War of the Colossal Beast is actually a sequel to an earlier Bert I. Gordon film entitled The Amazing Colossal Man. However, when it was released, they called it War of the Colossal Beast and basically never mentioned that it was a sequel to the previous film in an effort to make it able to stand on its own. This was also aided by the fact that there's a flashback sequence in this film that more or less fills you in on the back story from the first film and makes it even less important for the viewer to have seen the first one. It was an effective way of doing it, and at no time did I feel as though I really should have seen The Amazing Colossal Man first so that I could understand anything that was going on in this one.

The story goes something like this. Colonel Glenn Manning was caught outside of his bunker during a nuclear test. The radiation caused him to grow to sixty feet tall, and lose his hair, before they found a way to stop the growth. At the end of the first movie, they shot him off the top of a dam and he disappeared. They assumed he was dead, but he was only badly wounded and managed to wander away down to Mexico, where this story picks up. Trucks carrying food start disappearing off the road to a small Mexican town, and after the police are alerted and news reports start getting out, Joyce Manning, sister of the colossal beast, realizes that sounds like it could be the work of her mutated brother, so she calls up Major Baird and they head down to Mexico to investigate. While they do find her brother down there, they also find that he's suffered a severe head trauma and is now missing and eye and has a torn up lip and scar tissue all over one side of his face. He also has severe brain damage and has been reduced to little more than an animalistic state. The rest of the film involves them trying to capture him, hold him, or treat him, which all gets pretty old after a while.

So here my faithful readers we have yet another example of a film I refer to as a snoozer. For those who haven't yet read through my ratings page, a snoozer is a movie that there's really nothing wrong with, and yet it still manages to be boring. It's the kind of movie you could fall asleep too. Hence the name, snoozer.

But what exactly was it that made this movie a snoozer? Honestly, I've given that a lot of thought since I finished watching it, and I think it all boils down to uninteresting characters and a severe lack of any decent action involving the monster. I mean, how many times can you sit there and watch the beast going through the same slow, plodding motions over and over again? How many times can you listen to another conversation about whether they can or should help him or just send the military in to take him out once and for all? It just gets old after a while, and it keeps the pacing of the film down to a crawl at times. There were a few interesting or entertaining scenes, but generally it was all just too repetitive and flat out boring.

There's really not much else to complain about in this film though. The performances were all good, and even above average in many instances. The monster make-up and effects were all well done, with the exception of the three-toed footprint. I'm still trying to figure that one out, but generally everything was pretty nice looking when it came to the effects. At least, that is to say, nice looking for the era in which the film was created. Honestly though, the last film of Bert I. Gordon's that I reviewed, Earth vs. The Spider, not only had better and nicer looking effects, but it was a far superior film in every possible way. It had great characters, great settings, great effects...great everything. They really hit the mark with that one, but with this one, they missed it almost completely.

One thing I wanted to mention as well is that this film was shot in black and white, all except for the last scene. The last scene where the monster grabs the high tension electric wires and kills himself is actually shot in color for dramatic effect. Personally, I think they should have saved the money and left it in black and white. The color film didn't make it any more interesting, and it was a little weird to suddenly see everything in color after the rest of the film had been in black and white.

The DVD itself is the same double feature disc I used to review Earth vs. The Spider. It's got clean, nicely transferred copies of both films, but that's about it. Other than that, there's nothing special about it. The nice looking transfers make it worth picking up though. I do have to question why they would put War of the Colossal Beast as the second feature on this disc. It would have been smarter to pair Earth vs. The Spider with another Bert I. Gordon film and then release another double feature disc with The Amazing Colossal Man and War of the Colossal Beast as the double feature. The Amazing Colossal Man isn't currently released, at least at the time of this writing, so wouldn't it have made more sense to get it out there and released along side this one rather than to pair this film with a completely unrelated one? Oh well, I've stopped trying to figure out why these companies do what they do with their releases.

In the end, the question comes down to, should you see this movie. The answer is, it's up to you. Some people may find it more interesting than I did. If you ask the question, should I buy this disc however, the answer is a definite yes, because Earth vs. The Spider is a great film, and after you watch that one, if you're bored and you have some spare time...or just need a nap, you can pop this one in as well. In any case, as I've stated repeatedly throughout this review, I've given this particular film my dullest rating of...