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Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman

Entry updated 9 December 2016. Tagged: Film.

Made-for-tv movie (1993), first screened December 1993. Home Box Office/Warner Bros Television/Bartleby Ltd. Produced by Debra Hill. Directed by Christopher Guest. Written by Joseph Dougherty, based on the screenplay of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) written by Mark Hanna. Cast includes Daniel Baldwin, Christi Conaway, Frances Fisher, Daryl Hannah and William Windom. 89 minutes. Colour.

This is a remake of a rather dim affair from 1958 with (approximately) the same title, directed by Nathan Juran, primarily remembered for its wonderful advertising poster, and the unintentional hilarity of the story. Some feminist (see Feminism) criticism of the 1980s resuscitated the film as an early icon to do with the empowering of women. The possibly imaginary feminist subtext of the original is taken up with a vengeance and foregrounded in this rather one-note tale of a put-upon woman, played by Hannah (in therapy, and with a philandering husband, played by Baldwin) who, by Alien intervention, grows to be fifty feet tall and gets her own back (see Great and Small). It is a mildly amusing film, better than its original though crudely propagandizing, with Hannah positively glowing once she gets big enough, so to speak, to dominate, and to inspire other women. The film ends with a men's group therapy class including the Baldwin character, supervised by three vast women, in an alien spacecraft. [PN]

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