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.

Tormented.

Review #929: Tormented.

Cast: 
Richard Carlson (Tom Stewart), Susan Gordon (Sandy Hubbard), Lugene Sanders (Meg Hubbard), Juli Reding (Vi Mason), Joe Turkel (Nick), Lillian Adams (Mrs. Ellis), and Gene Roth (Mr. Nelson) Directed by Bert I. Gordon.

Review: 
When it comes to horror films, can you think of one with a ghost tormenting her old lover and his impending marriage? Where one moment involves the main character holding up a ghost and...its head? It seems the only one that can hear and see this ghost is the main character, who sees her in a photograph along with seeing her head in a wrap, even though it is actually just flowers. This is a ludricious kind of movie, filled with pallid characters and a thin plot that still manages to veer toward the absurd, particularly with the ending. With ridiculous cliches (and accompanying spooky music), this is a movie that falls into line with other run-of-the-mill horror flicks like The Screaming Skull (#654), with both films also having been lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000. There isn't much to the actors aside from Carlson, who manages to be pretty capable (all things considered) as the lead in a movie where he shows the most energy that reaches believability. Gordon doesn't really get much to do, and Sanders isn't too much better. Reding isn't much of a villain, and her presence doesn't make the movie any more chilling. The climax of the movie is swift (this is a 75 minute film, after all), if not as somber as one would probably expect in a movie like this, though it doesn't really leave that much impact. At the end of the day, this is a movie filled with empty pacing and even emptier people.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.