Sven- War of the Colossal Beast (1958)

 

Sven showed this fun sequel to the admittedly superior Amazing Colossal Man (1957) last night.  This was a movie I had seen parts of when I was around 5 or 6 years old.  I didn't ever see the titular Beast, but remember the trucks being found empty and a the giant footprint.  I knew something was up, but had other things going on at that age.  The television set was going, so I would see bits and pieces of a lot of movies this way.  As far as I know, the movie never aired in my region again, so I didn't see this film until home video, many years later.

The movie has an entirely different cast, and Glenn Manning now has a sister named Joyce- was she told after the fact about the events in the first movie? Manning has survived the fall into the Colorado river, but is now disfigured and even more mentally unstable.  Without the performance of Glenn Langan, this beast is just a monster until the very end of the movie.  There's a ridiculous bit with a boy and girl being "rebels" and you kind of wish Manning had squished them.

All in all, it's not a bad movie, really.  The finale was filmed in color, which was a fun thing to see.  After the Beast kills himself via electrocution, the movie just end.  No wrap up at all.  A lot of these movies end this way.  I always wanted to see what happened after these giants attacked humanity.  Would another two minutes of talk have blown the budget?