THE 30 FOOT BRIDE OF CANDY ROCK (1959)
Article 2223 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-17-2007
Posting Date: 9-13-2007
Directed by Sidney Miller
Featuring Lou Costello, Dorothy Provine, Gale Gordon

A garbageman inventor finds himself forced to marry his girlfriend when she enters a radioactive cave that turns her into a giantess. He then must protect her from the military forces, who believe that she is an extraterrestrial invader.

This was the only movie Lou Costello made without his partner Bud Abbott. It was also his last movie, and arguably the weakest of all of his movies. Because of this, it’s tempting to blame the movie’s weakness on the absence of Bud, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true; after all, THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES has a reputation as one of his best movies, and though he did it with Bud, it wasn’t as a team. Furthermore, you could easily have substituted Bud in the Gale Gordon part here, and it wouldn’t have made the movie any better. No, what Lou needed here was a decent script; though he’s putting forth his best effort, his lines simply aren’t funny. Director Sidney Miller had a long career as an actor, but he wasn’t much of a director, and the movie suffers from a lack of energy and imagination. I almost get the feeling that the movie was tossed off without much care, which is a shame, as it would prove to be Costello’s last movie; he died before it was released. At any rate, it really makes me appreciate the quality of his movies with Bud Abbott; even the weakest of those come off as better than this one.