Attack of the Puppet People.

Review #2453: Attack of the Puppet People.

Cast: 

John Agar (Bob Westley), John Hoyt (Mr. Franz), June Kenney (Sally Reynolds), Michael Mark (Emil), Jack Kosslyn (Sergeant Paterson), Marlene Willis (Laurie), Ken Miller (Stan), Laurie Mitchell (Georgia Lane), Scott Peters (Mac), and Susan Gordon (Agnes) Produced and Directed by Bert I. Gordon (#929 - Tormented and #2297 - Earth vs. the Spider)

Review: 

Okay, bring out the effects-laden movie by Bert I. Gordon for the holiday season. This was the eighth feature film directed by Gordon, and he had a hand with the writing in the story department, which he had done with a few of his other movies; George Worthing Yates, a semi-regular writer of the first couple of Gordon movies, wrote the screenplay. As you might expect, the movie was done in the wake of The Incredible Shrinking Man, which had come out in 1957. American International Pictures obviously knew where to go with trying to make a movie about small people, although apparently Gordon wanted to call the movie "The Fantastic Puppet People" (the teenagers they wanted to see the movie probably didn't think about the fact the shrunken down people don't really attack anything, to say nothing of that poster of them with a knife). What better way to remind people of one of your films than to have it play: a drive-in sequence early on shows the characters watching The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). Funny self-promotion I guess. Apparently, the movie was paired in certain drive-ins with Gordon's War of the Colossal Beast (1958).

So, you get a sci-fi youth movie about shrinking people. At least Dr. Cyclops (also a movie that does a cutaway from the shrinking moment around 30 minutes into the runtime, coincidentally) had a scientist trying to shrink stuff down with some idea based in science, this is a movie that has the owner of a doll manufacturing company shrinking people down because (you're never going to believe this): he's lonely and therefore puts them in and out of suspended animation when he has the feeling for it (notice how there are several people besides the main group that are shrunk but aren't restored at any point); I guess hookers or beer just wasn't ideal to float around in the 1950s (remember: don't try that at home). This would be an interesting quandary if it wasn't for the fact that it just doesn't lead to much beyond him and his interests in the little things. Hoyt is fine in that regard, I guess. The people aren't really given agency beyond one of them doing a song and bland platitudes. Agar and Kenney have the energy of being stuck at a bus station with no working TV. You don't get a sense of tension, and the effects don't really help all that much because it just looks a bit flimsy in the first place. The sequence near the climax of our lead subjecting these people to a puppet show of Jekyll and Hyde is almost too silly for words in making it, well, really easy to see how things will go when they outnumber him.  The ending isn't exactly much better, mainly because it just ends right at the part when you think it might be interesting: a guy about to be cornered for shrinking people. It just...ends, with him alone. I almost expected him to light the place up or do anything other than just sit there (or hell, throw in his dopey machine being used on him just to reverse him, the dude used it on a cat). Since it really isn't a role that evokes much pity, you really do need to show him get some sort of comeuppance. As a whole, Puppet People just isn't as impressive as it could've been in the look upon loneliness and general adventure in small-ness, managing to instead just toil in bland surroundings that make Dr. Cyclops from nearly two decades prior look better in comparison.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.

*Strangely, the movie played a small part of history years later. Apparently, when the Watergate burglary was playing out, the lookout Alfred C. Baldwin III was watching...Attack of the Puppet People on TV and got too distracted to see a cop pulling up right to them.

Earth vs. the Spider.

Review #2297: Earth vs. the Spider.

Cast: 

Ed Kemmer (Mr. Kingman), June Kenney (Carol Flynn), Eugene Persson (Mike Simpson), Gene Roth (Sheriff Cagle), Hal Torey (Mr. Simpson), June Jocelyn (Mrs. Flynn), Mickey Finn (Sam Haskel), Sally Fraser (Mrs. Helen Kingman), and Troy Patterson (Joe) Directed by Bert I. Gordon (#929 - Tormented)

Review: 

Okay, so it has been a while since I covered a Bert I. Gordon movie (seven years, in fact). Gordon was a filmmaker for over three decades, specializing mostly in effects-based features of varying quality. He served as a co-producer on Serpent Island (as directed by Tom Gries in 1954) before becoming a true director with King Dinosaur (1955). He added effects to his foray with his 1957 trio of films that started with Beginning of the End (1957). The following year, he directed three more films with War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), and this one; amusingly, both films are mentioned in the film as part of a double feature here for a film that is sometimes referred to as just "The Spider" (I'm going with the title that takes me back to Earth vs. the Flying Saucers [1956]). This actually was among Gordon's last to go big (pun intended) on effects until Village of the Giants in 1965; it was also the fourth film of his with distribution by American International Pictures, but he stopped his association with the company due to money issues he had with them until the 1970s. The movie was written by László Görög and George Worthing Yates, each of whom had done their share of horror scripts (the former did The Mole People [1956] and the latter did the story for Them! [1954] along with five total film scripts for Gordon). 

Admittedly, it had only been three years since that other movie about spiders with Jack Arnold's Tarantula (1955). Earth vs. the Spider proves quite the chuckler, particularly since it just goes on a quick start in someone running right into the spider right then and there. In fact, the movie doesn't even play with the whole "finding out the creature is real beyond all doubt" (except for one grouchy sheriff played by Roth, who I should mention *sees the spider himself*) or even wonder how the big spider is, well, aa big spider, it just is there making noise (don't ask if spiders sound like that). This is a being that can take plenty of DDT (ask your grandpa) that only seems to knock it out temporarily before the power of rock-and-roll music (yes, you see a spider in your gym, and it means it's a *swell* time to rock!) bring it right back up again. I especially like that the spider leaves skeletons with no missing bones for folks to discover in caves, since the spider likes to chew flesh like it was cheese of the pizza. At least of the two lead actors were under the age of 25 when they made this film involving teenagers, and while the script sure has them lend themselves to plenty of silly stuff (surely, I must go into this cave to get a bracelet back that my dead parent gave me, also he happens to be in the cave because of that deadly spider thing), they aren't exactly grimacing in being stick with this film. The effects are about a notch above, say, The Giant Claw, for better or worse (Paul Blaisdell apparently made a giant spider leg to use for the film). One has to love that after the plan to simply cave-in the big ugly goes by the wayside, their next plan is to simply electrocute them with the use of power lines that ends up with the monster then falling onto stalagmites...and then they dynamite another cave-in. As a whole, it is cheesy and one-dimensional in a predictable but somewhat comforting way. You expect a silly monster movie with a title like that and you pretty much get exactly what you expect with a hokey mess here.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.