Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

O2D This movie contains no puppets, puppet people or attacks but why should a movie title make sense? The story isn't great but the special effects are good for the 50s.

classicsoncall There's nothing particularly scary about this film with the words 'attack' and 'puppet people' in the title, but before you start calling for truth in advertising you might want to give this one a try. It's got an interesting concept and the special effects required for miniaturizing the characters in the story was fairly impressive. And the story didn't have to rely on a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo for doll maker Franz (John Hoyt) to explain how he shrunk his subjects. He simply broke down their molecular structure using high frequency vibrations - what could be simpler? I was intrigued with the opening credits when it stated 'Introducing Susan Gordon', for whom this was actually an accidental role when the original actress for the part of the young Brownie Scout wound up sick. Nine year old Susan was the daughter of the writer and director of the film, and I bring it up only because she also appeared in my very favorite episode of The Twilight Zone in a story titled 'The Fugitive'. I just watched it again the other night with my granddaughter to introduce her to my favorite TV show of all time.While on the subject of The Twilight Zone it's probably appropriate to mention that this flick could have been the inspiration for at least one of those stories. There was a third season episode titled 'Five Characters in Search of an Exit' that has a definite resemblance to this story. But even more so than the idea of human beings shrunk down in size, I was struck by the similarities in ideology expressed by the principal character. Franz's treatment of his miniature subjects was like that of big government providing for it's citizens in order to force them to be dependent on him for everything. On the flip side, it was one of the six Franz victims who proclaimed what could be taken as a denunciation of career politicians - "Nobody can hear little people like us". I doubt if any of this was on Bert Gordon's mind when he wrote the story, but it's an interesting idea in retrospect.The one disconnect I had with the movie was the reaction of 'puppet people' like Georgia (Laurie Mitchell) and Stan (Ken Miller) who seemed genuinely resigned and almost happy concerning their fate as victims of the doll guy. The resolution to the story was also rather lame considering all that Franz had put the little people through. I think a better ending would have been for Franz to shrink himself using his own technology in order to escape the authorities, that would have been a twist ending worth while.If you think about it, it was really Franz's carelessness that led to his undoing when he demonstrated the shrinking of his cat without bothering to restore it back to normal size. When little Agnes (Gordon) saw it crawling out of the matchbox it was like the proverbial cat being let out of the bag. Turns out it wasn't true that a little pussy never hurt anybody.

MARIO GAUCI Typically, director Gordon here puts his mark on a popular horror theme – in this case, the shrinking of human beings (displayed in glass receptacles very similar to the ones in which Dr. Praetorius showed off his own 'little people' in James Whale's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN [1935]!), that had seen service during the genre's heyday in both THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936) and DR. CYCLOPS (1940), and which was just reworked in Sci-Fi terms for the nuclear age in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957); incidentally, the film under review made for an inverse scenario to its director's two "Colossal Man" efforts (which I will be checking out presently). Though the end result is certainly harmless and not unentertaining, I cannot say to have been very enthused with it either. The main reason for this, apart from the obvious lack of surprise within the narrative, is the fact that, much as the film wanted to render the villain (an excellent John Hoyt) sympathetic by emphasizing the consuming loneliness that caused him to take drastic action to overcome this, I simply could not buy it – both as a believable ploy (how did he ever expect his subjects to take their 'affliction' sitting down?!) and as a fantasy element (so the size of an object caught on camera is proportional to the projector's distance from the screen…but what exact bearing does this have on the re-assembling of atoms from one place to the other?!). Another unfortunate aspect to the movie is the apparently obligatory inclusion of 'hip' teenagers…who literally dance to the tune supplied by the puppet-master, that is, until the more level-headed arrival in their fold of star and genre regular John Agar! A subplot involving Hoyt's inconveniently enthusiastic old pal Michael Mark, a more traditional manager of marionettes, and his equally insufferable theatre caretaker does not help matters. For the record, the director's daughter (Susan) makes her acting debut in this one.

morgie55 ** minor spoilers ** Despite the fact there is really no "Attack" and the "puppets" are really people, the film is a bit of a rip-off of the more successful Incredible Shrinking Man.The plot is quick and predictable. A toymaker whose wife had left him many years ago learns how to shrink people to six inches tall. He does this so that he won't be alone. This man is Mr. Franz, played seriously by John Hoyt, a character actor whose been in all kinds of sci-fi, from the crazy rich guy in a wheelchair in "When Worlds Collide" to the doctor in the pilot episode of Star Trek.Franz keeps running out of secretaries (shrinking them and putting them in bottles is bad for business) and so he hires another one; blonde and alone like him. She falls for Bob (John Agar, whose appeared in many cheesy scifi flicks of the 50s).Bob does the right thing: he proposes marriage in a drive-in which is playing "Attack of the Colossal Man" (through an incredible coincidence this film was also directed by Bert I. Gordon, the same director as "Attack of the Puppet People.").As the police close in, Franz decides on a murder-suicide but the little people will have none of it.The plot fades, we never learn the fate of the other shrunken people and Franz stands in a lab, alone -- the worst fate! Plot holes galore: How did a toymaker, doll manufacturer and part-time puppeteer find the skills and knowledge to create an advanced scientific device that shrinks organic matter? Why did he waste this on people when he could have made a mint as a respected scientist? And what happened to the other shrunken people who escaped into the theater? You'll have to watch to find out!