Main Cast: Sally Fraser, Dean Parkin, Roger Pace, Charles Stewart
Release Year: 1958
Country: US
Run Time: 68 minutes
Plot
War of the Colossal Beast picks up a year after the end of The Amazing Colossal Man -- Joyce Manning (Sally Fraser), sister to the first film's 70-foot-tall Colossal Man, Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan), believes that her brother is still alive, despite his fall off of Boulder Dam at the denouement of the first movie.Her hope is based on reports out of Mexico about a "very big man" attacking truckers and other passersby in a remote part of the country. As it turns out, Manning (played here by Dean Parkin, since Langan turned down the request to star in a sequel) is alive and hiding somewhere in the mountains, bigger than ever and suffering from serious brain damage, with a hideously deformed face that is covered in scar tissue and missing an eye. Every effort at communicating with the giant fails, and as things always transpire in movies of this sort (at least since the silent version of The Lost World), he breaks out of the place where he is being held and goes on a rampage. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
This sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man isn't nearly as strong dramatically as its predecessor, but it does offer some diverting chills and a short running time, even by the standards of late-'50s sci-fi B-pictures. The film's low budget shows when the makers avoid having the titular monster wreck Los Angeles as he'd previously demolished part of Las Vegas -- instead, the script has a 70-foot giant with a face out of a nightmare and no "social skills" whatsoever (or even the ability to string together two coherent thoughts, or to breathe without grunting loudly) hide out effectively in Los Angeles until he turns up in Griffith Park, holding a single busload of junior high school students hostage (that is, literally holding their tour bus, which ought to have been nearly as big as he is) until he comes to his senses. Producer/director Bert I. Gordon saved a gimmick for the end, one which had been used the previous year in AIP's I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, by suddenly switching to color for the final shot. Appropriately, War of the Colossal Beast was originally released on a double bill with the more dramatically coherent Attack of the Puppet People, another Gordon film that actually uses footage from The Amazing Colossal Man in one of its scenes. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
George Becwar - Swanson; Robert Hernandez - Miguel; Rico Alaniz - Sgt. Luis Murillo; George Alexander - Army Officer; George Navarro - Mexican Doctor; John McNamara - Neurologist; Howard Wright - Medical Corps Officer; Roy Gordon - Mayor; George Milan - Gen. Nelson; Warren Frost - Switchboard Operator; Bill Giorgio - Bus Driver; June Jocelyn - Mother; Jack Kosslyn - Newscaster; Stan Chambers - TV Announcer; Hal Torey; Russ Bender - Dr. Carmichael; Rod Dana
Upon hearing of several recent robberies of food delivery trucks in Mexico, Joyce Manning, the sister of Army officer Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (though in The Amazing Colossal Man, Glenn's fiance said Glenn had no surviving family), becomes convinced that her brother survived his fall from the Hoover Dam at the end of the first film. Along with Army officer Major Mark Baird and scientist Dr. Carmichael, she goes to Mexico to look for him.
It is discovered that Manning, now grown to 60 feet tall after being exposed to plutonium radiation, survived his fall from the Hoover Dam at the end of the previous movie, but he has gone insane and part of his face was left disfigured following his confrontation with the Army at the dam. Manning is captured and drugged by the Army and taken back to America, but he again escapes and goes on a rampage through Los Angeles and Hollywood. Eventually Joyce makes him snap to his senses and realizing what he has done, Manning kills himself by electrocution (somehow causing the movie to change from black and white to color for the final minute) on high-voltage power lines around the Griffith Park Observatory. The ending, involving electrocution, is almost exactly like the death of 50-ft Woman.
Although the most of the entire film is shot in back and white, the ending was shot in color for the electrocution scene, and doctored black and white.
