There's no doubt about it, "Village of the Giants" is a bad film. However, to its credit, it doesn't even try to be a good film and it never takes itself seriously. So, while it's imminently skip-able, it's not a bad way to spend 81 minutes--provided you don't expect a film from the Criterion Collection.
The film begins with four straight minutes of sexy young men and women rolling in the mud. Seriously. There is no reason for this other than to titillate the audience--which, at the time, was probably almost exclusively under 25. In fact, while the film is not in any way obscene, it IS very sexy and there are quite a few innuendos throughout and LOTS of scantily-clad young women breaking into dance for no particular reason.
Eventually, there is a plot. It involves a young genius, played by Ron Howard (sort of a 60s version of Dexter from "Dexter's Lab"), creating a potion that accidentally makes creatures grow instantly to huge proportions. The special effects for these transformations are pretty lame (especially when there are CLEARLY strings pulling the ducks up and down) and I really don't think they tried very hard to get this right. His older friends (including Tommy Kirk) want to use this to grow enormous livestock and thereby end world hunger. Some other young people (led by Beau Bridges) are far less generous in their intentions and want to steal the formula to get rich. In fact, late in the film after they steal it, the jerks decide to try the formula on themselves--and they then decide to terrorize the town!! Can Kirk and the others manage to thwart these jerks?
This film is almost like "The Amazing Colossal Man" merged with "Beach Blanket Bingo". Director Bert Gordon and the rest really manage to make a fun yet amazingly cheap and stupid film. It's got guilty pleasure written all over it if you are a bad movie buff. Otherwise, you'll probably want to skip this one.
The film begins with four straight minutes of sexy young men and women rolling in the mud. Seriously. There is no reason for this other than to titillate the audience--which, at the time, was probably almost exclusively under 25. In fact, while the film is not in any way obscene, it IS very sexy and there are quite a few innuendos throughout and LOTS of scantily-clad young women breaking into dance for no particular reason.
Eventually, there is a plot. It involves a young genius, played by Ron Howard (sort of a 60s version of Dexter from "Dexter's Lab"), creating a potion that accidentally makes creatures grow instantly to huge proportions. The special effects for these transformations are pretty lame (especially when there are CLEARLY strings pulling the ducks up and down) and I really don't think they tried very hard to get this right. His older friends (including Tommy Kirk) want to use this to grow enormous livestock and thereby end world hunger. Some other young people (led by Beau Bridges) are far less generous in their intentions and want to steal the formula to get rich. In fact, late in the film after they steal it, the jerks decide to try the formula on themselves--and they then decide to terrorize the town!! Can Kirk and the others manage to thwart these jerks?
This film is almost like "The Amazing Colossal Man" merged with "Beach Blanket Bingo". Director Bert Gordon and the rest really manage to make a fun yet amazingly cheap and stupid film. It's got guilty pleasure written all over it if you are a bad movie buff. Otherwise, you'll probably want to skip this one.