Village of the Giants

Turn off the brain for this campy craziness. Ron Howard, in his Opie days, invents "goo," which, when ingested, causes super growth. Beau Bridges leads a bunch of bad teens, Tommy Kirk (of Disney comedy fame) is the leader of some good teens, and you are the befuddled audience trying to believe what is transpiring on the screen.

Natch: the idiotic bad teens get a hold of the goo, and turn into colossal idiotic bad teens who take over a small town somewhere. Apparently, the presence of 30 foot hostile giants does not interest anyone outside of the town, so the townsfolk are left to fend for themselves. Of course, nobody in the town except the good teens bother to do anything about it.

Once the giants appear, the action is limited, probably due to a lack of budget for special effects. The growth sequence is about all they really focused on, where they --oh, never mind. It's the highlight of the film, though, trust me. Progressively cheaper and cheaper effects parade their way through the story after that. My favorite is the scene where they try to "tie up" a giant Beau Bridges. You see two plastic poles (supposed to be his legs) being roped by the good teens. They then try to fasten the ropes with hot rods orbiting the "surprised" victim. Every once in a while, they show Beau making spasmodic and confused expressions in slow motion. By the way, whenever they show a character in slow-mo, you know it's one of the giants.

The movie knows it's idiotic, and makes no effort to conceal it. Good for a laugh at how absurd it is.

What do you get when you mix the children of famous Hollywood actors (Beau Bridges, Tisha Stirling and Tim Rooney), a couple of former child stars (Tommy Kirk and Johnny Crawford), a then current child star (Ron "Ronny" Howard) and a future one hit wonder (Toni "Micky" Basil) with a hack director (Burt I. Gordon). You get one of the biggest camp classics in the history of film. This film attempted to mix the then popular beach party flicks with the fading giant human pics. Gordon must have really been desperate for a hit because he figured that if he couldn't get Lloyd Bridges, Ann Southern and Mickey Rooney he could at least get their children to play in one of his quickie drive-in movie features. It's fun if you like camp, but as far as a great film, I'll stick with the films this mess rips off.

Loosely...and I mean loosely based on H. G. Wells's The Food of the Gods, director/producer/writer Bert I. Gordon, Mr BIG himself, brings us a tale about a roving gang of teen thugs(nothing like today' s variation)who walk to a small town surrounded by a mudslide. In that town, a young genius, creatively named "Genius" works on varying experiments. One of these experiments when fed to a living thing causes the living thing to grow to tremendous proportions. We first see ducks, then a dog, and finally a tarantula. The gang takes the "food of the Gods" and gets big...and you can figure what happens for the most part after that. Highly unimaginative and lewd, Village of the Giants is really more concerned with showing beautiful scantily clad girls in tight polyester slacks and bikini tops grow to epic proportions. We see them literally bust out of their garments. They wear toga-like outfits, dance sensuously, bend over as much as possible to give the greatest vantage point to their cleavage, and so on. One giant girl even picks a "small" man up and has him hang from her top while she dances. The girls are all babes. Joy Harmon is stunning as is Tisha Sterling. But my gripe is...what's the point of presenting this as science fiction if all you really want to do is make this type of film? The acting ranges from OK(Ronny Howard is better than everyone else!), less than adequate(most of the gang including its leader Beau Bridges), to just bad(Tommy Kirk). Typical Bert Gordon special effects are here too. As mentioned by many other viewers, the music is really the best thing about the movie - well, next to Joy Harmon and Tisha Sterling and the other gang girls!

What did I not like about this movie? Tommy Kirk in summerwear, a smug Beau Bridges, Ron Howard going the Bill Mumy route, and typical teens roaming free and checking the scene...he's so gone, Jasper!!

Besides go-go dancing, booty shaking, and cleavageploitation, this one has some moments, but some parts just drag and stall. See the plastic breasts gag and you just laugh seeing a guy hanging off of them! The music is definitely dated, but has a neat psychedelic feel; probably the only thing going for it. After awhile, I screamed in utter agony, "Enough dancing already!" The sheriff, played by Joe Turkel, also appears as a blackmailing beatnik in BIG's Tormented!. Why is it in his negotiation scene with Beau and the gang, his voice was noticeably faded out? Great editing John Bushelman!! I really wished Tommy fell into the water filled basement without turning the electricity OFF! Hey, isn't the town square the same universal lot where they shot the town of Hill Valley from Back to the Future? I recognized that clock tower!!

I'm going to have 10 buckets of mini-wings right now.

A group of teenagers become giant sized.

Before this film, we had other "giant movies", such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, but a recent YouTube viewing of Village Of The Giants has made me wonder if "Village" is the best of the lot. It has a sense of B-Grade fun that is hard to capture on film...without looking too stupid that is. The dance scene alone, with the little boy grabbing the giant girl, makes the film a winner. And note the music for the dance scene.

Story elements, character names (Genius) and Ron Howard were all shifted into a Land Of The Giants (1968,ABC) episode called...Genius At Work.

Attention Hollywood: Don't remake this film today, "Village" is a product of the 1960s, it is about the 1960s mentality and 1960s music!

The film is a wonderfully casted and wonderfully scored knockout!