Why So Blu?

Attack Of The 50 Ft. Woman (Blu-ray Review)

Warner Archive Collection is bringing a movie with perhaps one of the most famous classic genre/cult posters of all time to the Blu-ray format – Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. Its a movie that is everything from a trailer to a poster, but how many people really know it any more for the film that it is? I’m sure plenty, but moreso a general public conscience. The film will come with a fresh restoration and transfer to go with a commentary and trailer to compliment as bonus features. The disc arrives on December 6th. You can order yourself a copy using the paid Amazon Associates link that follows the review at the bottom of the page.

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Film

Allison Hayes stars in this enduring classic of 1950s science fiction, as a beautiful, wealthy young woman–trapped in a loveless marriage to a philandering husband who only wants her money–exacts a terrible vengeance when exposure to radiation from an alien UFO causes her to grow into a 50-foot-tall monster!

Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman is probably one of the most well known, or one people are aware of, from the atomic era of horror. There is sort of ridiculous quality to the title to go with an iconic poster. Its the type of thing that you’re not confident of it being good or not, but you’re confident you need to check it out. And with how short of runtime it has, plus some intriguing subplots to build up to the title showing up in the finale, it pays out well enough to make that curiosity worthwhile.

One of the themes that finds more intrigue to a modern audience in the film is that there’s a sub-line of not believing women. Yes, there’s a dastardly plot from the husband at play, but the fact that no one will buy into what this woman is telling them is a very common horror trope that is being explored upon today. The film handles it in a more championing way, however with how it results and turns her into the ultimate villain showcases the times in which the film was made and the follow through on the writing of the time.

Special effects-wise, I’m not so sure this one was ground breaking. It comes with the regular tactics of the time. Some of the giant stuff however, is very much done in a super imposed fashion with this new disc making the giant people looking very see-through. Mostly however, the sort of “short comings” of the special effects are something that are the charm of the time and what you kind of want when taking in the film.

This classic piece of cult classic radioactive monster cinema is one that you can easily see where people endear. Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman manages to be interesting when its not living up to its title which really helps. And its funny, she doesn’t show up til pretty much the final reel, but people don’t complain like your Jason Takes Manhattans. Its a fun little movie to touch back upon from time to time or add to a varied cult movie marathon.

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Layers: BD-50

Clarity/Detail: Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman debuts on Blu-ray with a 1080p HD Master from a 4K Scan of the original camera negative. And it looks quite lovely here. The film has a wonderful clarity, looking pretty young and fresh for a film of its age. There’s a really nice level of detail here and even the effects heavy scenes come across steady and crisp.

Depth:  Depth of field is rock solid with a good display of scale and more than decent pushback for a 3 dimensional type appeal.  Motion is smooth and cinematic without any distortion issues.

Black Levels: Blacks are deep, rich and close to natural. There’s good saturation and wonderful shadow work that really brings out the texture and detail. No crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: N/A

Flesh Tones: Skin tones are gray/white with a consistency from start to finish. Facial features and textures are surprisingly clear as day from almost any distance in the frame.

Noise/Artifacts: None

Audio

Format(s): English 2.0 Mono DTS-HD MA

Subtitles: English SDH

Dynamics: The mono track here is pretty rock solid. There’s a nice clarity for a film of this age with really no heavy hiss of the the analog source. A good balance lies here between the effects, vocals and music. The low end stuff is a bit light, but what you’d expect from something of this age.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: N/A

Surround Sound Presentation: N/A

Dialogue Reproduction: Vocals are clear and crisp

Extras

Audio Commentary

• by Film Historian Tom Weaver and actress Yvette Vickers

Original Theatrical Trailer (HD, )

Summary

Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman is a decent curiosity and a look into older gender politics in film. Warner Archive Collection brings it to Blu-ray for the first time with a pristine restoration and a nice little pair of extras to boot. This one feels more like a collector niche, but if its your niche, you should come away pretty pleased.

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