Pretty good B sci-fi from the 50s. Glenn Langan stars as an Army lieutenant who gets caught in an atomic blast. Having no refrigerator to hide in, he suffers the full brunt of the explosion. Amazingly, it doesn't kill him. Even his burned skin regenerates after only a day. But the good news ends there, as this miraculous healing process doesn't stop. Soon, he's twenty feet tall, with no signs of stopping. His fiancée, Cathy Downs, watches in horror, and William Hudson and Larry Thor try desperately to find a cure. For a while, this film seems pretty good, with the protagonist going through an existential crisis that is easy to sympathize with. Unfortunately, as it goes on, it turns into a very rote monster movie with very cruddy special effects. It's not bad for what it is - I'm sure kids were happy to see the talking stop and see the shooting start - but for a while it almost seemed like it might become the companion piece to the contemporaneous The Incredible Shrinking Man, which provided both thrills and intellect.

Size obsessed science fiction filmmakers during the 1950s. They measured everything by bulk. Aliens, animals, humans, and robots either increased or decreased in stature. Actually, the first sci-fi film to explore the possibilities of people diminished in dimension was Todd Browning's "The Devil Doll" (1936) about a vengeful scientist who used humans that he had miniaturized to perform his perfidious deeds. The first major movie about tiny things being enlarged by radiation was Gordon Douglas' "Them!" (1954) about huge irradiated ants. Inevitably, just as Hollywood had shrunk humans, they would also enlarge them. Initially, director Bert I. Gordon experimented with this concept in 1957 with "The Cyclops" about a mutated 25-foot tall human in South America, anticipating Gordon's own 1958 outing "War of the Colossal Beast." The release dates of "The Amazing Colossal Man" with "The Incredible Shrinking Man" suggest American International Pictures rushed former into theaters to exploit the latter film about a diminutive dude. The problem with Gordon's opus is that it never generates either the suspense and/or tension that Jack Arnold's seminal sci-fi classic mustered. Once our hero looms to 60 feet in height in "The Amazing Colossal Man," nothing can challenge him in the same way that a house cat or a spider did the protagonist of "The Incredible Shrinking Man." "The Amazing Colossal Man" opens with a convoy of military vehicles—crossing the screen from left to right—traveling along an asphalt road through the desert as a narrator establishes the setting. "The time is two forty-five A.M., two hours and fifteen minutes before time zero. At time zero, a new type of atomic explosion--a plutonium bomb--will be detonated at Desert Rock, Nevada. These soldiers are to experience the plutonium explosion under simulated combat conditions." The next sight that we see is several soldiers crouched in a trench in combat gear with helmets and special goggles as the bomb site officer at a distant command post (William Hughes of "Geronimo") keeps the troops posted about the impending detonation. "Attention! Attention! All personnel. The time is zero minus thirty seconds. The plutonium explosion will take place at time zero. I repeat, the plutonium explosion will take place at time zero." Dramatically, the officer commences the countdown. When he finishes it, the technician at the command center—a staff sergeant—clicks the mechanism to trigger the detonation. However, nothing happens. The command post officer cautions the troops: "Do not leave your positions. I repeat, do not leave your positions. The plutonium bomb has been triggered and will explode at any moment. The chain reaction did not complete its cycle as calculated. Keep your dark glasses on and stay where you are." One of the troops asks Colonel Manning (Glenn Langan of "The Snake Pit") what will happen. He warns them the bomb could explode at any minute, but he allows them to smoke cigarettes to calm their nerves. About this time, they hear the sound of an engine and Manning spots a light propeller-driven civilian aircraft descend through the clouds. The command post orders the unseen pilot to alter course, but the plane crashes. The plutonium bomb has still not detonated so a heroic Colonel Manning sheds his helmet and goggles and charges towards the plane to rescue the pilot. The command post orders Manning to desist, but the plutonium bomb detonates. The blast catches Manning and shreds the clothes off his body. Later, the Army doctors have little hope for him since third degree burns cover his body.Manning's fiancée, Carol Forrest (Cathy Downs of "My Darling Clementine"), visits him in the hospital and later tracks him down to a secret military facility when the Army has transferred him to study his condition. She refuses to be kept away from him, and the doctors relent. Carol gets to spend time with him. Miraculously, despite the third degree burns, Manning survives, and new skin grows to replace the charred skin. One tragic side effect is that the Army colonel grows eight to ten feet a day. Eventually he has to be housed in a circus tent. Dr. Paul Linstrom (William Hudson of "Mister Roberts") and Major Eric Coulter, MD (Larry Thor of "Machine Gun Kelly") both struggle without success to find a cure. Nevertheless, Manning continues to grow until he towers 60 feet in stature. Carol spends time with Manning, but he grows increasingly depressed about his acute condition and sees no hope for his future.Some forty-five minutes into the action, Manning decides to leave the army base. He vanishes into the desert. How does a 60 foot guy avoid detection from the military in the desert? Before long the Army receives reports about slaughtered cattle and two guys in a car with a bottle of liquor encounter Manning at night on the highway. "I'll never drink again," the passenger (Hank Patterson of "Green Acres") assures his companion. Colonel Halleck (James Seay of "Vera Cruz") warns Linstrom and Coulter that he is prepared to use force against Manning if Manning endangers lives and property. When they finally locate Manning, Manning has wandered into Las Vegas wearing only a sarong. He uproots a palm tree and hurls it at the Las Vegas police after they take rifle shots at it. Manning tromps off to Hoover Dam. Before he gets there, Linstrom and Coulter fly in with a huge syringe and administer an injection of a drug that reduced the size of circus animals. The shot fails. Manning grabs Carol like King Kong. The military waits under he releases her and then cuts loose with a barrage of fire. Manning topples off the dam and vanishes into the Colorado River.The only genuine violence occurs when Manning skewers Coulter with the giant needle. Gordon, who doubled as the special effects coordinator, does a reason able of developing Manning's plight, but later "The Amazing Colossal Man" degenerates into giant freak show with little ambiguity.

I am constantly amazed at the numbers of people who write such educated pieces on films as low in quality like The Amazing Collosal Man. I mean on this one I'm pretty shocked because this movie is horribly bad. It's not the worse and doesn't come close to the "worse" quality such as a Beast Of Yucca Flats type film. There is a coherent plot, but the story is incredibly long and boring and the end is very anti-climatic. This would have been a drive in flick where I would be cursing the ending saying "I stayed awake for that?". THE ONLY way I watched this whole thing was because it was a MST3K episode that I got and they tore it a new one. I mean the funniest part was at the end when the "Giant" (he's no longer a "Colonel"), is asked to put the girl down, and when he does the soldiers blast him, the MST3K guys dialog was, OK thanks for putting the girl down now here's some bullets for your reward. That ending was that abrupt and that lame. Avoid this like the plague unless watching as a MST3K bit or unless you intentionally want to watch a bad film. Some of these reviews must be have been written by college students using their essays from school and posting it on the web since they already did it. I mean to make so much into a flick like Amazing Collosal is like rationalizing a terrorist attack, sometimes its just too obvious to analyze in depth. In this case, it's early American International crapola, period.

"The Amazing Colossal Man" gets my vote for Bert I. Gordon's best movie, meaning that it's not nearly as bad as his others.Gordon's sci-fi/horror films of the 1950s had the same basic plot: 1. Monster is created. 2. Monster attacks. 3. Monster is destroyed, accompanied by inept special effects. In this film, luckless serviceman Glenn Manning (Langan) is exposed to intense radiation from a plutonium bomb, and is burned over his entire body. The attending physician (Hudson) gives him zero chance for survival, but the next morning his skin has miraculously healed. Afterwards, Manning disappears, and his wife (Downs) finds him at a remote army base--50 feet tall! The healing process apparently had some unintended side-effects, and now Manning is kept in a circus tent. Hudson tells Downs that Manning is in pretty bad shape, and that "his mind will go first", a sure clue to the rest of the film. Sure enough, Manning goes crazy and escapes into the Nevada desert. Meanwhile an Army scientist (Larry Thor) has succeeded in his miniaturization experiments, and thinks if he can just give Manning an injection, everything will be fine. Of course, the usual no-nonsense 1950s Army guy (James Seay) shows up and says that if Manning causes any trouble, "we'll stop him cold!" Manning attacks Las Vegas, tearing up a few casino signs and causing a ruckus. Off go Hudson, Downs, and Thor in a helicopter, toting a 6-foot hypodermic needle. In the film's best (and funniest) sequence, Thor and Hudson give Manning an injection in his big toe, whereupon Manning picks up the giant needle and impales Thor with it. Sure looks painful.Apparently by now Gordon was out of ideas, because Manning shows up next on Boulder Dam, carries Downs around for a few minutes, then as soon as he puts her down, Seay yells, "FIRE!" His Army guys blast Manning with a variety of weapons, and in a very bad show of special effects, Manning ends up in the Colorado River. The End.What sets "The Amazing Colossal Man" apart from the rest of Gordon's 1950s films are the story and acting. The story is actually pretty intelligent (compared with, say, "The Beginning of the End"). The acting is not bad, and the little-known Langan gives something of a minor tour-de-force as Manning. Hudson, Downs, and Thor are also quite adequate in their roles.I recommend this film as a pretty good time-filler. Try watching without paying too much attention to the special effects. Gordon actually filmed a sequel, "War of the Colossal Beast", but it's pretty rock-bottom.