Last week's Cinema Sunday looked at Oscar winning classic From Here to Eternity, a classic motion picture preserved in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
This week's film... isn't.
Today, film fans, allow me to introduce Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
This 1958 independent sci-fi horror film was written by no one you ever heard of, directed by no one you ever heard of and starring no one you ever heard of.
It's a about a woman who...
(Let me check my notes.)
grows to.....hmm!
(rustling through papers)
50 feet and then....
(strokes beard thoughtfully)
...Attacks!
In the last 10 minutes of the movie.
Most of it's short 70 minute running time is taking up with some shenanigans involving Nancy Archer, a wealthy but very emotionally fragile woman who has to put up with a big glowing orb thing she encounters in the desert.
And also her philandering husband Harry and his floozy of a mistress Honey who spend an inordinate amount of town canoodling and dancing and what not at Tony's Bar and Grill where we learn this movie's most important lesson.
I was watching this one lazy Sunday afternoon with my wife Andrea and my daughter Randie. It was Randie who became obsessed with figuring out a sign that was appearing rather prominently on a wall behind Harry and Honey.
After pausing, rewinding and slowly advancing the movie one frame at a time, we translated the sign:
"We Make the Best Spaghetti In Town"
And you thought Harry and Honey were just hanging out at Tony's Bar and Grill for the sex.
Later, when Nancy starts growing into a....
(reviews notes)
50 foot woman and.... hold on....
(puzzles a moment)
...attacks, Nancy destroys Tony's Bar and Grill.
And we all wondered, "Where will people go now for the best spaghetti in town? Will someone else step up to now make the best spaghetti in town? Will people have to go out of town now to get decent spaghetti?"
These questions are left unanswered as Honey is crushed under rubble of Tony's Bar and Grill and the ruin's of Tony's dreams of making the best spaghetti in town.
Harry is crushed in the palm of Nancy's hand as her gargantuan form stumbles into some power lines, shocking her into oblivion, her body too big to survive, her heart too broken to love, her soul too shattered to ever know the warmth and comfort of the best spaghetti in town.
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was remade in 1993 in a film directed by Christopher Guest and starring Daryl Hannah in the title role.
I have no idea if the remake addresses the question of who makes the best spaghetti in town.
Perhaps it's best that some of life's mysteries remain unanswered.
Let poor Tony and his dream making the best spaghetti in town just rest in peace.
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