Giant from the Unknown

Rating:
Summary: "Can I spill you some coffee?"
Review: Campy fun from simpler days, this movie is a real treat.

Rating:
Summary: 50's HORROR CLASSIC!!
Review: I have always been very fond of this film. A giant Spanish Conquistador comes back to life and goes on a rampage in this Richard Cunha sci-fi gem. I love everyone in the cast especially Morris Ankrum and the always lovely Sally Forest. The small town setting adds a wonderful charm to this picture. 5 stars all the way!!!

Rating:
Summary: A True Monster Classic!
Review: I really love this film because it came from monsterdom's greatest era, the 50's and because of the title character, played by Buddy Baer. He also played the giant in Abbott and Costello's Jack and the Beanstalk. Any film made in this era, either sci-fi or horror can only be deservedly called a classic. Giant from the Unkown is no exception. Thank you Englewood video for releasing all these horror classics on video and allowing this monster freak to enjoy some of these lost classics I have been dying to see. Giant from the Unknown should be scen by all monster boomers because it will bring back all those matinee memories of monsters!

Rating:
Summary: HARMLESS 50'S SCI-FI OPUS...
Review: I sought this disc out to see if it was as bad as everything I'd read about it. It's bad but not THAT bad. I saw no reason to rip it to shreds as one reviewer so painstakingly did. Richard E.Cunha made some bad horror films but this isn't the worst I've seen. It sports fairly decent location shooting for one thing and some of the most unintentionally funny dialogue and situations you could want in a low budget "monster" movie. The "Giant" of the title isn't really a monster but a revived Spanish Conquistador who's just really big, really dirty and mad as hell. Held responsible for murders and other assorted mayhem that occured BEFORE he was revived (as the above mentioned reviewer correctly noted), he commences his rampage by stomping around with an axe. There's an elderly archaeologist, his chirpy daughter, a jerk sheriff and the hero---a local guy who keeps getting blamed for everything by the sheriff. The story takes place in a mountain community where everyone is upset by these brutal murders---yet one young woman is left ALONE by her brother in their remote cabin and meets the "Giant" when she goes to the well for water. Then the dippy heroine is left alone at a campsite I don't know how many times while the men go off in the mountains. Yep, the "Giant"s lurking around in the bushes. He also throws rocks at people. So you see, this is a goofy, goofy film. It's dumb and silly but I liked it because it's really watchable. It's a pristine example of 50's b&w drive-in fare well preserved on disc by Wade Williams and Image in a crisp, clean print. Rather enjoyable if it's not taken so seriously.

Rating:
Summary: "It's cold dead stare is watching...YOU"
Review: So says the coming attraction trailer on this chiller theatre opus
Terror strikes a small mid-west community in the form of a spanish
7-ft tall conquistdator reawakened from a suspended animated sleep by a freak lightning bolt.

This low budget 1958 film is more memorable for sporting the score
of the great Albert Glasser than anything. This image dvd is great
for this type Saturday matinee stuff. The picture is the clearest
print that I've seen of this film in quite sometime of course that
special feature trailer which makes it complete.

Rating:
Summary: A "Giant" worth watching
Review: The picture qaulity of this DVD is very good. The movie itself, simply put is allot of fun. The characters are interesting to watch(especially nosy Sheriff Parker)and although the story sounds stupid, somehow it all seems to work. I think I've watched this DVD more than any other. All in all, an excellant B-movie.

Tom Phillips

Rating:
Summary: A "Giant" worth watching
Review: The picture quality of this DVD is very good. The movie itself, simply put is allot of fun. The characters are interesting to watch(especially nosy Sheriff Parker)and although the story sounds stupid, somehow it all seems to work. I think I've watched this DVD more than any other. All in all, an excellant B-movie.

Tom Phillips

Rating:
Summary: Alternate Title: Tall Guy From Under a Pile of Leaves
Review: This is a fascinating movie. Not so much for what it is, as for what it represents: storytelling apathy. Ed Wood told nigh-unwatchably
ridiculous tales, but with conviction and from the heart. This, on the other hand...
Look, I have never been lucky(?) enough to see the worst Larry Buchanan efforts (the sneaker-clad monsters, the typos in the title cards), but this movie helps me to understand MST3K's popular host segment where it was hypothesized that the moviemakers just must not have cared
Similarly, GU doesn't have plot holes- it has canyons. Did no one involved with the movie notice that the title character rises from suspended animation AFTER several killings have already taken place? The characters may be excused for believing him responsible, because they did not see him rise, but the audience had, and therefore knows he has an airtight alibi: he was still dead. Yet no explanation is given or even attempted. Wassupwitdat?
This had possibilities. Limited possibilities, I'll admit, but the capacity was there to be a diverting, if silly, little 50's sci-fi opus. However, any possibilities GU had were snuffed out. I can forgive executional gaffes or shortcomings due to budget, bad acting or weak effects. I'll even forgive junk science sometimes in the name of fun, nostalgia or imagination. But flaws this grievous at the script level are fingernails-on-a-chalkboard to me. Badness of this kind is not the lovable, comical ineptitude of Hideous Sun Demon; it's just annoying.
Only when mistakes so moronic pop up do I turn a more critical eye to these dumb little films, and set out to find all the mistakes I can. What would be a charmingly naive plot point in a slightly better film is unmasked as the ugly prom date it is. Such as: The Giant takes bullet after bullet to his person, with little effect, then is defeated very suddenly due to his own clumsiness. How can this dubious denoument make any sense given the tall fellow's supposed indestructibility? Because the script says it must, and the moviemakers would have had to pay the crew more to wait around while a suitable ending was rewritten. Or that's my guess, if anybody gave it even that much thought.
The half-hearted moviemaking style is demonstrated in other ways. Cunha provides some evidence that he knew how to make Giant of the Unknown technically better; but he seemed not to care.
Take for example, the scene where the stereotyped "crazy Indian" character sneaks up on the scientist. The Indian carries a rifle and there is still doubt whether he is behind the earlier killings. Where other directors would have built suspense by establishing both characters in their spatial relationship to each other, then cutting back and forth between them in a succession of tighter shots, Cunha finds contentment in showing one wide shot, then cutting to the oblivious scientist and building the music to crescendo, without seeing anymore of the peril. The viewer feels doubly cheated- tension is hinted at, then never mounts. Because it would've meant utilizing different angles, which would take tearing down the camera and setting it up again, a longer shooting schedule...
And there a lot of dumb things in this movie, but I won't take the time to outline any more.
... Sigh ...
GU is the kind of sci-fi/horror movie I really enjoy (and hate when it is messed up): a small, isolated community overcomes squabbling and joins together to fight off a monster. But a 6-foot-6 guy just isn't that horrifying, 500 years old or not. And let's face it, there a dozen better efforts out there, even when you are as manic as I am and divide them into sub-sub-subgenres. Yet though there are a lot of these movies, there aren't so many that there isn't always room for one more *good* one. Therefore, I can imagine myself as a 10-year old in 1958, crying as I left the theater because, well, a Saturday afternoon monster movie matinee is a terrible thing to waste.
... Sigh ...
Compare its laziness and/or stupidity to: Bride of the Monster; Meteor Monster; Flying Serpent.