Attack of the Puppet People

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Lesser film from Bert I Gordon about a lonely old doll maker (John Hoyt) who comes up with something new to stay busy. Instead of making dolls he's going to take real people and shrink them down to a doll size. Two such people (including June Kenney) decide that they don't want to remain this size so they fight to become big again. ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE is a pretty disappointing film when you consider there's really no puppets and no attacks. This is a pretty screenplay that really doesn't offer up anything overly interesting and it appears that no one was really interested in coming up with a story that you could care about. The doll maker really isn't all that interesting and we really don't learn about him being lonely until the end of the picture. Perhaps if they had worked this in earlier we could have gained some sort of connection with him. The secretary role isn't any better as we never begin to care what happens to her. Gordon does a pretty good job with the special effects, which might be the only time in his career. I thought the rear projection was obviously horrible but there's a lot of stuff dealing with miniatures that actually work. The long sequence where a group of people try to escape the office was well-directed and a lot of credit goes to the special effects for actually looking real. The performances are another good thing as Hoyt manages to be good in his role as does John Agar as the woman's love interest. At 79-minutes the film seems a little long at times but I'm sure fans of the director will still want to check this out. Others should probably stay clear.