VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS 1965 JOY HARMON TONI BASIL AND BEAU BRIDGES GROWING HUGE AND DANCING IN THE MUD DVD-R!

Village of the Giants is a 1965 American teensploitation comedy science fiction film produced, directed and written by Bert I. Gordon. Based loosely on H. G. Wells‘s 1904 book The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, it contains elements of the beach party film genre. The story concerns a gang of rebellious teens who gain access to a chemical substance called “Goo”, which causes living things to grow to gigantic proportions. The cast is composed almost entirely of teenaged actors and young adults portraying teenagers. Also making musical guest appearances are The Beau Brummels, Freddy Cannon, and Mike Clifford. Gordon would later direct another adaptation of Wells’ story, titled The Food of the Gods.

The Beau Brummels, singers Freddy Cannon and Mike Clifford all make appearances. Cannon enjoyed a string of hits during the 1960s, including “Palisades Park” and “Tallahassee Lassie“, and performs “Little Bitty Corrine” in his signature style (wearing a cardigan sweater in the summertime), while Mike Clifford (veteran of The Ed Sullivan Show, and later an actor) croons the movie’s obligatory slow song, “Marianne”. Clifford is also credited with another song, “Nothing Can Stand in My Way”, but this does not appear in the film. There was no official soundtrack release for this movie.

The film’s director, Bert I. Gordon, was involved with many size-themed movies in his career (perhaps coincidentally, his initials are “BIG”). Besides Village, these include King Dinosaur (1955), Beginning of the End (1957), The Cyclops (1957), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), and The Food of the Gods (1976).

The film was made by Gordon’s newly formed Berkeley Productions. It was to be the first of a three-year 12-picture deal between Berkeley and Joseph E. Levine‘s Embassy Productions. Some of these were to be for TV, others for theaters. The next two planned films were titled The Creatures of Dr. Freak and Horror House, but neither of these were made.

The cast features a number of children of established Hollywood actors: Beau Bridges (son of Lloyd Bridges), Ron Howard (son of Rance Howard), Tisha Sterling (daughter of Robert Sterling and Ann Sothern), Toni Basil (daughter of Louis Basil) and Tim Rooney (son of Mickey Rooney). Debi Storm completed her role as Cora, the sheriff (Joe Turkel)’s daughter in just three days. Vicki London, who played Georgette, is absent from the screen for most of the giant scenes in the film. Robert Random and Joy Harmon each also appeared in episodes of Gidget, which debuted in the fall of 1965.

The cat appearing in this film was named Orangey (later renamed Minerva), and Village of the Giants was the second time he played the role of a cat larger than a human, the first being Scott Carey’s (Grant Williams) pet in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). His most famous roles were as Rhubarb in the film Rhubarb (1951) and Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

Most of the outdoor scenes were filmed on the Columbia Pictures backlot, where portions of I Dream of Jeannie and The Partridge Family were also made.

The film’s goo was a simple mixture of angel food cake mix with pink-colored dye. The beer the teenagers are drinking at the beginning of the film is Blatz, and the Teen magazine Merrie (Joy Harmon) reads in the film is an actual issue, from the summer of 1965. The tiny yellow custom hot rod (with the surfboard) that is used in the street scene to tie up Fred’s feet is The Surfite, designed by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.

The low-budget film had limited commercial success at the time of its release, for it was distributed mainly to drive-in theaters as part of double features. In 1965 it did draw media attraction and audiences with some of its special effects and lightly provocative sex appeal, including scenes with implied nudity. Margaret Hartford of the Los Angeles Times, for example, alludes to those elements in her review at the time. The “best things” about the film, she writes, are the “special effects and photographic trickery”, along with “those endless views of healthy young torsos gyrating to the rhythms of the Beau Brummells or Freddy Cannon”. Hartford adds, “Alan Caillou’s script keeps the action fast and the dancing swinging.”

color, mono, widescreen, 81 minutes. DVD-R comes packaged as shown in color DVD case, wrapped in plastic!