Fifty-Foot Feminist

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Nancy Archer is the goofy, exaggerated incarnation of a character we know well: she is every Victorian heroine anguished by her own passivity, every sit-com wife stuck in a split-level with a Michelob-loving numbskull. She is the woman who has had enough -- Thelma or Louise, or Lorena Bobbitt minus a kitchen knife.

In the inadvertently hilarious 1958 science-fiction film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, now re-made for HBO (Dec. 11, 8 p.m. EST), Nancy is trapped by a philandering husband and a cruel, cruel fate. Afflicted with ray burns suffered when she is seized by a huge space monster, Nancy is transmogrified into a murdering colossus and ultimately killed by a sheriff wielding a riot gun.

But destiny is far kinder in director Christopher Guest's post-feminist ; interpretation of this troubled suburban Mrs. The result is a movie that really means to be funny. The new Attack spoofs '90s notions of male insecurity and female empowerment. The plot follows the old line: Nancy (Daryl Hannah) is married to a bonehead (Daniel Baldwin), who prefers cavorting in motels with beauticians named Honey to sipping Chardonnay at home with his wife. For years he has chipped away at Nancy's self-esteem. She's 5 ft. 10 in., but inside she feels about the size of a Barbie doll. All that changes when Nancy emerges from an auspicious UFO encounter a full 50 ft. tall. She is toughened by her size -- a giant awakened. It is time to exact revenge for the past.

In the 1958 version, Archer ends up squeezed to death by his wife. Today he suffers a more harrowing fate: a lifetime of male-sensitivity training.