Powerful

hyped garbage

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Mr. Franz is a deranged doll maker & "mad scientist" who's biggest fear is being alone. He creates a machine and shrinks a group of people to keep for himself. In a roundabout way, Mr. Franz reminds me of Dr. Pretorius (Bride of Frankenstein) with his tiny people and mannerism and I liked that a lot with this film.Do not expect a physical attack from the tiny people that is not their form of attack, it's another form of attacking by trying to find away to grow large again and report what has happened to the police.Talk about some great filming and special effects... it really looks as if they have been shrunk down into doll sized people. The story is good but tragic in a way - Mr. Franz severe fear of being alone.Overall, this is a very fun 1950s sci-fi horror. I recommend it to fans of the classic sci-fi horror shows.8/10

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.

Attack of the Puppet People is a "psycho-drama" — it's literally a case study of a mild-mannered man who is actually a demented, controlling sociopath. This isn't really a sci-fi film at all, and it certainly is very different from other Bert I.Gordon films in that the entire film takes place on a couple of small sets, and mostly in the claustrophobic, office-like laboratory. The film is completely about Mr. Franz and the extent to which he will destroy people's lives just so he can have complete control over them; Franz is Stalin in the guise of a grandfatherly lab technician and doll-restoration expert. Do not laugh at me when I say that I've watched this film 5 or 6 times in recent years and found that it improves with successive viewings. John Hoyt's performance is excellent. Attack of the Puppet People is an underrated film.

This is the case of a horror film whose title is much better than the film. So much of the title is wrong--a much better name would have been "Doll People Who Mostly Just Sit Around...and Stuff"! There is nothing at all resembling an attack and the people are shrunk to the size of Barbie dolls and are NOT puppets in any sense. But think about how creepy and wonderful it would have been if puppets really did come to life and have a reign of terror!! What an opportunity wasted.The film is about a creepy and lonely man (John Hoyt) who sells dolls but also turns people into his own special living dolls. The dolls are kept drugged and in suspended animation in plastic tubes and he takes them out occasionally to amuse himself because his life really sucks. It's hard to be horrified by the guy--he's more just some old creepster who is rather pathetic. And, eventually when the living dolls (at least two of them) are able to restore themselves to their original size, the film just ends! There is no real resolution or satisfaction--just an ending that leaves the viewer wondering why they gave up on the movie towards the finale (such as it was).The biggest problem with the film is the super-limp script. There is nothing particularly interesting about it other than the main plot idea--no chills, no excitement,...nothing. The scale of the doll people also often changes--showing that the film was rushed into theaters before it could all be worked out well. About the only interesting thing about the film is seeing two very familiar TV actors of the age in non-traditional roles (John Hoyt, who seems to have done practically every sort of role over the years and Hank Patterson, who played 'Fred Zipfel' on "Green Acres"). Otherwise, it's a dud.