Not even bad in a good way

Let's be realistic.

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Good ole Bert I Gordon helms this huge slice of Velveeta, a straight- faced sequel to his "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" clone, The Amazing Colossal Man. Colonel Manning didn't die as thought, roaming the countryside of Guavos, Mexico, lifting food trucks off roads, his face and brain damaged. His sister in Los Angeles urges the military and doctors to help him. Government brass want nothing to do with him, and psyche tests show Manning is a head case of enormous size. A hanger holds him for a while but eventually Manning frees himself, nearly tossing a bus of kids at the soldiers oddly blinding him with spotlights... because that is what you do to a giant hoisting up a bus full of students! Despite being a man of great size, power lines are his downfall. Growling, with some rather poor makeup imitating revealed skull, this Manning speaks only his sister's name and nothing else. The giant effects opposite regular size folks and landscapes reveal all too well the limits Gordon's budget had. Being loose in LA, the film is too low budget to capitalize on any recognizable locations, ending at night with neighborhood onlookers marveling. For Gordon fans, this will be fun, but others, not so much. Lots of talking minds debating what to do about Manning as his sis appeals to in her brother's favor.

This is the sad case of the Colossal man, Glen Manning, who through no fault of his own was doomed to suffer a horrible fate. In the first movie, he appeared to die as he fell off Hoover Dam. Now, he has resurfaced, with huge facial deformities and damage to his brain. The problem this time is that he doesn't seem to have the ability to communicate with others. His sister goes to bat for him when the military wants nothing more that to destroy him. It's interesting where he fits on the definition of humanness. That's why the sister is working so hard to get him some help, but he doesn't seem to be able to interpret his world. He does show his compassion one more time at the close of this film. The big guy never had a chance.

War of the Colossal Beast starts in Los Angeles as Joyce Mannning (Sally Fraser) hears about a strange incident in Mexico in which a man's truck mysterious disappears without leaving any tracks. The sister of 60 foot giant Col. Glenn Manning (Dean Parkin) who was apparently shot dead by the US military but whose body was never found Joyce suspects that her brother might be responsible for the vanishing truck & travels to Mexico to investigate, Major Mark Baird (Roger Pace) joins her & together they discover Glenn hiding in a mountain range & stealing trucks for food supplies. A trap is set & Glenn is rendered unconscious & flown to Los Angeles airport & chained to the floor of a huge hangar. More monster than man Glenn manages to escape & starts to terrorise Los Angeles, it's up to the authorities to try & prevent any harm coming to anyone & find a peaceful solution...Produced & directed by Mr. BIG himself Bert I. Gordon this direct sequel to his earlier The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) was made only a couple of years later & having seen the original as recently as a couple of days ago I have to say while neither are exactly masterpieces I actually thought The War of the Colossal Beast was the slightly better film although most claim the opposite. The very questionable scientific nonsense from the original is absent here with no mention of Glenn's heart problems, at just under 70 minutes it moves along at a decent pace although the first twenty odd minutes is set-up as a mystery where we know what's happening to the missing truck's but it takes a while for the character's to catch up. The script is fairly basic, there's not a lot to the film & it's just a case of Manning being captured by the military, escaping, being captured again & escaping again although how he can just disappear is a mystery to me as a 60 foot tall giant isn't exactly inconspicuous is he? I mean he's hardly a set of car key's... The ending is a bit of a mystery too, after a unexpected twist in which Manning tries to commit suicide he just disappears into thin air which just looks totally bizarre & never explained. I also feel that the script does a better job of making you sympathise with Manning compared to the first which just paints him as an unlikable moaner although there is no mention of the plan to return Manning to his normal size that featured prominently in the original. The War of the Colossal Beast is a competently written & made low budget sci-fi horror that isn't brilliant but isn't that bad either, at only 70 odd minutes long at least it's short too.The film doesn't really live up to it's dramatic sounding title, I would hardly describe anything that happens as even approaching a War & gone is the description of a mere Colossal Man to be replaced with the more terrifying sounding Colossal Beast! You may, or indeed may not, know that the 'thrilling' climax of The War of the Colossal Beast was shot in colour, don't get your hopes up though as while the ending does change from black and white to colour the colour footage lasts for all of thirty seconds. There are numerous flashbacks to the original film where footage is edited into this which helps explain the origins of Manning if you haven't seen the original. The special effects are alright & a slight step-up from the original, the matte work isn't quite as bad & Manning interacts with his surrounds more although the model work isn't that convincing. Originally released as a double package with Mr BIG's Attack of the Puppet People (1958).Filmed in Los Angeles in California the production values are decent enough & it's competently made for what it is. The acting isn't great but it's not terrible, the original Colossal Man has been replaced with Dean Pickering who only gets to say one word throughout the entire film & has some fairly effective disfigured face make-up although his constant loud moaning type noises that makes irritated me.The War of the Colossal Beast is a pretty good late 50's sci-fi monster film, it's fairly basic & not that much happens but at only 70 odd minutes it's fun while it last's. Not too bad at all & I actually prefer it to the original.

**SPOILERS** After being hit by a number of bazooka shells and falling some 700 feet from the top of the Hoover Dam 60 foot Glenn Manning, Duncan Parkin, somehow survived and ended up, flowing downstream, in Mexico. It's there that Manning, the survivor of a plutonium blast, started raiding grocery trucks to fill his enormous stomach and keep from starving to death.It's when American gun club owner John Swason's, George Becwar, grocery truck was snatched by Manning with his young Mexican driver Miguel, Robert Hernandez, losing his mind in the process that the truth came out that the big guy was still around and causing trouble. It's Manning's sister Joyce, Sally Fraser, who by watching a news report on the incident suspected that her "Big" brother had survived in his battle with the US Army as was now determined to find him. The final evidence that Manning was in fact alive is when Swanson's dismantled truck was found with a giant fingerprint indented in it that matched the so-called deceased Manning that was proof positive that he in fact was alive. The problem now is how to apprehend him and bring Manning back to the US for farther study! In how plutonium rays effects the growth process in both man and animal!Manning is fit to be tied, and is, as he's brought back to the US, after being captured in the wilds of Mexico, in a giant US Army cargo military plane to L.A. Despite all the precautions to keep Manning, who lost an eye and half of his brain in his battle with the US Army, "tied up" he escapes, twice not once, from his confinement as he causes havoc all throughout the L.A district. ***SPOILERS**** In the end Manning just got sick and tired tearing the city apart and seeing that there's no future in him being the biggest guy in the neighborhood he did the only thing left for him to do. With him destined to go through life wearing a giant makeshift diaper, since there's no clothes that can possible fit him, Manning put an end to it all by electrocuting himself, by grabbing a live 50 foot power line, and did it in living color!The most unusual thing about the movie "War of the Colossal Beast" is that its star Duncan Parkin as Glenn Manning was overshadowed by actor Glenn Langan who played Glenn Manning in the previous movie that the film was based on "The Amazing Colossal Man"! In fact it was Langan, in a number of long flashbacks, that had more screen time as far more lines in the film that Parkin did! There's also in the movie George Becwar as gun club and truck owner John Swanson who three years earlier became immortalizes, in bad movie lovers circles, as the overstuffed and arrogant Prof. Valadimir Strowski in the Ed Wood bad movie classic "Bride of the Monster". It was Prof. Strowski who ended up being a victim of what the films star Bela Lugosi, as Dr. Eric Vornoff, called the "product of my genius" the alleged "Monster of Lake Marsh". Which in fact was a rubber motorized octopus with its motor conked out!