Village of the Giants

Rating:
Summary: No thank you MGM!
Review: I'll never be able to understand MGM's DVD policy! Lately they've released a dozen great titles in nice looking transfers almost every month, but now and then they let a disc slip by that proves to be way below their standard. I've just tried to watch "Village of the Giants", but had to stop after ten minutes out of pure anger. This image is squeezed from an original aspect ratio of approximately 1.77:1 to a so called standard screen format! The result is a deformed picture where all the actors walk around with banana sized faces and Goofy-shaped legs! This is the first DVD I've seen so far mastered in this idiotic way. Slight cropping can sometimes be acceptable, but pan & scan is unforgiveable in the DVD era - and so is squeezing! This one goes back to the store tomorrow!

Rating:
Summary: Hokey,silly film,but still fun to watch!
Review: If you like bad movies with cheap effects and a poorly written script and plus,like to see what Ron Howard did after The Andy Griffith Show(as well as Beau Bridges;among others),then by all means check this out!! If you'd like to see what MST3K did to this,then find someone that may have a copy..Either way,you'll laugh!! Recommended....

Rating:
Summary: Very amusing and fun movie , even if corny at times ;)
Review: Most people would think that anything with a title like this, made in the 1960's and with the storyline that the movie follows, this would have to be a real horrible movie. Well it isn't something I would say should win an award but I would say for the price and type of movie this is, its really not so bad at all. In fact I actualy enjoy it every time.

The premise is simple enough. A young boy played by Ron Howard named Genius invents some substance that he names "Goo" . They don't realize it yet but soon enough after a cat accidently eats the stuff and then grows to the size of an elephant, they realize that this stuff makes anything that ingests it grow to huge proportions. They instantly see dollar signs before their eyes hoping to better man kind with such an invention. A few bullies though have some other ideas and steal the substance and all grow into huge 50 foot giants/giantesses and start to take over the town. Its up to Genius and Tommy Kirk to bring these titans back down to size.

Its full of many jokes that just aren't meant to be funny but come off as hysterical. It has a lot of bad effects. (Like two wooden legs in the middle of the street that are supposed to be one of the giants own legs. Cheap motorcycles that fall apart after they try to tie up one of the legs of the giant, giant animals that can't seem to move from the spot they are in due to the way they did the effect. Also the fact that they seem to be trapped inside a huge stage for most of the movie . How they ever got in though without breaking anything is beyond me. ) and not to mention the really bad acting (Talking really slow to make it seem like they are giants and the corny diologue througout). Then the best is the music. Its just so out there it really makes this movie perfect.

This was supposed to be one of those Teen explotation movies of the 60s and it pulls it off well. We have the teens not wanting to listen to the adults anymore because of their size and such things as playing with sex (one fo the giantesses gives a small boy a dance hugging him to her breasts) and ordering the cops around. It really is an interseting movie for what it is and the hidden messages in it. Really a fun movie though overall. You will laugh at the diolage and special effects but I think thats part of the charm of this movie. Not every movie has to be serious and ILM effects. This was just a fun , carefree, fantasy type of situation movie. It holds no punches and doesn't even take itself seriously so we the viewer of it shoudln't either. Defintely fun and a good movie to watch with friends just for the laughs .

Rating:
Summary: There's just something about this godawful flick!
Review: Okay, okay, I know some people might be in disbelief that I actually gave this flick 5 stars, but -- despite its godawfulness -- there's just something mesmerizing about it! The story involves a group of teens (yeah right, more like mid-twenties)who find a potion that turns them into giants. It's campy and the "special effects" are laughingly awful, yet the flick is highly entertaining for a number of reasons: First of all, the bass-driven wierd 60's musical score is great; as is the accompanying sensual dancing of the giants (they really don't know what else to do after becoming giants, so they just dance); the cast -- which includes a young Ron Howard -- is great; and last but certainly not least, the cast includes a young redheaded Toni Basil (who went on to become a one-hit wonder with "Hey Mickey"); Basil is so incredibly sexy and gorgeous, it's worth seeing the movie just for her! Watch out for Basil in a bikini in the pool party scene! So, yeah, overall it's a real turkey, but a golden turkey!

Rating:
Summary: Future Stars In Crazy Movie!
Review: The 1960s produced a many youth orientated movie. Most of them were just outright wacky like this one, about some mean teens who get their hands on a formula that makes them giants. The bad kids are too clean cut to really portray juvenile delinquents, but no matter. Totally silly plot, but tolerable. Worth seeing as a time capsule of the mid-1960s, but also for two guys who went on to do better things: Ron (Ronny) Howard, as the boy wonder who makes the formula, and Beau Bridges, as one of the thuggish teenagers.

Rating:
Summary: Beau, baby! Woof!
Review: The near-naked appearance throughout most of the film of humpy, hairy young Beau Bridges is the enduring value of this camp classic. The film itself is a wacky confabulation of BEACH BLANKET BINGO, THE MONKEY'S UNCLE and THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN.

Rating:
Summary: Truly bad movie, one of the all time worst.
Review: There's a reason this appears on almost every compilation of the all time worst movies....

An unintentional classic, on par with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This movie will appeal to anyone enjoying Bert Gordon or Ed Wood films, or Joy Harmon's chest.

No goodies on the DVD version, which is too bad. I would have to loved to see what Ron Howard or Beau Bridges would have to say about this movie a few decades later.

Rating:
Summary: Town of the Overgrown young adults and very chessy effects!
Review: This movie is about a two groups of young adults.First we have the bad young adults lead by the a very (I'd say 20-30ish Beau Bridges,judging by the amount of chest hair on him when he grows up to be a giant!) and the good young people lead by Tommy Kirk(Babes in Toyland). One of the good teen siblings(Ron Howard) accidently discovers a food stuff that makes whatever eats into a giant.The good teens accidently let some ducks and a dog eat it. meanwhile the bad teens wreck their car outside of the town where the good teens live. The bad teens decide to go have a good time dancing and causing trouble at a local teen hang out.

There the bad teens learn of Genuis's goo(growth stuff). They plot to find a way to get their hands on it for money etc. Eventually the bad teens sends in a bad teen to steal the goo.They steal it but are discovered by the good teens and a brawl erupts. One of the bad teens escapes during the melee with the giant growth growing food.

Later at a abandoned play theater the bad teens decides to "dare" themselfs to take the goo.Finally Beau Bridges decides that all the bad young adults takes the substance. They all grow to be at least 2 stories high.Here is a example of bad special effects!In this part it looks like they are growing but we cannot tell becuase the film makers covered everyones chest and did a lousy job of making them giants.After they are done growing they get some new clothes(when they grew , they become naked! ) and go out on the town. Also why only one giant with chest hair?They could of got a few more hot hairy peoples besides Beau?Also why not make the good teens giants too and let the town become a battlefield?

They promptly take over the town by doing some very bad dancing and blackmail(like getting the towns guns). Well the bad teens do not like what the bad teens did, so they devise a plan of their own(more dancing! ). Ron Howard makes a red gas that shrinks the bad teens back to normal despite all the trouble they caused(kidnapped of sheriff daughter,a good teen friend,breaking and entering the theater, etc..)As the bad teens shrink it's a yet another example of bad special effects! The bad teens flee the town in the used to be giant togos(how they shrunk too , I do not understand! ).The opening and ending of this movie has a giant Beau Bridges and his fellow young adult rebels dancing in a blue or some other light. It was OK for the year/decade it came out!if anyone can remake this movie please do a better job with the special effects!And another thing why is this movie not on DVD? I'd rather of got this movie on DVD (so I can watch my favorite parts,for me the bad teens becoming gaints!) and no ads before or fast forwarding! Please MGM rerelease this movie on DVD ASAP!

Rating:
Summary: To say it is Bert I.'s finest film would be faint praise.
Review: This was, at the time of its release, no less than the crowning achievement of man. So it should not dim the glory of Village of the Giants one bit that a mere 4 years later, Armstrong's moonwalk eclipsed this film's importance to humanity. The fact remains that Village of the Giants represents a watershed moment in our history.

It is, and you can believe me, because I am a believable guy, the BEST BAD MOVIE OF ALL TIME!

All the things that make Bert I. Gordon movies what they are are present here, in full- and silly- force. In fact, it is as if all Bert's planets aligned at once, and he found his true calling, moving beyond mere Colossal Beasts and Cyclopean things and giant Spiders, to those most photogenic of glandular mishaps: Giant women! Not to say that there isn't a giant tarantula in this film, or a colossal beast in the whiny form of a young Beau Bridges, but Bert's camera clearly favors the elephantine charms of Joy and Tish (as well as the average-sized pulchritude of Toni) over the evermore passe thrills of mere oversized creatures. Like, giant grasshoppers are SO 1957!

Other things contribute to the overall pleasing quality of this film's ineptitude, not the least of which is, despite Bert's recurrent leering, a basically naïve sensibility: movies had not become too dirty or trashy yet. The bad teens are about as menacing as wheelchair-bound octogenarians- they wear cardigans, for goshsakes. And while there is a definite cheesecake factor at play here, it is in the G-rated manner of the Frankie-and-Annie Beach Party films, not the slimy type in evidence in later Hammer horrors.

Other bad movies are equally as "bad." Al Adamson, Jerry Warren, Colman Francis, Ed Wood's later stuff, even Bert himself a few years later... all of these guys make lousy films. But they're sleazier somehow- not as *fun.*

Fans of the Hideous Sun Demon know well how star Robert Clarke's trousers became soaked with sweat during filming in the hot sun, to the point where it looked as though the Sun Demon couldn't control his bladder. That led to unintentional hilarity for B-lovers.

Now imagine several howlingly funny instances like that for every minute of this film's 80-minute run time. Dialogue, plot, effects, music, direction- everything is side-splittingly ...here. There are more laughs in this movie than in Jim Carrey's entire filmography.
And far from being the bewildering, incoherently awful mess that Plan 9 is, this movie is very straightforward; it just does everything in such an over-the-top and utterly wrong fashion.

Now, in the manner of the copy on those lovably hyperbolic posters from days gone by, I will outline only a fraction of this movie's treasured moments:
See! Beau Bridges try to pick up a chick by telling her his dad is the biggest man in the meat business!
See! Where John Ratzenberger got his inspiration for Cliff Clavan the mother-dominated postman in Beau's wink-wink nudge-nudge performance!
See! Ronnie Howard create a substance which turns normal things into giants, and act surprised when they leave!
See! Tommy Kirk claim the giant ducks for his own, raising his arms as though he just scored the winning touchdown!
See! The infamous ride of a young cowboy on Joy Harmon's bust!
See! Bert I. Gordon's directorial genius, as shots of the tail feathers of ducks being tortured by gaffers are intercut with shots of boogieing girls' rear ends!
See! Song after song after song after song, each one more hypnotically campy and dated than the last!
See! "Giants" moving very s l o w ly, to signify how totally, you know, HUGE they are!
See! Cops not notice the 30-foot tall teens in technicolor clothing standing ten feet away!
See! Tommy break a fake chair over Beau's skinny, knobby, hairy plaster leg, then listen in incredulity as Beau shouts, "O o o o o o oww!" and pouts!
See! Several scenes of interminable length while the bad "teens" shake it before the camera! See Beau make fine use of the ever-popular dance technique known as 'The White Man's Overbite!'
See! Midgets longing to be giants!
See! Much more wonderful, terrible stuff than I could tell you about if this review were five times this long! This really doesn't even begin to touch how comic the dialogue, or performances, or the direction are!

See! Yourself buying this dvd posthaste! Then, buy one for a friend!

See! also: Hideous Sun Demon; Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine; Astounding She-Monster; Jail Bait; Brain From Planet Arous; Phantom Planet; Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (1958); Magic Sword!

Rating:
Summary: It took a village to raise these damn idiots
Review: Very loose adaption of "Food of the Gods", as if HG Wells had adapted his work for one of those AIP Beach movies. In this one, a group of cardigan wearing bad-teens led by the evil Beau Bridges descend on a California town, not knowing that the town's resident genius (known as "Genius" and played by Ron Howard) has developed something called goo which causes super-growth. A couple of geese try the stuff and grow to a size slightly smaller than a BMW, amusing and amazing the town before ending up as the guests of honor at a BBQ for a town full of kids who can't spell FDA. In a classic scene, the evil Bridges gang steals the goo and, too delinquent to just sell the stuff to the highest bidder, they eat it. Growing to monstrous size (which is anything bigger than their clothes can stand before tearing off - a logical detail actually working for the plot for once), they take over the town and force its citizens to watch them engage in slow motion dancing (how hard did they have to fight for this town). Led by Tommy Kirk, the good teens try to keep the bad teens at bay until Genius can create a "cure" for the goo. At its worst, the flick is bald exploitation, and good clean fun at best. Most critics slam this as an exploitative version of the Wells book - why the connection was ever made is a mystery to me. The problem is that the producers take this stuff much to seriously - if they had Russ Meyer do it (a guy whose pretty honest of his intentions) it would have been a big cult hit.