As strange as it sounds, that honestly could be at least partly true! There's definitely a lot more to old low-budget movies than meets the eye. Nathan (Hertz) Juran was an otherwise accomplished director who was having a little fun with this movie, which in many ways is an intentionally humorous, if not exactly camp, send-up of The Amazing Colossal Man, a Bert I. Gordon film that took itself more seriously. Screenwriter Mark Hanna unquestionably included satirical elements in his screenplay for Roger Corman's Not of This Earth, which he co-wrote with Charles B. Griffith in 1956. Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman was shot at the end of 1957, when many Americans felt threatened by the Soviet satellite Sputnik. A mild recession was also taking shape about that time, shattering nearly a decade of prosperity. Perhaps the idea was that the President should appropriate assets (like the Star of India) from the idle (and amoral) rich (like the Archers) to fund the fledgling space race (which might have kept invaders out of the California desert). The alien's "satellite" is first sighted over the Barents Sea (north of Murmansk) and is then described as stampeding a herd of camels in Egypt, whose President Nasser had recently concluded a controversial arms deal with the Soviet Union.
That said, I believe the film is even more interesting as a study of attitudes toward women in the late 1950s. The sheriff in particular seemed to be saying, "How dare that woman rise above her station and punish her cheating husband and his mistress!" It didn't seem to make much difference that they would have murdered Nancy if they could have gotten away with it.
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