Artie Pinsetter (Lou Costello) lives in the small town of Candy Rock with his dog, Corporal. He owns and operates the local rubbish company as well as being an inventor. Artie has been working on a portable computer that can change the time curve in relation to space orbit. He calls his invention Max. Artie’s girlfriend is Emmy Lou Rossiter (Dorothy Provine). Artie and Emmy Lou want to get married, but Emmy Lou’s uncle, Raven Rossiter (Gale Gordon) objects to Emmy Lou’s relationship with a garbage collector.
Artie and Emmy Lou are out in Dinosaur State Park so that Artie can work on Max. When Artie and Emmy Lou get into an argument, Emmy Lou runs off and ends up being exposed to radiation being emitted from a nearby cave. The effect causes Emmy Lou to grow at an enormous rate. In a few seconds she is thirty feet tall. Artie races back to town to try to tell Emmy Lou’s uncle about what happened. When he tells Raven that Emmy Lou grew “big” the man misunderstands and thinks that his niece is pregnant. Not wanting a scandal, he insists that the local magistrate, Magruder (Jimmy Conlin), marry the two of them.
When word gets out about a giant roaming around, the army is dispatched to deal with the situation. The army thinks that it is an alien invasion from Mars and is determined to take down the giant and save the world. Artie tries to come up with a way to return Emmy Lou to normal size while trying to avoid being shot at by the military.
“The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock” was released in 1959 and was directed by Sidney Miller. It is an American comedy science fiction film. This was Costello’s last film before he died. The movie was released posthumously.
Not only was this Costello’s last film but it was, other than stunt and extra work when he first began, the only film where he was not paired with his longtime partner, Bud Abbott.
The movie is mostly silly, downright ridiculous, and just plain farcical. There is lots of schlock and screwball comedy mixed in with stretches of nonsense. Most Abbott and Costello films were a satire of other film genres. Costello, working alone, continued the trend with this film, a comedic take on “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” 1958. I guess most notable of the film is that the special effects were better than those for “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”, the most obvious being the balloon hands. That’s not surprising since “30 Foot” was done by Columbia Pictures and “50 Foot” by poverty row company, Allied Artists. Allied used to be called Monogram Pictures.
The movie would mostly appeal to Costello completists.