Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

People are disappearing and it seems to center around a doll-maker's office-repair shop. Sweet young Sally applies as receptionist at the office and marvels at the life-like detail of the owner's array of dolls. Maybe this is a job she shouldn't have taken.Oddball slice of 50's sci-fi. Franz (Hoyt) may be a mad scientist, but he's hardly the standard cruel stereotype. Nonetheless, with an infernal machine, he does shrink people down to doll size and keep them in little glass cylinders. But, he's not power- mad like the usual nutcase. Instead, he's a lonely old man who must have company when he needs it. Thus his human dolls can be resuscitated at will so he can watch them party and have a good time. His situation is rather poignant instead of infernal. He really means them no harm, though he's clearly lost perspective.Rather surprisingly, Hoyt is excellent as the benighted Franz. The actor usually plays cruel types, but here he's almost genial and without a single snarl. Special effects are simple—an unobtrusive split screen separating the normal from the miniature. Thus, we get the two worlds coming together on the same screen. However somebody should have caught the fleeting shadow cast against a process screen near movie's end. I confess to liking this cheap indie, maybe because it breaks so many of the mad scientist rules. Nonetheless, the title is misleading and I can see 50's drive-in hot- rodders and their dates feeling cheated from a lack of scary scenes to cuddle up over.

While not a classic, this is one of the better AIP sci-fi films of the 50s. John Hoyt does a great job playing the lonely doll maker shrinking real people that he likes to provide him company in an apparently lonely life. The sets and props(for AIP standards)were quite good. On the "fun facts" mentioned on the DVD case, they refer to the "War of the Colossal Beast" as the film Bob and Sally watched at the drive-in. While that film was co-billed with this one, the film that they were actually watching was "The Amazing Colossal Man" of which the co-bill to "Puppet People" was the sequel. The"Midnite Movies" DVD edition of this film is excellent with a sharp image and great contrast. The film is presented in it's original aspect ratio (1:33).

Bert I. Gordon (BIG) stands out as one of the more successful grade-Z auteurs of 1950's films, having made within a few short years a slew of monster/scifi ultra low budget films, all of which involve fantastical changes in the size of people or animals. BIG never made films as good or subversive as Roger Corman, but BIG made a lot of super-cheap films in a short time that made money, provided employment for actors, and provided material for drive-in theaters.Most of the BIG films involve people or animals that become giants, but this one involves a mad toy-maker who shrinks people so as to fulfill some kind of weird personal fetish. There is a crisis point about 2/3 way through this film where Mad Scientist Hoyt decides he must kill his shrunken pets...there is a hint of genuine horror at this point, and I was reminded of the real-life horror the Andrea Yates case, herself guilty of infanticide and simulatanously a victim of both poor mental health and fundamentalist religion. BIG borrows heavily here, from sources as wide-ranging as the Bride of Frankenstein to The Incredible Shrinking Man, as his visuals go. As far as BIG's patented FX techniques go, this is one of his more refined pieces, along with War of the Collosil Beast.Eternally geriatric John Hoyt, who was good in 'When Worlds Collide' and as Gene Roddenberry's original choice for the doctor of the starship Enterprise, plays the mad villain, and does a fine job of it. Hoyt's performance holds the film together, and despite the mad scientist schtick, he is ultimately more engaging than John Agar, to whom I have assigned the title World's Most Unlikable Actor.This is standard, mid-grade BIG fare, which is to say, an enjoyable waste of time for those who enjoy Drive-In era films. The story is not terribly complicated, and I think BIG padded things out so that this film would have sufficient running time for theatrical release, otherwise it could have been done as an episode of the Twilight Zone.BIG made this film for peanuts. Ten years after its release, TV schlockmeister Irwin Allen tweaked the concept slightly, and made the series 'Land of the Giants,' which at the time was the most expensive TV show ever produced, and ultimately much more tiresome than this quaint artifact.

This is the case of a horror film whose title is much better than the film. So much of the title is wrong--a much better name would have been "Doll People Who Mostly Just Sit Around...and Stuff"! There is nothing at all resembling an attack and the people are shrunk to the size of Barbie dolls and are NOT puppets in any sense. But think about how creepy and wonderful it would have been if puppets really did come to life and have a reign of terror!! What an opportunity wasted.The film is about a creepy and lonely man (John Hoyt) who sells dolls but also turns people into his own special living dolls. The dolls are kept drugged and in suspended animation in plastic tubes and he takes them out occasionally to amuse himself because his life really sucks. It's hard to be horrified by the guy--he's more just some old creepster who is rather pathetic. And, eventually when the living dolls (at least two of them) are able to restore themselves to their original size, the film just ends! There is no real resolution or satisfaction--just an ending that leaves the viewer wondering why they gave up on the movie towards the finale (such as it was).The biggest problem with the film is the super-limp script. There is nothing particularly interesting about it other than the main plot idea--no chills, no excitement,...nothing. The scale of the doll people also often changes--showing that the film was rushed into theaters before it could all be worked out well. About the only interesting thing about the film is seeing two very familiar TV actors of the age in non-traditional roles (John Hoyt, who seems to have done practically every sort of role over the years and Hank Patterson, who played 'Fred Zipfel' on "Green Acres"). Otherwise, it's a dud.