fwdixon War of the Colossal Beast is the sequel to the Amazing Colossal Man and is directed by Bert I. Gordon. Those of you unfamiliar with the first movie just have to know the Col. Glenn Manning was turned into the Colossal Man via that 50's favorite, radioactivity, and was shot off Boulder Dam and presumed deceased at the conclusion of that picture. This picture picks up with Manning being found in Mexico, still a giant but now horribly disfigured and apparently insane. The Army captures him and brings him to Los Angeles on the somewhat shaky presumption that nothing could possibly go wrong with bringing a violently insane 60 foot man to a major population center. Well, of course Manning breaks free and proceeds to terrorize Griffith Park. His loving sister confronts him and snaps him back to sanity. At that point he decides to electrocute himself on some convenient high tension wires. The End.This American International (the hallmark of quality!) picture is actually pretty good given the genre and its (low) budget. I feel it is superior to The Amazing Colossal Man. The special effects are at once both cheesy and surprisingly effective. There's also plenty of footage from the original picture shown in flashback moments and some stock footage thrown in for good measure. The film moves along at a nice clip and the acting is acceptable, if at times a tad overwrought. A nice touch in the grand electrocution finale is the switch over to glorious color, so the viewer can fully enjoy the disintegration of Col. Manning. My "B" Movie Meter: 8.5*

MARIO GAUCI Bert I. Gordon was known to milk a successful formula dry, but his efforts perhaps never felt more mercenary than here – for he not only revived the unfortunate protagonist of THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN but, to show his degeneration to an essentially subhuman level, he was given the chief attribute (an annoyingly loud growl) of THE CYCLOPS (both these films emanated from the previous year)! A sure sign of the quick cash-in status of this one is the fact that the film-makers did not even bother to re-read the original's script, where it is mentioned that Glenn Langan had no surviving relatives…but a sister somehow pops up here!; incidentally, one cannot blame the actor for presumably declining to reprise his by-now unenviable role, but neither were any of the other characters retained (which is odd, to say the least)! While the lack of heartburn this time around can be explained by the scientists in the first film having succeeded in stalling his growth, he acquires a physical and almost skeletal makeover – which, along with the title (despite its obvious exaggeration, since his acts of aggression basically revolve around pillaging food-trucks for sustenance and, at the climax, threatening to throw a school-bus filled with children at the inquisitive crowds and assorted military figures below!) and a surprising switch to colour for the monster's literally electrifying come-uppance, virtually constitute its sole points of interest.

MartinHafer I love 1950s sci-fi and horror films. Sure, many of them are quite cheesy but they are also quite fun. And this is the biggest reason NOT to see this film--it simply isn't any fun.Although you would think that the enormous man died at the end of "The Amazing Colossal Man", somehow Colonel Manning somehow ends up in Mexico. This, despite two bazooka blasts and a 700 foot fall at the end of the last movie. The only think I liked about this angle was the great makeup job--with the Colonel's partially exposed skull. The other problem with the man now is that he's obviously brain damaged and just growled and grunted throughout the film! Not surprisingly, when the Air Force brings him back to America, bad things ensue.In addition to a rather unnecessary plot, the film also suffers from 'flashback-itis'. In other words, much of the film consists of film footage from the first film in a cynical attempt to pad the movie--which is sad because even with this recycled footage it's only a little over an hour long.So here's the negative: the script is dull, filled with rehashed material and the leading man growls and grunts throughout the entire movie. On the positive side: cool skull makeup. All in all, the skull makeup pales in comparison to the rest of the movie! My advice is only see this is you are very, very bored...and not particularly choosy.

sol1218 **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!