Impressions

Three words: Bert I. Gordon! Lots of jokes about the burn victim being food. “Peel and eat Manning?” and “Ribs! That’s what I’m hungry for!” This is a good episode.

Synopsis

This is the prequel to War of the Colossal Beast. Colonel Glen Manning tries to save a guy before a plutonium bomb explodes. He’s caught in the blast and burned badly. He mysteriously disappears from the hospital and his fiancé searches for him. When she finds him, he’s 22 feet tall and whiny. Also, it turns out the heart is made of a single cell. The scientists shrink an elephant and a camel, then go looking for Glen with a battalion of elderly soldiers. A sixty-foot Glen wanders into Las Vegas and terrorizes the town by pulling the decorations off the hotels. The Vegas police shoot at him, which, not surprisingly annoys him. Glen gets progressively whiter. Finally the good guys give him a giant shot, which saves him, but not before he spears his rescuer with the giant syringe.

Host segments

Segment one: Tom and Crow won’t come out of their clubhouse made of cardboard. No bejumpsuited humans allowed! Invention exchange – Dr. F has a plant that reviews music. Joel invents a rewriteable tattoo.

Segment two: Tom and Crow don’t want to sit through a lesson Joel wants to teach them. Joel teaches them not to be rude to a spouse of a horribly maimed radiation victim. Tom and Crow have such polite offerings as “He’ll sure come off the bone easy, now!” They insist that they’re really sensitive, already. As proof, they offer this: in spit of Joel’s many faults, they have never mentioned them.

Segment three: Joel is Glen Manning. He whines and moans like Glen. The Bots send in Barbie to cheer him up and then a Ken to offer her a real man. Joel gets cranky and quits.

Segment four: Joel and the Bots wonder how big Glen will get. They consider various tall jokes to try on him. It turns out he’s outside the ship. He’s so huge that the satellite hit him in the gut. Mike Nelson does a great Glen Manning!

Final: Joel and the bots evaluate the quality of the movie. They have some suggestions for improvements mainly along the lines of Glen using various buildings and vehicles as if they were personal grooming items. Joel reads a few letters. Dr. F gives Frank a giant shot.

Stinger: Glen laughing until he winces dramatically in pain.

Riffs

The plutonium bomb doesn’t go off.

Crow: It’s the amazing colossal dud!

Joel: Jiggle the cord or something.

A doctor is putting bandages on Glen, who is badly burned.

Joel: I think we’ll make him into a piñata.

Some orderlies are rolling a gurney onto a elevator.

Joel as orderly: What I usually do is roll ‘em in the elevator and . . . pick a floor!

The doctors can’t believe that Glen’s skin grew back.

Doctor: When the skin is burned to the degree that it was on this man’s body . . .

Crow: It’s really icky!

Joel: Vandals came in and put skin on him.

Tom: The government’s involved in a cover-up? How could that be?

Doctor: The body is like a factory.

Crow: There’s a lot of underpaid workers in it?

Joel: Oh my goodness! I’m growing so fast I’m giving myself a wedgie!

Giant Glen is noticing that the furnishings are small.

Crow: Oh my god! I’m being held in Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse!

A doctor pulls a rabbit out of a cage.

Joel: Well, Fluffy, time to shave your butt and put cosmetics all over it.

Glen: I don’t want to grow any more!

Joel: I’m a Toys-R-Us kid!

Glen drinks from a barrel.

Joel in a high nervous voice: That’s your chamber pot, sir.

The doctor explains to Carol that the heart is made of a single cell.

Joel, Tom, Crow together: Huh? Single cell?

Crow as Carol: You’re not a real doctor are you?

Pilot of helicopter: Can you see anything?

Joel as Carol: Well, there’s a 50-foot guy, but he’s got hair. It can’t be Glen.

Army officer: We won’t hurt him unless he gives us cause.

Joel: Like Rodney King.

Glen approaches Hoover Dam.

Crow: I’m the biggest guy by a dam site.

Carol and an officer with a bullhorn convince Glen to put Carol down. Then to show their gratitude, they start shooting him.

Tom: Thanks for putting down the girl. Here’s some bullets for you!

The Amazing Colossal Man IMDB Page

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