Remember Glenn Manning, the unfortunate “hero” of The Amazing Colossal Man?

The previous film may have ended with Glenn plunging to his apparent death from the Hoover Dam but, believe it or not, he survived!  Unfortunately, he didn’t survive well.  Now, he’s even bigger and he’s even angrier.  Plus, he’s massively disfigured.  The once articulate, if cranky, Amazing Colossal Man is gone.  Now, he’s a Colossal Beast!

That’s the story behind the 1958 film, War of the Colossal Beast!  In this sequel, Glenn is back and the army once again has to find a way to control him.  Needless to say, it all leads to a final confrontation near Los Angeles’s Griffin Observatory, which means that War of the Colossal Beast is not only a sequel to Amazing Colossal Man but it’s also a bit of companion piece to Rebel Without A Cause!

(Speaking of companion pieces, am I the only one who associated the end of Colossal Man with those commercials that MSNBC used to show of Rachel Maddow going on and on about how only a nation could build the Hoover Dam?  Never say “Lean forward” while you’re standing on top of a dam.)

Anyway, War of the Colossal Beast has a totally different cast from Colossal Man and a somewhat different feel.  That said, the Colossal Beast makeup — that eye socket freaks me out! — is memorable and, like the previous film, it’s fun in a 1950s B-movie sort of way.