Attack of the Puppet People (

1958

) ½

Stories about miniature people are hardly a recent phenomenon. Tales of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina date back to the 1500s and 1800s respectively. Literary minds like Jonathan Swift explored the idea of what it would be like for a regular man to live in a world of giants, and a giant in the world of miniature men. There's something fascinating about the idea, which invites the audience to put themselves in the place of the miniature protagonist. All of the sudden the familiar shapes of our world become insurmountable obstacles and monstrous dangers. When you are three inches tall a chair is a mountain, and a house cat is more dangerous than a saber tooth tiger. At the same time though, a slice of cake is a feast fit for a royal court, a sowing needle is a sword and a sponge is a queen-sized bed. It's fun to imagine the details of such a scenario, because it recalls memories of a simpler time when the viewer was playing with their dolls or action figures and seeing the world from their perspective. For a long time, such fantasies were the sole domain of literature and perhaps the odd marionette show. It wasn't until The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) that films developed the technology to make such scenario and not until Dr. Cyclops (1940) that it was used to any really impressive extent. Another decade an a half would elapse before there was a really good tiny person movie with the release of The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is a masterpiece, one of the rare cultural critiques of 1950s America that manages to be both poignant and entertaining. But it is also first and foremost a horror novel, that focuses more of the plight of its diminishing protagonist, and the horrors that lurk in the miniature world rather than on the possible adventures of a diminutive hero. As the film is based on a novel by Richard Matherson, there is excess of existential dread and a bare minimum old-fashioned heroics; since the film is helmed by Jack Arnold it's equally unsurprising that the film is more social criticism than action-adventure. Obviously, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is a great film, but it leaves my appetite for uncomplicated shrinking adventure stories unfulfilled. Fortunately, Bert I. Gordon took one look at The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), slapped himself in the head and shouted “Now why didn't I think of that” before cranking out today's film in a frenzy of activity. Gordon is no dreary auteur, he's a pulp filmmaker and Attack of the Puppet People is one of his most competently made films.

By 1958, Gordon had made a name for himself with a series of quickly made monster movies, almost all of them about people/animals growing to gargantuan proportions and going on a rampage: see Earth vs. the Spider (1958), Beginning of the End (1957), and The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). His love of giant monsters brought to life with his signature slip-shod effects earned him the nickname Mr. B.I.G. Making a film about people shrinking to the size of dolls, is only superficially different from Gordon's established work. All the same tricks for animating a giant spider are used to create the illusion of a inch high person. Gordon's preference for working with real footage for his monsters instead of the more popular claymation or puppets only made the jump easier for him. Obviously, the special effects on display here are nowhere near as spellbinding as the ones used in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), but come on, that movie had a major studio like Universal backing it, while today's film was a product of the AIP assembly line. If it feels a bit sloppy and rushed, well that's what happens when your director is tasked with making three movies a year.

Our story begins with an introduction to the kindly old man named Franz. Franz used to be a traveling puppeteer, until his wife left him for an acrobat who performed at the same venue. Distraught, Franz retired from show business altogether and became a doll-maker. However, Franz must have had yet another career before being a puppeteer, that of mad scientist, because somehow he manages to build a shrink ray in the back of his doll shop. He uses the device to shrink people down to doll-height so he can have a group of friends that won't abandon him when the chips are down. This points to the main problem with Attack of the Puppet People's story: That it desperately wants to be science fiction rather than fantasy. That's all well and good, but the story would just make more sense if Franz was using magic rather than technology to accomplish his goal. Seeing this kindly old puppeteer stumble through a quick educational lecture on the workings of his shrink ray is pretty atrocious for the audience's immersion. But if the film's premise betrays its identity crisis, then it also showcases one of Attack of the Puppet People's greatest strengths: It's humane, almost pitiful villain. Sure Franz is creepy and more than a little dangerous, but he's also tragic. Too often villains in 1950s horror/sci-fi movies are abstract concepts, marauding beasts, or soulless communists. Seeing a baddie with real human emotions is a refreshing change of pace.

Having turned his last secretary into a doll-person, Franz is obliged to hire a replacement, a young woman named Sally. He hires with barely a glance at her resume, presumably because she's the perfect fit for a 6-inch high dress he recently made. Franz isn't the only one smitten with her though. It's not long before she's entangled in a romance with Bob, a traveling salesman from Saint Louis in town to do business with Franz (well except for that one scene where Bob is inexplicably working on the doll assembly line, but more on that below). Bob takes Sally to the drive in for a movie date, and that's where we get what is perhaps the most peculiar scene in Gordon's oeuvre. The movie they go see is none other than Gordon's own The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Gordon was always working in a reference to his other movies, usually in the form of a throwaway line or a cinema marquee in the background, but this is something else. We see a whole uninterrupted scene from The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), with Sally and Bob talking around the edges of movie's dialogue. It's a strangely astute scene for Gordon, as it highlights the greatest truth about his work as a filmmaker. Audiences go to films for a lot of reasons, but in the age before televisions and home video, we were always there looking up at a world of giants. Sure, Gordon's film often have literal as well as figurative giants but that's just his own peculiarity. Soon, Sally and Bob will be pulled into a world of giants of their own, which is in fact the world of giants the audience has come to the movie to see. It's as elegant a bit of meta-textual commentary as I've seen in a 50s horror movie.

Once Franz has shrunk them down, he introduces them to a few of his other puppet people, whom he keeps in jars in the lobby of his shop (which generally seems like a bad idea given the number of kids running around there at any given time). Franz is a lonely old man, and sees these puppets as his sole source of companionship in all the world. The puppet people themselves have mostly accepted their fate, play-acting as happy healthy individuals so Franz lets them out of the bottle as often as possible. The alternative is being stuck there in suspended animation behind glass, the equivalent to eternal sleep or death. In truth, they despise their situation to an individual, and only need somebody to lead them on an escape attempt. They find just such a leader in Bob, but it's not going to be easy going. The world is full of obstacles and dangers when you're only six inches tall.

In this hobby you get used to misleading posters fast. Hell, by now I just assume that nothing on the poster for a B movie I haven't seen will happen at any point in the film. So when we never saw the puppet people team up to fight a viscous dog by collaboratively wielding a knife, I wasn't particularly upset. Titles though, I'm still inclined to trust a bit, but as I learned from Gordon's earlier Earth vs. the Spider (1958) they too are subject to last minute marketing changes. So, when the full movie elapsed before the puppet people did anything that could even be remotely considered an attack, I quickly figured out what had happened: The suits at AIP had taken one look at the box office for Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) (which earned a cool million off of its $70,000 investment) and told Gordon to switch the title. It's a subtler change than Earth vs. the Spider (1958), because that one I assumed was nonsense the moment I read it. With attack of the Puppet People, I really could imagine the titular puppets rising up in revolution against their kingly old oppressor and taking revenge Lilliput style. Indeed, I was waiting for just such a twist for the entire movie. But no, Gordon's puppet people are a good deal more empathetic than the name lets on, they may hate Franz for imprisoning them in doll-sized bodies, but they also pity the twisted lonely old man. Such a quietly sad tale is poorly served by such salacious title, but hey this is AIP we're dealing with here: Ticket sales first, artistry second.

The script is riddled with minor defects and small plot holes. Establishing that Franz has a cat, for instance, before he shrinks that cat and tells Sally “You were always fond of him” is a perfect example. All it would take is a snatch of dialogue when Franz is first acquainting Sally with the office and its environs. On a similar note, the romance between Bob and Sally seems to jump from flirtation to marriage in the matter of a single scene-transition. I'm more inclined to forgive this, because too many old monster movies piss away half their run-times with superfluous love stories, seeing one rushed aside is downright refreshing at this point. Other hiccups are a bit more difficult to hand-wave away, like when Bob is helping out Franz on the doll assembly line despite visiting Dolls Incorporated as a traveling salesman. It reeks of being an artifact from an earlier draft of the script where Bob was Franz's assistant, not some guy from Saint Louis. Then there's the fact that the climax completely forgets about four out of the six doll people (to say nothing of the ones Franz has in his waiting room that he never lets out of their tubes). Those are some pretty extreme loose ends to leave dangling. None of these are serious problems, they're the kind of thing that would normally get fixed by an additional draft. I'm guessing the tight timetables over at the AIP assembly line didn't give enough leeway for luxuries like second drafts. That's a shame, because the core of Attack of the Puppet People is unusually solid, were these details addressed it might have been a damn fine picture.