There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, there are big talents hidden in the shadows…
Village of the Giants (1965)
Distributed by: Embassy Pictures
Directed by: Burt I. Gordon
There’re no small roles in Hollywood, especially if you just keep up and do your best in what you’re in as you make a career of it.
There is some great talent that has ended up in some pretty odd, dinky places. Not all of it is as stark as Hattie McDaniel in Murder by Television or Humphrey Bogart in The Return of Doctor X, but there are other cases where someone on a small shoot goes on to bigger things.
And in a case like this, there are a lot of someones…
We open after the opening credits in a jarring manner, seeing a car wrecked thanks to a road being cutoff in a landslide. Out of the car pop eight teens: Fred (Beau Bridges), Pete (Tim Rooney), Rick (Bob Random), Harry (Kevin O’Neal), Merrie (Joy Harmon), Elsa (Gail Gilmore), Georgette (Vicki London), and Jean (Tisha Sterling).
For eight kids in a car accident, they’re pretty happy as they fall into the mud to dance, goof around, and make love. The fact that they pass beers around as they do gives you some idea as to their attitude in life, as well as what probably caused the accident.
Another jarring cut and we focus on two kids being kids in town, Mike (Tommy Kirk) and Nancy (Clara Doherty). The make-out music is getting heavy as they plot what happens next, since they have the whole house to themselves, thanks to Clara’s folks being cut off by the landslides.
Okay, not entirely to themselves: There’s an even younger member of the household, who everyone calls “Genius” (Ron Howard). He walks in on them to show off his latest experiment, which was supposed to blow up, but doesn’t. They get him to scram and resume their tryst, but have to stop when something does blow up.
As they clean up, one of Genius’ concoctions bubbles up. They just let it expand until a cat that breaks into the lab samples it, not noticing until it’s too late that the tabby is now the size of a saber tooth tiger.
Mike’s reaction to the discovery is to be horrified for humanity that such a thing exists figure out ways to make money off of this. After the dog, Wolf, tries it out and becomes actually the size of a warg, they feed it to two ducks, who likewise bulk up like turkeys being fed steroids before Thanksgiving. When the ducks waddle away, Mike and Nancy follow them, ending up at a dance club where the Beau Brummels are playing:
Everyone comes here, including the ducks and the eight teens we opened the film with. Mike’s secret about the food fed to the ducks, which gets called “goo,” is now out in the open, and the reprobates from the opening now try to get their hands on the stuff.
There’s an almost instant switch over where the two ducks are sacrificed for science, having been roasted and served to the town. Why kill the ducks to feed the town, when studying their bodies to better understand the goo, is almost as inexplicable as Freddy Cannon showing up to do a musical number…
We get all sorts of shenanigans after that, including Mike and Nancy’s pointless battle with a giant spider and a musical number with Mike Clifford. They don’t seem to have any real purpose than just to pad out the film and maybe meet an obligation or two to someone looking to get in front of the public, but thankfully Fred and his gang of freewheelers ultimately get their hands on the next batch of goo.
Out of plot necessity boredom and the need for kicks, the gang divide up the stuff and taste it themselves. They turn into thirty-foot-tall troublemakers, popping out of their clothes in a few shots of quick titillation without soft music and suggestive make out requests taking place first.
The town discovers what happened when the giants gather them to state that they are now in charge. They let them know that the adults are now under curfew, and that everyone has to take orders from them. Which of course being the kind of kids these are, they do it in a cocky manner that just turns the helpless citizens against them.
They don’t care, though, as they are now the big shots (#sorrynotsorry) in town. This group of giants has just committed the greatest act of teen takeover ever, or at least, the largest by some measures. They even celebrate their victory with a go-go dance to the theme from Jack Nitzsche:
It’s hard to imagine that folks in the film were celebrating their good luck to be in this production, although Kirk was probably glad to get the work, as his arrest for drug possession in December of 1964 had led to dismissal from three other projects before this script came his way. If anything, the players make the best of the goofiness inherent in the premise, with performances no worse than the average American International beach pic.
One could argue that the film was probably intended to be a beach movie from the actors’ attitudes and the way the cast is attired. We can only guess why Gordon, whose schtick for size changing movies included the likes of Attack of the Puppet People and Empire of the Ants, didn’t shoot at the beach and instead stuck to the backlot (which included Universal’s Courthouse Square, where Back to the Future would be shot years later), though money was a likely factor.
Speaking of strange settings, the script by Gordon and Alan Caillou was as far a departure from the source material as could have been possible on a small budget SF. The film credits the work as based on The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells, leaving only the premise of the novel while discarding the characters, setting, tone, and just about everything else. Even when Gordon gets a chance to do a proper adaptation, with 1976’s The Food of the Gods, he can’t leave well enough alone.
Gordon’s quick jarring transitions between scenes, which is unusual for his work, makes the movie feel slapdash. Were it not for the folks trying their hardest to make the best of what they’d gotten, this would be a far less palatable film to sit through today.
Some of the names of those who went on to bigger and better things are obvious. Beau Bridges would go on to a long and stories career, winning several Emmie awards along the way. Ron Howard would grow up, get better acting roles, then transition to being an influential director and powerbroker in Hollywood.
Jack Nitzsche would concentrate on his music career, working with the likes of Phil Spector, Neil Young, and the Rolling Stones, for whom he played the keyboards on such songs as these:
Also among the talent that went on to bigger things was Toni Basil, who played Red in the film and choreographed the dancing. At one point, her character tries to distract the giants, with one of the better scenes from the movie:
Basil would make her name as a choreographer, setting up dance routines for The T.A.M.I. Show, videos for the Talking Heads, and tours for David Bowie. She would contribute to many outstanding works while being quiet in the background.
…well, for the most part…
Years later, Quentin Tarantino’s films would benefit from the work of Nitzsche (who used his theme from the film in the “Death Proof” segment of Grindhouse) and Basil (who served as dance consultant on Once Upon a Tine in Hollywood).
Having kept up and done their best in what they were in, they proved to be a giant help on bigger things…
