mark.waltz Thanks to young Ronnie Howard's formula, a small village gets filled with giant critters including dancing ducks, carnivores cats, friendly Fido's the size of a one story building and a pet tarantula too big for its mason jar. Still cute little Opie Taylor at the time, Howard was sort of the Andy Hardy of his time, and oh what trouble he causes in this deliciously bad science fiction "musical"? Yes indeed, there are Dancing Ducks. These friendly little quackers get ahold of some of Ronnie special formula ("the goo") and pretty soon are on a spit roasting for one of the biggest picnics this small-town community has ever seen. It's truly in bad "taste" that sees the dancing duck enliven a little party where the teenage population is down, not realizing that their intrusion will have them as a roast. It seems like the tongue was in the cheek of the people who wrote this, and if the duck isn't enough, the scary spider, the crazy cat and the friendly Pooch will certainly have you amused And when some of the Teen swallows some of Howard's formula, it really goes over the top, especially when the growing young ladies loose theirs. Oh, and speaking of Andy Hardy, one of the teen actors is played by Tim Rooney, son of the original Andy Hardy who would be jealous of the idea that Opie Taylor gets here.In addition to leading young man Tommy Kirk is a very young Beau Bridges. This hits its nadir in a sequence where giant teenagers (that alone is scary in itself) begin a dance while another one (Johnny Crawford), not made into a giant, hangs onto the sequined bra of one of the blonde bimbo beatnik type chicks who invaded the tiny community. If the opening scene of these juvenile delinquents rolling around in rain soaked mud doesn't have you rolling your eyes, this sequence (where the hapless young boob hanging on for dear life) definitely will. The presence of the few adults who don't even do a double take after seeing all the giant teens. After the film settles down into its juvenile plot, it becomes rather dull, with really wretched attempts at acting. The blonde crazy women seem like the types who would later flock to Charles Manson's country camps. At times, the really bad special effects make those on "The Amazing Colossal Man" and "The Attack of the 50' Woman" seem worthy of Oscars in comparison. If remade today, this needs to focus on the idiotic teenagers who text walking down the street, and make them crash into buildings because they are not paying attention to where they are going.

Woodyanders This completely ridiculous tongue-in-cheek adolescent sci-fi comedy romp represents 60's kitsch at its most delightfully dumb and inoffensive. The plot alone is pure silliness: A precocious little squirt scientific genius named -- what else? -- Genius (none other than future "Happy Days" TV show star and mainstream feature director Ron Howard!) creates a special formula called goo that causes both people and animals to growth substantially in size. Of course, a no-count band of rowdy rebellious teenagers led by the suave Fred (an embarrassingly bad turn by Beau Bridges) eat the goo and become evil tyrant towering behemoths who take over the town. It's up to nice guy Mike (former Disney movie star Tommy Kirk) to stop them. Boy, does this hilariously ludicrous honey deliver the campy goods with a gut-busting vengeance: we've got fumbling (mis)direction by the ever-inept Bert I. Gordon, uproariously poor and unconvincing (not so) special effects (the huge wooden legs are especially laughable), extremely variable acting, a pair of giant dancing ducks, hopelessly dated "hip" slang (favorite line: "Dig that nitty gritty"), a cheerfully silly tone, blithely lewd and idiotic humor (one dude hangs off the breasts of a busty lady giant!), an excellent rock soundtrack, and more insanely groovy dancing than you can shake a tail feather at (the lengthy sequence with the over-sized teens dancing up a storm is positively sidesplitting!). Better still, Jack Nizsche supplies a terrific catchy score (the rumbling instrumental tune "The Last Race" is simply fantastic), both Freddy Cannon and the Beau Brummels make special guest musical appearances, and such hot babes as Joy Harmon (the buxom blonde car wash girl in "Cool Hand Luke"), Tisha Sterling, and Toni Basil provide a plethora of delicious distaff eye candy. Stanley Kubrick film regular Joe Turkel plays the no-nonsense sheriff and Rance Howard even briefly pops up as a deputy. All in all, this infectiously inane stupidity sizes up as a total goofy hoot.

MartianOctocretr5 Turn off the brain for this campy craziness. Ron Howard, in his Opie days, invents "goo," which, when ingested, causes super growth. Beau Bridges leads a bunch of bad teens, Tommy Kirk (of Disney comedy fame) is the leader of some good teens, and you are the befuddled audience trying to believe what is transpiring on the screen.Natch: the idiotic bad teens get a hold of the goo, and turn into colossal idiotic bad teens who take over a small town somewhere. Apparently, the presence of 30 foot hostile giants does not interest anyone outside of the town, so the townsfolk are left to fend for themselves. Of course, nobody in the town except the good teens bother to do anything about it.Once the giants appear, the action is limited, probably due to a lack of budget for special effects. The growth sequence is about all they really focused on, where they --oh, never mind. It's the highlight of the film, though, trust me. Progressively cheaper and cheaper effects parade their way through the story after that. My favorite is the scene where they try to "tie up" a giant Beau Bridges. You see two plastic poles (supposed to be his legs) being roped by the good teens. They then try to fasten the ropes with hot rods orbiting the "surprised" victim. Every once in a while, they show Beau making spasmodic and confused expressions in slow motion. By the way, whenever they show a character in slow-mo, you know it's one of the giants.The movie knows it's idiotic, and makes no effort to conceal it. Good for a laugh at how absurd it is.

StuOz A group of teenagers become giant sized.Before this film, we had other "giant movies", such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, but a recent YouTube viewing of Village Of The Giants has made me wonder if "Village" is the best of the lot. It has a sense of B-Grade fun that is hard to capture on film...without looking too stupid that is. The dance scene alone, with the little boy grabbing the giant girl, makes the film a winner. And note the music for the dance scene.Story elements, character names (Genius) and Ron Howard were all shifted into a Land Of The Giants (1968,ABC) episode called...Genius At Work.Attention Hollywood: Don't remake this film today, "Village" is a product of the 1960s, it is about the 1960s mentality and 1960s music!The film is a wonderfully casted and wonderfully scored knockout!