Classic Horrors Club

As is sometimes reported, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959) was not Lou Costello’s only movie without longtime comic partner, Bud Abbott. (He started his film career solo with several extra or uncredited roles.) It was, however, his final movie, and although I’ve seen only a few of them, it’s got to be one of the weakest.

What’s missing for me is energy. After watching it and thinking that Costello didn’t look entirely well, I read that he had rheumatic fever while filming. He doesn’t look particularly old (he was only 52), but he died of a heart attack five months before the movie was released. He’s not the only one responsible for laci of energy, though. Director Sidney Miller would have to hone his comedic timing later in television sitcoms of the 1960s.

Costello plays Artie Pinsetter, Candy Rock’s outcast rubbish collector. In a town where his business is the only one not owned by Raven Rossiter (Gale Gordon), he struggles to make a living. With no history or explanation, we’re expected to accept that Raven’s lovely young niece, Emmy Lou (Dorothy Provine) is in love with him and pushing Artie to marry her.

Sneaking her out of the house, Artie takes Emmy Lou to Dinosaur State Park where she wanders into a smoking cave and emerges a giant. Ostensibly a parody of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), the only threat the 30 foot bride causes is to Raven’s political career, if she were to be discovered. When Artie first tells him his niece has gotten “big,” he assumes she’s pregnant. But when the truth is revealed, he (and everyone else) accepts it without question.

The assortment of writers may indicate there were too many cooks in the kitchen, but none of them make anything that’s good to eat. I don’t want to say any of the five are lazy, but giving Artie the side hobby of being an amateur inventor with a robotic boombox that can do anything he says, including making him fly, seems to provide an easy way out for Emmy Lou to get out of her predicament.

This means there’s little conflict or sense of real danger and helps explain why the movie runs only 73 minutes. I can’t help but think more time to flesh out the characters and plot points would have made it a better film, but then again, I didn’t want to watch even one more minute of it. It’s not horrible… not a “bad” movie. Neither can I say it’s “disappointing.” However, it’s certainly not “good.”