After trying out enlarged human beings for size in The Cyclops (1957), Mr BIG, Bert I. Gordon, returned to the theme for The Amazing Colossal Man. As was usual with Gordon’s films, the direction is listless, the pacing leaden and the special effects, handled by Gordon himself, were below par. But The Amazing Colossal Man is possibly his most consistently entertaining, even if only accidentally so thanks to terrible performances, woeful dialogue and a good deal of silliness involving the wanton destruction of Las Vegas landmarks.

Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is severely wounded when the first test of an experimental plutonium bomb in Nevada goes horribly wrong. Manning survives but suffers third-degree burns over most of his body and is placed in the care of Dr Paul Linstrom (William Hudson) and military scientist Dr Eric Coulter (Larry Thor). Manning’s fiancée, Carol Forrest (Cathy Downs), joins him at the military base where he’s being treated and is astonished, as are the doctors, when his horrific wounds miraculously heal overnight – though for reasons unclear, he also loses all his hair. But he’s also started to grow at an alarming rate, his new cells multiplying at an accelerated rate. Increasingly embittered by his fate, Manning grows to be 60 feet tall, escapes captivity and heads for the bright lights of Las Vegas. As Manning lays waste to the city, Coulter develops a serum (complete with over-sized syringe) that he hopes will reverse the effects of the radiation and restore Manning to his normal size.

The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Comics’ green-skinned, radiation-spawned hero/monster, who debuted in his own, initially short-lived, title in 1962, owes something of its origins story to The Amazing Colossal Man – in both, the hero is blasted with radiation (plutonium here, gamma rays in the comic) during the testing of an experimental bomb and both are transformed into over-seized monsters. Hulk remains popular today, poor old Glenn manning rather less so (he appeared in a sequel a year later but that was the end of his misadventures). He did himself few favours in the longevity stakes by proving to be a dull and morose sort, lounging about in his over-sized nappy, waxing philosophical and making strange observations on his fate (“perhaps it isn’t I who’s growing, but it’s everyone who’s shrinking!”) before strolling around Vegas in search of things to smash.

He’s also fatally wounded by Gordon’s inability to generate anything like sympathy for his monster. King Kong, whose good name is invoked in the film’s advertising (“never since King Kong such a mighty motion picture!”) we cared deeply about. Even the Gill-Man, for all his creepy, stalkerish ways earned out grudging love. But for Manning… nothing. We simply don’t care that much about him and his plight so in the end he’s no different to any other giant menace that stalked 50s science fiction cinema. The sight of him strolling slowly around Vegas in his “expandable Sarong,” casually trashing casinos is more laughable than moving.

Gordon hadn’t originally intended to direct the film. It was originally written by Charles B. Griffith who adapted Homer Eon Flint’s 1928 novel The Nth Man, about a humanoid creature ten miles high, into a comedy, with Roger Corman set to direct and Dick Miller taking the title role. But Corman bailed and Gordon stepped in to take over, promptly falling out with Griffith who also walked, leaving Gordon to completely revamp the script with Mark Hanna and uncredited George Worthing Yates. And as usual for Gordon, it’s a script brimming over with ambition that neither his budget nor his talent ever had a hope of realising effectively. The over-sized syringe is emblematic of the film’s problems really – it probably seemed like a good idea on paper, but it looks ridiculous on screen, clunky, impractical and just plain silly. Why would they have built a giant-sized replica of a normal syringe and not a custom-made delivery system that would have been more practical to use?

It’s a very hokey film, and the plodding pace and shoddy effects (you can almost see-through Manning in several matte shots of his striding around Las Vegas – the film might have been better off titled The Amazing Transparent Man but that was whole other film directed by Edgar G. Ulmer in 1960) but it’s more enjoyable than most of Gordon’s tatty oeuvre. It has enough bad dialogue, wooden performances and shaky effects to earn it more sympathy than we ever feel for its hero, and it does at least try to live up to the promise of its enticing title.

Mock it we may, but like so many of Gordon’s films The Amazing Colossal Man turned a tidy profit when released on a double bill with British import Cat Girl (1957) in August 1957, inflating AIP’s coffers to the tune of over $848,000 in its first six months of release alone. It was the film that really put Gordon on the map and it allowed him to indulge his fascination for all things gigantic with a sequel in 1958 in which Manning is revealed to have survived his climactic fall from the Boulder Dam to turn up in War of the Colossal Beast (1958). This time he’s scarred again (he looks not dissimilar to his predecessor in The Cyclops), mute and played by Dean Parkin instead of Glenn Langan and producers American International Pictures curiously went out of their way to avoid any mention of it being a sequel in their publicity. If you ever have the hankering to see both films but don’t have the stamina for a double bill, just watch the sequel as it features a potted recap of the events of the first film that plays out a lot more briskly and excitingly than the actual film itself.