Weirdhouse Cinema: Attack of the Puppet People

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe tackle another miniaturization movie with 1958’s “Attack of the Puppet People.” Director Bert I. Gordon jumps in to capitalize on the success of 57’s “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” John Agar stars and somehow this all connects to Watergate. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. Our miniaturization theme continues
from last week with Weird House Cinema's third miniaturization film,

(00:25):
following Doctor Cyclops from nineteen forty nineteen fifty seven's The
Incredible Shrinking Man, which we talked about last week, and
now we're going to go just one year ahead into
nineteen fifty eight with Bert Eye Gordon's Attack of the
Puppet People. I think a pretty obvious cash in on
the popularity of The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it's not

(00:48):
like a Shrinking Man Incredible Shrinking Man rip off. There
are other also elements of Doctor Cyclops in there. There
are also some I think some clear there's a clear
homage to nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. It's certainly
not a rip off of The Incredible Shrinking Man in
that it doesn't have any real similarity to the story,
but I would say probably is in that they are

(01:09):
trying to make a quick book on the idea of
shrink movies right after there had just been a really
big one on the other hand, Oh no, no pun intended.
On the other hand, Bertie Gordon, I think it was
a perennial fascination of his to make movies about big
things getting small or small things getting big, Yeah, which
are essentially the same exercise. Like there's when you get

(01:33):
down to it, you know, what's the difference between a
movie in which a man fights a giant crab or
a movie in which a wait, let me now, I've
lost my own train of thought in this What is
the difference between a movie in which a normal size
crab fights a tiny man or a normal sized man
fights a giant crab. You have just discovered a Galilean relativity,

(01:58):
that magnitude really only means something in the context of
a frame of reference. Yeah, yeah, so yeah. There's a
kind of baseline physical profundity to a lot of these
blow up movies and shrink movies. But that is the
element brought over from The Incredible Shrinking Man. What is
not brought over is the sort of the character complexity

(02:22):
and the the I don't know all the wisdom and
insights of the Incredible Shrinking Man, which, if you haven't
heard last week's episode. I do recommend you go back
and listen to that one, because I think Rob, you
and I were both It's fair to say shocked by
how interesting and thoughtful The Incredible Shrinking Man was as
a story. Absolutely yeah, yeah, just just really solid and thoughtful.

(02:45):
Yeah yeah, far more thoughtful movie than anticipated. I would
say that this movie as well, was more thoughtful than anticipated.
I had a much lower bar for this one. I
was expecting just pure spectacle, pure cash in, and I
mean that would have been fine. I was looking forward
to that experience. It is more thoughtful than I expected,
but not necessarily in ultimately constructive ways. No, I'd say

(03:09):
the thoughts here do not really seem to build on
one another as they did an Incredible Shrinking Man. It's
more like it's a shrink movie. And occasionally there are
some thoughts, yes, but I know what you mean. Also
by comparing this to James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, one
of the great monster movies of all time, because you
know the universal Frankenstein series. With each movie it has

(03:30):
to one up the Mad Scientists. So the original Frankenstein
has the titular Frankenstein, the mad scientist who makes the creature,
and they got to get an even more mad scientist
for the sequel. So they come up with doctor Septimus Praetorious,
a fantastic villain, and his hobby is making homunculi. So
he has these little jars with tiny people in them,

(03:51):
including like a little like king and a little queen,
and I think the little king is always trying to
get out of his jar into the little Queen's jar. Yeah,
so we wacky sequence, and I like, is that a
great classic monster movie. But another strange alleged fact about
Attack of the Puppet People is that, if reports are

(04:12):
to be believed, this film played an unintentional role in
American history. And the role is this, Okay, it is
June seventeenth, nineteen seventy two, the night of the Watergate
break in, So agents of the Nixon White House have
sent out burglars to break into the headquarters of the

(04:34):
Democratic National Committee at the in the Watergate Complex in Washington,
d C. They're they're trying to do some espionage. They
were there to I think like photographed documents and maybe
plant bugs and stuff. So that's the famous burglary that
kicks off Watergate. But the thing that was the sort
of like set the fuse burning on everybody finding out

(04:56):
about the Watergate break in was that the burglars caught
that night, and the burglars had a spotter who was
supposed to radio them on their walkie talkies and let
them know if the police showed up so they could
get out of there. But according to an article called
the Bartender's Tale, How the Watergate Burglars Got Caught by

(05:19):
Craig Shirley, published in June twenty twelve in The Washingtonian,
this spotter, who was across the street at the Howard
Johnson's Motor Lodge. His name was Alfred C. Baldwin the Third,
did not notice the arrival of police because he was
too absorbed in watching a movie on TV. And that
movie was Bert Eye Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People. So,

(05:43):
if this is to be believed, if Attack of the
Puppet People had been even slightly less amusing of a film,
the Watergate burglars might not have been caught and American
history could have unraveled in a very different way. Yeah.
What a strange place for alternate universe is to split
around Burt Eye Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People. What

(06:05):
scene do you think it was that when the police
showed up and this guy could not be bothered to
look out the window. Oh well, there plenty of candidates
for scenes that couldn't have been at It had to
have been, in my mind, it had to have been
the various special effects sequences or various scenes in which
miniature people are averting about. You don't think he was

(06:26):
glued to the TV during one of the many elevator
scenes or the scenes of mister Franz receiving a phone
call saying that he should come out to the lobby
to meet someone. Yeah, yeah, probably not one of those scenes,
but it's worth noting on that. Yeah, the Attack of
the Puppet People is a movie that you don't expect
it to necessarily grab you right away. You gotta let

(06:48):
it set in, you gotta let it get through. It
needs to travel to another location before it it kicks
in with the spectacle. Okay, I got another beef with
this movie, and this is not going to turn into
just right on Attack of the Puppet People because highly
amusing film. I'm gonna say overall, this is what I
do recommend for be cinema purposes. But this is one

(07:09):
where the title and the poster just lie. They just
lie to you. The title is attack of the puppet People.
The only plausible candidates for the titular puppet people are
not puppets. They're people who have been shrunken to the
size of dolls. And these doll people do not attack
anyone except in one instance where the thing they attack

(07:32):
is a puppet. So the title would only make sense
if it was attack of the puppet by people. Yeah,
and the poster, to your point, shows multiple little people
wielding a knife like it's a medieval battering ram against what.
I guess we were talking about this before we recorded.
We're not sure that we assume this is supposed to

(07:53):
be a dog, but it looks kind of like a
Tasmanian devil, yeah, or like a like a wolverine or something.
I don't know what this animal is. And the poster
tagline is doll dwarves versus the crushing giant beasts. Again
highly inaccurate, completely misleading. There is a There are brief

(08:14):
scenes towards the end, this is not even a major
part of the movie, fleeting moments of the puppet people
being threatened by animals, including a rat and a dog,
but they're never like in the same shot, and they're
over in a few seconds. Yeah, it's not like I mean,
I guess what they were going for is like, hey,
do you remember those great sequences in The Incredible Shrinking

(08:36):
Man where he fights a spider or a housecat? Will
prepare for more of that in Attack of the Puppet People.
I guess they figure by the time you get to
those scenes. Most theaters have a policy where it's too
late to get the money for your ticket back. Yeah. Well, well,
let's let's let the people know what's in store for them. Here, Joe,
what's your elevator pitch for Attack of the Puppet People?

(08:58):
All right, people keep disappearing at the offices of Dolls Incorporated,
a small company run by the eccentric old mister Franz.
The mailman vanishes without a trace. His former secretary was
never heard from again. Also, you are not allowed to
play with the freakishly lifelike dolls in glass tubes over

(09:21):
in the corner display case. That's it, all right, Let's
listen to the trailer idea. John agar is the nice
looking young man introduced by John Whyte to pretty June Kenny,

(09:46):
and when boy meets girl, well they do what comes naturally.
But the loss of love has made this mild mannered
man into a maniac. A maniac who wants to make
you a plaything, and the fear awsome fact is he
knows how to do it. Why I'm your friend? All right? Well,

(10:20):
if you want to watch this one before proceeding with
the rest of the episode, it's widely available for digital
purchase in streaming. You can also pick it up on
DVD as part of the MGM Midnight Movie series as
a two pac with Village of the Giants, and I
think it's also available as a straight up blue ray.
I would also add that, as of today, I think
watching this movie is the best way to see unedited

(10:42):
scenes from the amazing Colossal Man. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's again.
Kind of a kind of a shame. I'm gonna be
optimistic though, and hope that the reason for this is
because somebody's just about to put it out in some
sort of restored special edition blue ray, especially since to
get into the connections here on this one, the director
the producer story credit as well goes to Bert Eye Gordon,

(11:05):
who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty twenty three. He
passed away earlier this month at the age of one
hundred years old. Right, So we sort of ended up
here by saying we wanted to do a Bert Eye
Gordon movie, and we were originally going to do The
Amazing Colossal Man, but as you noted, that's like it's
not on disc and then that led us to The

(11:26):
Incredible Shrinking Man, and then somehow we ended up back
with Bert Eye Gordon for the rip off of The
Incredible Shrinking Man. Right, so we've come back around to
Burt Eye Gordon before the month is out, Bert Eye Gordon,
b Ig, Mister Big. Those were his initials. That was
his nickname because he did a number of films involving
big bugs, big humans, or humans so small that everything

(11:48):
else seems big. In the case of this picture. He
was an icon of nineteen fifties beast cinema. His earliest
credit is producer on nineteen fifty four Serpent Island, but
he moved into directing and fighting with the follow up
nineteen fifty five King Dinosaur, and then in nineteen fifty
seven he began busting out his Giant Man movies. The

(12:08):
first Giant man movie did was nineteen fifty seven's The Cyclops,
about an area of Mexico where giant radiated animals and
a twenty five foot tall man with a disfigured face,
one eye and savage instincts, you know, rule the countryside. Okay,
I don't know that I've ever watched The Cyclops in
its entirety, but that one has Lon Cheney Junior in it.

(12:30):
The same year he also gave us The Amazing Colossal Man.
This is another atomic enlargement tale, but one that explores
the emotions of a rational human being at the center
of the change, played by Glenn Langan in a role
that I always liked. Again, would love to come back
and do this film when we have a better way
to watch it. It's maybe we'll discuss this a little

(12:52):
bit when we get to the part in this movie
where they're watching The Amazing Colossal Man. In nineteen fifty eight,
he followed this film up with a sequel, War of
the Colossal Beast, in which they say that Glenn survived,
but he's now disfigured and savage, played by a different actor,
and they dress him up in the same Cyclops mask.

(13:13):
From the earlier picture, so that kind of completes his
Giant Man trilogy. But then he did a Giant Spider
picture titled Spider or Earth Versus the Spider, and then
this movie Attack of the Puppet People. Wait, so you
could say that in fifty eight he may have had
two different movies, both inspired by the incredible Shrinking Man,

(13:33):
this one where it shrinks humans, but also maybe Earth
Versus the Spider because it involves humans fighting a giant
spider puppet. I suppose, so, though I guess Giant Spider.
I mean, when you start thinking of like a full
list of Giant Spider movies, they're quite a number of them.
Gordon remained active throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and
even came back to direct twenty fifteen Secret of a

(13:55):
Psychopath while in his nineties. Of his post Puppet People films,
I'd say some of the more notable ones include nineteen
sixties Tormented. This one was featured on MST. It has
Joe Turkle in it. Nineteen sixty two is the Magic Sword,
also an MST three K classic. This one starred Basil Rathbone,
Estelle Wynwood and Gary Lockwood. Very fun sword and sorcery

(14:18):
sort of movie, you know, very much for the kids.
I've never seen it, but this one does look fun.
I considered it for the show. Oh yeah, we could
totally do magic swords someday. It's it's it's a lot
of fun. And the MST three K episode was was
great fun as well. Nineteen sixty five Village of the
Giants also an MST three K episode. This one had
Tommy Kirk, bow Bridges, Ron Howard and more Joe Turkle.

(14:43):
This one kind of attack of the Killer Teenagers. They're
like giants, sort of sacop teens in it. Yeah, yeah,
I believe so, and I yeah. And this one if
I didn't mention already, this one was also a future
in an MST three K. But I have a less
clear picture of this one. It may be only solid ones.
Nineteen sixty six is Picture Mommy Dead. This had Don
Amici Jajaga Boor in it. And this is an evil

(15:05):
Stepmon film. Nineteen seventy two is Necromancy starring Orson Wells.
Orson Wells, Yeah, Orson Wells with for a quick payday
on this one, and it's not supposed to be very good.
Every July, Peas grow there and then seventy six Food
of the Gods, a giant killer animal film based on

(15:27):
a work by H. G. Wells in the nineteen seventy
seven Empire of the Ants, A pretty late in the
game giant Ants film based on Wells, starring Joan Collins.
Haven't seen it, heard very conflicting reviews. Some say it's
a hoot, others say it is a it is a
kind of gross bore. It's certainly no Phase four, all right.

(15:58):
George Worthing Yates screenplay credit on this so of nineteen
oh one through nineteen seventy five, So it may have
been Gordon's story, but someone had to put it together
into a screenplay, and I suppose that's where Yates comes in.
His writing credits go back to the twenties and thirties,
with a bunch of the adventure films, including a nineteen
thirty eight Lone Ranger film and a nineteen forty seven
Sindbad the Sailor film starring Douglas Fairbanks, Junior, Marine O'Hara,

(16:21):
and Anthony Quinn. But in nineteen fifty four you see
his credits take a sharp turn down the atomic turn
Bike with the Giant Ant movie Them. Afterwards, he worked
on fifty five Conquest of Space and it came from
Beneath the Sea, fifty sixes Earth Versus the Flying Saucers,
and he did some uncredited work apparently on the amazing
Colossal Man. Oh, these are some respected sci fi movies

(16:43):
them and Earth Versus Flying Saucers and stuff. Yeah, along
with puppet People. He worked on War of the Colossal Beast,
followed by fifty eight Spacemaster X seven and Gordon's The
Spider and Tormented. I'm also very intrigued. I haven't seen this,
but I'm intrigued by this nineteen fifty eighth film that
he was a writer on Frankenstein nineteen seventy, which indeed

(17:04):
is supposed to take place in nineteen seventy and stars
Boris Karloff as Baron Frankenstein. I would love to know
what writers in nineteen fifty eight thought nineteen seventy would
be like. I think I read that they originally were
thinking it was not quite nineteen seventy, it was just
a few years into the future. But they're like, nope,

(17:25):
this is two futurists. We got to bump it up
even more. By nineteen seventy, every family will own a
car the size of a battleship. All right, let's get
into the cast here. John Agar is back. This, of course,
was the star of Tarantula, which we've covered not too
long ago. He plays Bob Wesley. Agar lived nineteen twenty

(17:46):
one through two thousand and two. Longtime American actor who
appeared in a bunch of films from forty eight through
two thousand and one. You can basically divide his work
into two categories, the war movies in the Westerns, and
then on the other side, the B movies, as we
talked about in our Tarantula episode and Who. When it
comes to the war movies and the West Arns, he
worked with folks like John Wayne. But in the B

(18:09):
movie category he's in stuff like The Mole People from
fifty six, Revenge of the Creature from fifty five, and
Hand of Death from sixty two. It's John Agar. I mean,
it's exactly what you would expect. He's total cornball in this,
but I would not change it for anything. It's got
to be John Agar. Yeah, I mean he's the dependable lead.
You know. I can imagine if you're a director. Not

(18:30):
only were would you be happy to have him, you'd
wish you had a whole suitcase full of them. Oh
I see what you did there. Yeah, all right. We
also have our our villainous character here, or evil dollmaker
slash puppetmaster slash shrinkinader. This is mister Franz, played by
John Hoyt, who Lift nineteen oh five through nineteen ninety one.

(18:52):
You know, I have some questions about how this character
is written, but I think John Hoyt is actually much
better than the part deserves. Really, he brings an interesting
take on the role. I mean, so, this is an
inherently a creepy villain, a guy who shrinks people down
into dolls and wants to control their every move. But

(19:12):
John Hoyt, I think, makes the interesting decision of making
him ultimately even creepier by giving him very gentle, mild
mannerisms and making it seem like, oh, how could this
guy hurt anyone? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Like,
it's the kind of role that, by all rights, should
have gone to somebody like John Carradine, who, okay, would

(19:34):
have physically had a similar presence on the screen and
would have seemed a nice, nice and tall looking or
at least thin enough that he looks tall in comparison
to our shrunk characters. But this generally does not come
off as lovable. But yeah, Hoyt's take on this character
like you can't help but buy into the heart of

(19:55):
the character at times and ways. And I'm not sure
how much of this is his performance and how much
of it is the script. At times it feels like
too much effort is made to make you feel for
this guy who is a kidnapping and human experimenting villain.
Yes so. Hoyt was an American actor best known for
When Worlds Collide from fifty one, Spartacus from nineteen sixty,

(20:16):
and Brute Force from forty seven. He has a lot
of credits going back to in the nineteen forties lots
of TV. He acted in such films The sixty three'es X,
The Man with the X ray I's nineteen sixty fourth,
The Time Travelers, and nineteen seventy four's Flesh Gordon. His
many TV roles include bits On at the original Battlestar Galactica,
The Six Million Dollars Man, Koltchak, The Knights Stalker, Planet

(20:38):
to the Apes, the TV series Hogan's Heroes Get Smart,
The Monkeys, the Original Outer Limits, and much more. This
is not really a one to one comparison, but I
kept thinking about Annie Wilkes from Stephen King's Misery with
this guy. You know, the way that he's without you know,
the overt violence and aggression you see from Annie and
Wilkes and Misery, but you know he's he's that kind

(21:01):
of like I love you and therefore I must keep you.
I'm doing this for you. I'm I'm I'm saving you
from the world, that sort of thing. Yeah. He at
one point he gives a speech about how, look, you'll
never have to pay taxes again now that I've made
you into a doll. But as sure, he never has
to break out the sledgehammer. Um, he just sort of

(21:22):
his worst threat really is like, well, I'll just put
you back in the tube for a long time. Yeah, yeah,
it's And in fact, I kept thinking that he would
have to squash somebody to make an example out of them,
and that would you know, up the antie for making
him a believable villain, but they never did. Still, really
really good performance. Yeah, kudos, Yeah, thumbs up. John Hoyt. Now,

(21:43):
really our main character in this outside of the evil
puppet Master here is Sally Reynolds played by June Kinney
who lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty one. I
think if you look up on Jenue in the dictionary,
you would get a picture of this character. The character
is someone who are Rives sort of like bride eyed
and innocent and unsuspecting of anyone and then is confronted

(22:06):
with a sinister plot of shrink Nation. Yeah, given the
limits of this role, I think she's She's really good
in it, you know, she's especially when she's up there
with John Agar and Jagar you know, again solid dependable,
but his character as well discuss as we get into
the plot there's not a lot really to latch onto
there either. And I don't know, you can see she's

(22:29):
one of thos, one of those those performances with Jim
Kinney where I feel like you see the wheels the
gears turning in her head even when you wouldn't have
to for a film like this anyway. She was a
fifties B movie starlet that was active from the early
fifties to the early to mid sixties. Her films include
fifty eight The Spider, nineteen sixty one Bloodlust, and nineteen

(22:51):
fifty seven's Teenage Doll. Ironically enough, does she play a
doll in that too? I don't think so. I forget
exactly what the ride up on Team n Doll was,
but I don't think it's the Shrink film all right,
Just a few other players have none. I'm not going
to go through all the Shrink characters and the side characters,
but there's a character named Stan. He's one of the
belief the newlyweds that have been shrunk, played by Ken Miller,

(23:14):
who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty seventeen. A notable
youth actor of the day, his credits include fifty seven's
I Was a Teenage Werewolf in nineteen sixty four Surf Party.
Then we have a character by the name of Georgia
Lane played by Laurie Mitchell, who lived nineteen twenty eight
through twenty eighteen. Model turned actor, best remembered as Queen
Yelana from nineteen fifty eight's Queen of Outer Space, which

(23:36):
also starred Jean Jacoboor with a screenplayed by Charles Beaumont,
who we've talked about before a lot of connection to
the classic Twilight Zone. All right, we have a little
girl wander into We have multiple little children wandering and
ask questions about the dolls, which is not surprising most
of the movie takes place at a doll shop. But
one of these little girls is played by Susan Gordon,

(23:57):
who plays a little girl named Agnes. This was Bert's daughter,
lived nineteen forty nine through twenty eleven. She was apparently
a last minute replacement for another child and this was
their first acting gig. Apparently her this is one of
those situations where her parents didn't really want her to
get into acting, but you know, she kept she kept
at it, and she ended up acting into the late
nineteen sixties, with appearances and such titles as Tormented, Alfred

(24:21):
Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, The Original Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Hour,
and My Three Sons And finally, the music on this
picture is by Albert Glasser, who lived nineteen sixteen through
nineteen ninety eight, film composer who worked in the forty
fifties and sixties mostly. He apparently started off as a
Warner Brothers music department copyist, but moved up and made
a name for himself mostly in B movies, and he

(24:43):
worked for Burt Iye Gordon several times. Well. Speaking of
the music, one of the first thing when we were
watching this, first thing that made my eyes light up
with joy was when in the credits you realized that
this movie has a theme song like a song, a
song popular music song written for the film. The title

(25:04):
song is called Your My Living Doll, music by Albert Glasser,
who you just mentioned in Don Ferris, lyrics by Henry
Shrage Shrage, I don't know how you say that, and
then sun by cast member Marlene Willis. That's right. She
lived nineteen forty two to nineteen eighty two. She's yeah,
she's she's in the film playing Laurie, one of the

(25:27):
shrunk people. This is only one of I think two
different film roles that she did. But she has a
lot of variety show appearances from from back in the day.
So you show up on variety show. So I guess
we would think of her primarily as a as a
musician who also did some acting gigs here and there.
So we're talking about a shrink movie that has a
song with lyrics about being a doll. It's called your

(25:51):
my living doll, and they sing it in the movie. Yes,
that's classy. Attack of the doll people would would have
been far more fitting, right, It would have matched up
with the song, and yeah, it would have been a
little more honest. Where does the puppet thing come from?
Well as well, discott. I mean, they do share the
stage with some puppets, and puppets are part of the plot.
But yeah, all right, we can get to that. Oh

(26:12):
but another thing I wanted to note is there are
there are puppet people who we never meet in the film.
We see them in a glass display case in the office.
We also see them in the credits. So as the
credits are rolling, we see people in glass tubes appearing
across the screen, and I think only of a couple
of the ones in the credits ever show up in

(26:33):
the film. Now, are the ones in the credits refresh
my memory? Are they moving at all? Or is it
seemingly the same special effect that they use for the
people in the actual film? They they are not moving.
I think there's it's the same effect. I think, yeah,
which I took to be just two D paper cutouts
of the people that were carefully held in such a

(26:54):
way that you would not reveal that they were two
d to the camera, yes, which sometimes made for like
awkward hand posture with respect to the camera, like you're
you're holding this tube of John Agar and you're staring
directly at his ear and realizing that it's really yeah. Okay.
So we open on a shot of a tall office building.

(27:17):
I don't know what city this is supposed to be in,
maybe New York, but we learned this is the Tilford
Building and inside there is a Brownie troop. So girl
Scout troop is getting off the elevator and they're headed
for a visit to an office called Dolls Incorporated. Inside there,
the troop leader meets with the secretary. He was a
very friendly and professional young woman. And the secretary calls

(27:40):
on the phone to let mister Frans know they're here
and then tells them they are welcome to go check
out the dolls on the wall display, and they do that,
and then she's like, oh, but excuse me, not those
dolls right next to the other dolls in the hermetically
sealed glass tubes with the suspiciously human looking flesh. I
did not mean you could play with those dolls because

(28:02):
mister Franz is very particular about them. Let's go look
at the other ones. He is big about just having
his dark secrets just open for display for anyone that
happens to wander into his business. Yeah, so you're like
shrinking people into dolls. And why would you have them
in the front room of your office. He doesn't even
have them in a vault or anything. Well, I'm at
His response would be, how could I keep them in

(28:23):
the back room? I get lonely. I need to look
at them. But he's always in the back rooms. He's
having his visitors and secretary look at them. But what
do I do when I come into the front room.
I would get lonely if I couldn't see them. I
keep one tube of John Agar in the bathroom just
so I have some company. Yeah, so we zoom in

(28:45):
on the tube dolls while we get a horrible dramatic
music sting. Duh, And of course we see the very
realistic looking people, except they do look kind of flat
and I think they are paper cutouts. Anyway, So we
cut to some time later and a different young woman
is wandering the holes of the building. She consults a

(29:06):
classified ad that she's cut out from the newspaper. It's
in her hand and it says that says general office
girl wanted easy work, good pay. Apply to mister Franz
Dolls Incorporated, Tilford Building, fifth floor. And this is June
Kenny as Sally Reynolds. So she lets herself into the
office and then wanders around looking at things, and ends

(29:28):
up picking up a figurine from the desk to examine it.
And then suddenly there's a hand on her shoulder from behind,
and she whirls around and here is John Hoyt as
mister Franz. What would you guess? Is the first thing
he says to her, like hello, or are you here
about the job? The first thing he says is, young lady,
do you like my dolls? She says, oh, yes, I

(29:52):
think they're lovely. And then he takes around to meet
some of them. So he shows off. Oh here's a bride,
isn't she lovely? Here's a housewife going shopping. Oh here
she's very important. This is my nurse. She helps keep
my little people well. So he's already like taken the dolls,
taken them all serious, and Sally notices this. She's like, oh,

(30:15):
you treat them like real people. And he says, but
of course they're my friends. My name is mister Franz.
And she is creeped out, as many people would be,
so she tries to leave, but mister Franz runs to
the door to stop her. Good move, and he starts
giving her a job interview there while he's preventing her
from leaving. The main thrust of the job interview is

(30:37):
are you married? Answer is no? Do you live with
any family or roommates? Answer is no? And he's like, Oh,
you're perfect, You're exactly what I need for this job.
You're hired next victim. Yeah, And I guess the I
don't know. I guess it's just that, like Sally is,
so is so goodhearted and innocent, she doesn't notice. Maybe

(30:59):
that the that The entire thrust of the job interview
is would anybody notice if you went missing? Yeah? Even
in this interview, though, Franz is constantly doing this, he's
always playing the pity card, a self pity card. You know.
There's the loneliness thing, but also the well, I and
I'll pay you a standard rate, maybe even a little more,
though it'll be difficult, you know, He were something to

(31:21):
that effect, where he's he's like, it's always about what
a bad time mister Franz is having. If you've seen
what we do in the Shadows, mister Franz is kind
of an emotional vampire. Yeah, he's always just like, oh
so lonely, I couldn't I don't know what I would
do without you. Yeah, it's very lonely and controlling, and

(31:42):
it is all about putting the blame for his loneliness
on anyone in his vicinity, and in this case they're
mostly people he's kidnapped and and experimented on. Right, So
he eventually pressures her into consenting to answer a ringing telephone,
and then he goes back to take the call in
the rear. So here we get a good look at

(32:04):
the layout of the office which will spend most of
the movie in. There's sort of a front room where
like there's the secretary's desk in a waiting area and
dolls in display cases on the walls, and then there's
a middle room, which is the factory. This is equipment
for making dolls. You get like plastic injection molding and
conveyor belt for dollheads, and then these tables covered in

(32:26):
parts arms and legs and stuff. And then there's a
back room behind a door that says no admittance, and
beyond that door there's a room that has a desk
and a telephone, as well as a couple of operating
tables with some big ray gun aimed at them. Anyway,
he goes, he takes the phone call and it's from
a mister Grant who's like, hey, do you know somebody
named Janet Hall. She was supposed to start work with

(32:49):
us this week, but she never showed up. And we
find out, of course, that was the previous secretary who
mister Brand says he doesn't know where she went, but
he again begs for pity. He's like, oh, you know,
miss Reynolds, Janet took such good care of things. I
don't even know where the cash register is. But then oh,
and then so Sally goes out to start doing her job,

(33:11):
I guess, and we get the music swelling ferociously with
a dun dune done as it zooms in on the
tube in his arm, and it's obviously Janet damn it. Yeah, yeah,
there she is tubed up, shrunk and tubed. Okay, so
some time passes. Miss Reynolds is apparently settling into her

(33:32):
new duties. Everything seems to be going all right, But
sometimes life throws a curveball at you. Sometimes you're just
sitting there punching the keys on a typewriter and a
room full of dolls and in walks John Agar. He's
ready to sweep you off your feet to Saint Louis,
Missouri and a whirlwind of arrows. And that is at

(33:52):
this moment, I've realized exactly what this movie needed. So
it's a late fifties b horror film. So in the orcast,
you need three figures. Really, you need the sparkly eyed
on Junue. You need a creepy old man with a
science or dull related secret. And to make the triad complete,
you need a grass fed USDA Prime rectangle. And John

(34:16):
Agar is exactly what the doctor ordered. He's uh oh,
and his character just sucks. He's he's a salesman named
Bob Weslie, and as soon as he comes in and
starts talking to her, he is a pushy jerk, Like
you get the feeling this is. This is a salesman
who makes his employees asked permission every time they want
to drink from the water cooler. Uh and uh you know.

(34:39):
So the first thing he does is he's like, I
need to see mister Franz, and Sally tells him mister
Franz is busy, can't be disturbed, so he just ignores her,
like barges right past her to throw open the door
and look in the back. Yeah. Yeah, he this is
a This is a character that I got the impression
that he needed to be shrunk down to size, you
know that. Yes, he this probably did him some good

(35:01):
character wise. Oh. He introduces himself as he says, I'm
Bob Wesley, the best salesman in Saint Louis. So maybe
that says it. Maybe this is supposed to be Saint
Louis or maybe what if not? What's he doing in
New York or wherever? Right, No, he's from Saint Louis
because at one point he talks about taking her back
to Saint Louis with him. Oh okay, yeah, why does

(35:25):
it seems like a weird brag a strange flex if
you're in the big city, in the big Apple. You know,
But despite how impressive and important John Agar is, he
still can't see mister Franz, because Sally explains, he's in
the back back room, the one labeled no admittance, and
he cannot be disturbed while he's in there. She can't

(35:46):
even call him on the phone. He'd be furious. And
I think once you've seen the whole movie, you can
probably assume. Oh, in the scene he's back there playing
with his shrunken humans. Yeah, he's he's having key time
for them or something. But John Agar's confused by this.
He's like, mister Franz, how could he ever be furious
at you? He's as mild mannered as a kitten. How
is that even possible? And so they start to talk,

(36:10):
and Sally admits that she's a little bit uneasy about
mister Franz, but she hesitates to say why, and John
Agar turns on the charm. He apologizes for his earlier behavior,
and he says, I want to be friends, okay, and
the charm seems to work. She agrees to be friends,
and she starts to explain she gets a little weirded

(36:30):
out when mister Franz gets into one of his peculiar moods.
When he quote talks to them, he seems so serious,
almost as if he expected them to talk back, and
John Agar asks, what do you mean talks to who?
And she says his dolls, to which John Egar responds
by just laughing in her face. I'm not sure why

(36:53):
is he mocking her for believing, he assumes incorrectly that
mister Franz talks to his dolls. This reaction, it doesn't
make any sense that it might just be bad writing.
I don't know. I don't know he comes He does
come off incredibly unlikable because it feels like he's laughing
at her, even if he's supposedly laughing at mister Frantz.
I think he is laughing at her. I think the

(37:15):
point is he's like, of course he's not talking to
his dolls. You are silly for thinking he does that.
I don't know. Well, you know, The Incredible Shrinking Man
was all about a guy who became more self aware
the smaller he'd got. So maybe some positive change is
in store for John Agar. Yeah. So we cut to

(37:36):
the next morning or some other day, and there's an
elevator scene. John Agar is back. He's pestering Sally in
the elevator on the way up to their office. Good lord,
how many people are in this elevator. This is not
an elevator, this is a room. Yeah. I was taken
aback by this as well, because if my count is correct,

(37:57):
they're like fourteen people in this elevator scene. And I
just did I didn't do extensive research, but I glanced
around at some stills from famous cinematic elevator sequences, and
I feel like you're generally looking at eight to ten
people tops, but fourteen. This is incredible. This is like
a freight elevator. You would think buildings would have a
dedicated elevator for John A. Gar Alone. Yeah, I mean,

(38:20):
given his sales credentials. Okay, But also here in this scene,
there's a whole thing about the mail carrier bringing a
letter for Janet Hall, the previous secretary, and it has
to be signed by her, but she's not there. So
Sally Reynolds offers to take the letter, and then mister
Franz says he'll take it because he expects to see

(38:41):
it or see her again. The point is Janet Hall
is missing, and mister Franz takes the letter. He promises
to give it to her, but later Sally finds the
letter in the garbage, and this raises her suspicions. Also,
we learned that the mailman is new because the old
mailman quote old Ernie, who used to deliver to the building,
mysteriously went missing two days before his retirement, right around

(39:04):
the time mister Franz made that incredibly realistic mailman doll
that no one is allowed to touch. And oh, and
then also we get a scene later where mister Franz
like closes the door and hanging on the back of
the door is just a mail carrier's satchel. This is
just adding to his crimes. He's interviewing with the post
office at this point. Yeah, oh man, you don't want
to mess with that, so you know, much like mini

(39:35):
movies are padded out with extraneous scenes of people driving
to the next location or parking cars when they arrive,
this movie is padded out with a lot of scenes
of people arriving at the office, calling in to say
they've arrived, walking back and forth between the rooms and
the office and so forth. And to be clear about
driving scenes, not all driving scenes and movies are extraneous.

(39:58):
Sometimes filmmakers use them for a good stylistic reason, maybe
to establish a tone or a mood. But a lot
of B movies, you know, they don't accomplish much in
terms of style. The driving scenes are just some filler
to get you to the target run time of eighty
two minutes. And I think a lot of the sort
of like human padding scenes in this are the same

(40:18):
way as just people arriving in places saying they've arrived
and so forth. Not much is really getting done there
in terms of plot or mood. Yeah, I'm reminded of
there was at least one essay from emberto Echo where
he gets into this, or maybe more than one where
he's talking about movies where he was talking about literature,
like what happens when you have like dead time in

(40:38):
movies dedicated to characters moving from point A to point B.
Writing in elevators. I think there was one who is
also talking about what, like what does it mean when say,
James Bond spends a lot of time pouring his coffee?
You know, James Bond book and so on one level,
having these kinds of moments in your film or just
your general storytelling, you can highlight the mundane to either

(41:03):
intentionally or accidentally, then highlight some sort of supernatural or
element that will present itself or some sort of supernatural
or not supernatural, but some sort of supernormal stimuli. But
it also is the sort of thing that clearly occurs
in motion pictures just by virtue of amateur filmmakers or

(41:25):
filmmakers that are just kind of cranking it out. And
I tend to think that this picture is more of
the latter, as opposed to some sort of pointed attempt
to make the shrunk scenes feel more amazing. It's interesting
though you raise the case of James Bond pouring his
coffee and stuff. I do think specifically in the case
of James Bond, a big part of the esthetic of

(41:46):
the Bond books and the Bond films is the stereo
feeling that emerges between like sex and death on one hand,
and consumption of luxury food and drink items and use
of like luxury hotel and automobile facilities on the other end.
You know, it's like, exactly what the James Bond feeling

(42:08):
is is it's danger. It's like erotic and life and
death thrills alongside luxury goods. Yeah, I mean, it's just
a basic too. When there's food in a movie, if
someone orders a meal, you want to see that meal.
I'd forget what I was watching the other day. I
was watching something with my wife, I think some TV
show and a character ordered some meal or some dish

(42:31):
and we never got to see it, and that kind
of made me mad on some level, like, like, no,
I want to see what they ordered, Like, show me
the food. I think that's something most good directors understand.
Showing food and drink is an important part of setting. Yeah,
and we do have some food and drink sequences coming up. Yes,
that's right. Oh. We do get a scene with a
like a doll clothing vendor where mister Franz is asking

(42:55):
Sally which article of doll clothing she likes best, and
she picks out, oh, white organdy with blue ribbons, and
he says, oh, it's a pity you can't model it
for us. So he's still being a creep. And then oh,
and this is also the scene where Sally discovers the

(43:15):
letter to Janet Hall torn up in the trash Dun
dun dune. Yeah. Oh, also here we introduce a new character.
This is mister Franz's old friend, a Meal, and it
is through a meal that we learn a lot of backstory,
So I think they knew each other from back in
the day when they were both in the puppet show business.

(43:37):
So mister Friends was once a puppeteer a performer, and
Amiel is in town to do a string of big
puppet shows at the theater. It seems like he is
still a world class puppeteer. And we learned later that
he's doing some kind of puppet adaptation of Doctor Jekyl
and mister Hyde. Now I should throw in here. I
didn't cover Michael Mark earlier. He's the actor playing Emil

(43:58):
who lived eighteen eighty through nineteen seventy five. Some of
his uh bigger films were Son of Frankenstein from thirty nine,
The Waspwoman from fifty nine, and a slew of other pictures.
He was also in Return of the Fly from fifty nine.
But yeah, in this, in this picture, it's kind of
it's it's a fun little role. He's also the character
who frequently has has shown up to to greet mister Friends.

(44:23):
Mister Friends, it's like, oh, I have all my only
friends are the dolls? What will I do without them?
And like here's an actual, like real life friend. He's
like Hey, buddy, can we hang out? And he's like, oh, well,
if I must, if I must, but I really need
to get back to my dolls. Yeah. He's constantly trying
to get Emil out of his office so that he
can go shrink people some more. You know, Emil as

(44:45):
like the guy who shows up from you know, the
Life before to talk to the villain. He kind of
reminds me of like Doctor Strowski and Bride of the Monster,
because he's like generally concerned about his old friends, like
asking about him, like, you know, how, how's your wife? Oh?
That's right. So here is another thing we get from
mister Friends as emotional history. So we learned he was

(45:07):
once married to a beautiful, golden haired woman named Emma,
but she left him. Mister Friends says, my Marionettes were
playing in Luxembourg and she ran away with someone she
liked better, an acrobat, And I was thinking, what's what's
the story? Is Luxembourg significant? Is that a place where
people run away? Maybe that's just incidental. Yeah, I'm not

(45:31):
sure where the connection would be there other than she
had enough of mister Friends if he found somebody better,
and he has never let it go and refuses to
take a chance on any new human beings in his
life that have not been completely managed, shrunken down, and
completely controlled by him. She left him for an acrobat

(45:53):
who promised never to shrink her. Yeah, but anyway, he says,
you know what, I'm happy now because I have my daughter.
That's what I'm into. I don't want to come back
to show business. His friend tries to get him to,
you know, yeah, come come, come do show business again,
and he's like, I don't want it, but I will
repair your puppets for you, so that there's that. Oh.

(46:16):
Also we see he still knows how to operate puppets
because they go to the theater and he puts on
a little show for Emil, and I don't I'm confused
by this theater setup. So the people in this large
theater are all watching this tiny puppet show in a
box about three feet wide, Like it looks like a

(46:39):
normal size auditorium, so people might be seated like eighty
feet away, and these puppets are less than a foot tall,
and the action is taking place in this little three
foot space. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I've seen
a number of puppet shows over the years, and sometimes
they've I mean, it's it's certainly a medium where it's
better if you can be up close for it, especially

(47:00):
the smaller scale stuff. But I've also seen puppetry in
venues where my seating wasn't that good, and maybe it
was a little harder to make everything out, but it
was still pleasant and amusing, So I'm not sure. I
guess it could go either way. But if the scene
is making you doubt it, then I think the scene
has some shortcomings for sure. Yeah, once again, here Emil

(47:24):
tries to tempt mister Friends back into show business, but
he's content where he is in the doll business, and
he says, why must someone who is content have something
wrong with him? And Emil says a contentment is not natural,
but you know he's not going to budge him. So then, oh,
then we cut away to one of my favorite scenes
in the movie. That is the scene at the drive

(47:46):
in movie theater where John Agar and Sally are I
guess on a date for some reason, Why are they
on a date? Did we see any basis for like
a romance being established other than him nagging her and
saying he wanted to be friends? And then then that's right.
Next step today wanted to be friends? Okay, yeah, so yeah,
they go to the drive in and they watched The

(48:07):
Amazing Colossal Man on the big screen. But I love
this because Bert doesn't just casually drop it at It's
not one of those moments where it's like, hat, did
you notice that The Amazing Colossal Man is on in
the background? No, no, no, We watched several clips from
the film featuring big Glenn Manning freaking out over his size,
and yeah, it's it's wonderful. I like the idea too,

(48:31):
that drive in viewers were watching this movie and had
previously watched The Amazing Colossal Man, perhaps at the same
drive in, and now they're watching like drive in through
a drive in screen. Yes, there are also some time,
I think tongue in cheek comments from Agar's character about
you know, about trying something new, which felt like maybe

(48:52):
it's kind of a bird eye Gordon like, I usually
make movies about big things, now I'm making one about
small things. Haha, wink wink. But I may be over
analyzing the whole the whole sequel. Do you think he
had realized what his initials spelled by this point? Um?
You know, I'm not sure at what point because who
wasn't it gave him that nickname. I want to say

(49:12):
it was Forrest j Ackerman or somebody like that, so
that that nickname may have been bestowed pretty early on. Well, anyway,
this drive in date leads to some plot developments, because,
as is well known, if you watch a Birdeye Gordon
movie at the drive in on your first date, the
next step is immediate and irreversible progression to full wedlock.

(49:35):
So they decide to get married. And how seriously, how
bizarre is the proposal in the scene? How I don't
even how does it develop? These just like she's like, oh,
are you going to go back to Saint Louis And
he's like, you could come with me? And she says,
and do what he says, become missus. Bob Wesley. Well,
you have to remember that The Amazing Colossal Man is

(49:58):
a very stirring film about about the growing distance between
a man and his wife, and so it can it
can make one maybe even a little bit impulsive about
the need to hold on to people you're you've known
for like quite a week, and and and maybe want
to want to actually lock that down with a wedding ring. Yeah,

(50:19):
it makes you hold fast to the nearest pushy salesman. Uh.
So they're gonna, yeah, they make plans. They're gonna fly
to Las Vegas and get married the very next day,
and then they're gonna move to Saint Louis together. And
so Bob tells her, you know what, you don't even
have to tell have to tell mister Franz, I'll tell
him for you. I'm gonna go in in the morning
and tell him that that you're not coming back to work.

(50:41):
That's I guess that's how these dynamics worked in the fifties. Yeah, well,
I think she says she didn't want to face him
because she felt bad, because of course he'd he'd like
guilt tripper about it. We know what he would do.
He is a creek so and and can be very
forceful with his self pity. So yeah, get John Agar
in there. He's he's a cold hearted hunk. He can
exactly Yes, this pushy salesman will not be bothered by

(51:04):
his please for pity. But then back at home, it's
the next day and Sally, you know, where's where's Bob?
She receives a call from mister Franz. It seems Bob
has left town without her. How horrible, And so she
goes into the office and mister Franz is like, oh,
that wasn't very thoughtful of him. But Sally doesn't believe it.

(51:27):
Could John Agar possibly have treated her this thoughtlessly. Oh. Also,
now mister Franz has a tube with a tiny John
Agar in it, and she's like, wow, it really looks
like him. It could almost be him, except he wasn't
this small. And mister Franz gives a speech in response
to her, saying, you know, it really looks like him.
He says, thank you for the compliment. You know, it

(51:48):
is the aim of every composer to fit the world
within the limits of his symphony. A writer wants to
put all of life between the covers of his book. Well,
if I can make my dolls in the image of
those I know and love, I'm satisfied. You know, I'm
reminded for the first time here as we're recording it that,
even though last episode was our first shrink movie in

(52:12):
a while, the episode before that, if I'm remembering correctly,
Clash of the Titans, that of course, also has these
scenes where like Zeus is handling these miniature versions of
people and controlling and manipulating them. And that's basically what
mister Franz is creating for himself here. He's setting himself
up as the self obsessed god that treats everyone in

(52:34):
his life like they are little playthings that he has
complete control over. Well, he could have just taken a
page out of your book and got a miniature's hobby.
He didn't have to shrink all these salesmen and secretaries.
That's true. I was actually clipping out some minis while
watching the movie and didn't realize the irony of that
until it was a good ways. Then I have one
of you and JJ and everything. So Sally's I think

(52:58):
she's seen enough. She knows what's going on now, so
she goes straight to the cops. She says, please help,
my boss turned my fiance into a doll. And the
detective treats her like she's out of her mind until
she starts to mention other people to whom she thinks
the same thing has happened. There is Janet Hall, the
previous secretary. There's a maleman named Ernie and so forth,

(53:21):
and what do you know? The detective starts leafing through
his files and he finds that these are all missing persons.
But that makes me think, wait, the detective never put
it together that like half of the missing persons in
town all have a connection to the same doll company.
Oh well, Amy, we don't know that he's a good detective,

(53:41):
but he appears not to be. But I did ultimately
kind of like this see the sequence kind of got
it took sim me because it seems like he's just
gonna laugh her off. But then he's like, oh no,
actually these are all missing people's cases. And then he's like,
let's go check it out. And part of me gets
kind of wrapped up in the plot here, and I'm like, yeah, okay,
nail him. Get this guy that we're gonna actually arrest

(54:02):
him here. Yeah, I know what you're saying that there
was a nice plot movie. I think a lesser movie
would have just had him laugher off completely and then
move on to the next thing. But now she makes
a logical case. She's like, what about all these missing people?
Those are actually missing people. So we get further investigation.
So Sally and the detective go to Dolls Incorporated. The

(54:24):
cop is like, look, Friends. I hear you've been turning
people into dolls? Is that true? And he, you know,
Friends are sitting there with John Eggar in a tube
at a table, and he denies it. He's like, whoa,
that's silly. How could I turn people into dolls? And
the detective asks, how come that doll you're holding looks
exactly like her boyfriend because it's a little John Egar there,

(54:46):
And he replies by setting it on fire. Yeah, just
drop the match in there, and woof, John Agar goes
up in flames and it's just completely incenterated. Now. Of
course Sally is horrified, but then the leads to mister
Friends opening up maybe my favorite set piece in the film.
This is the best image from the movie. Yeah, opens

(55:08):
up the suitcase and what's in there but six tubes
of John Agar. A suitcase full of John Agars. Looks
like Santa came early this year. It's so many John Agars?
What would you do with them? All? Yeah? And I
mean I was trying to piece that together, like why, well,
first of all, how because we'll get into exactly how

(55:29):
Friends as miniaturization is supposed to work in a bit,
and he never it's never mentioned that he can create copies, Like,
I don't know why we have a plurality of Agars
in the picture. It's never explained in context with friends
his method of miniaturization, Like are these just mere backups
because he likes this guy so much, just in case

(55:49):
a friend gets smashed or eaten by a neighborhood cat
or I was wondering too, is this like a fuel
source because we see how quickly John Agar goes up
in flames. Perhaps a canister of this is enough to
like power an airplane to fly from New York to
London or something. Oh yeah, John Agar, the energy source
of the future. You can imagine something like this facility

(56:11):
powered by one hundred percent clean burning John Agar. Yeah.
I mean, I guess. The other less fun interpretation is
he also makes super accurate dolls that can in this
case serve as as as a decoy for his actual
miniaturization efforts. But there's nothing else in the picture to
back that idea up either, So it's but it's still

(56:32):
such a delightful sequence. It's so weird and wacky when
he opens that suitcase and there are all these John
Agars in there all right, So after the suitcase of agars.
The detective leaves, and obviously Sally is quite embarrassed. She
wants to quit. She's like, how can we go on
after this? I need to I need to leave. I'm
never coming back. But then Friends locks the door. He
gets even creepier. He says, how could I ever bear

(56:54):
to let you go? And he approaches her and we
see her her screaming, and then the lights go out.
And what happened was she loses consciousness, and when she
wakes up again, she is lying down on a strange
surface with her head on some kind of rope or something.
And then she sits up and she finds she's dressed strangely,

(57:15):
and the rope her head was lying on was not
a rope but a telephone chord of enormous proportions. And
what she's wearing is a napkin. That's right. Miss Reynolds
has been shrunken. So she's surrounded by all these huge objects, say,
a rotary telephone bigger than she is, a big scaffolding

(57:36):
of drawers and shelves with paint cans and stationary and
chemistry equipment, all of monstrous size, and right off the
bat here, I think we need to compare the shrink
effects in this movie with last week's movie, The Incredible
Shrinking Man. The Incredible Shrinking Man is wonderful in many ways,
but with the effects, I think it really made you

(57:58):
feel the alien horror of changes of scale. And so
the gigantic sets representing matchboxes and sewing needles and everything,
the mousetraps, they looked spectacular, but they also made you
feel how truly frightening it would be to be in
the same environment you live every day but a couple
of inches tall. Oh yeah, absolutely. By comparison, the special

(58:23):
effects and gigantic sets in this movie are not even
close to as good. Now. They are quite amusing, I'm
not gonna I mean, this movie is a lot of fun,
but they do not at all make you feel that
scale change as the kind of nausea or horror that
Incredible Shrinking Man does. One way that puppet People really

(58:43):
does not compare is that the scaled up stuff all
around them feels totally inconsistent in respect to the size
of their bodies. Like, are the puppet people bigger than
a telephone or smaller than a door knob? Yeah, you
get the fear that like Basically, Burt and his people
were like, hey, you your team, or you're building a

(59:04):
giant door knob. You you're building a giant telephone. And
it wasn't really there weren't really any details about exactly
how all these things should scale to each other. I
will say this, this sequence where she wakes up and
she's small, first of all, compared to Incredible Shrinking Man.

(59:27):
Incredible Shrinking Man is is a lot of the film
is about the dread and the gradual acceptance of becoming small,
these changes in scale. Here she's just suddenly small, so
it's shocking. And if nothing else, we do get a
nice scream here from her, a nice scream face with
hands on both sides of her face while she's looking
at a giant rotary telephone. Yeah. I mean that's got

(59:49):
to be if you woke up and saw that phone,
wouldn't you scream? She's like, I have to answer this
thing all day long? Yea. So, so mister Franz comes
in and he starts giving his villain speech. He's like, well,
surely you aren't afraid of me, are you? And he
gives a long speech explaining his motives. What goes on

(01:00:12):
with people now that they're shrunken. His methods. Oh, first
of all, he like very creepily makes her dress up
in doll clothes, and then he brings out tiny John Agar.
He gets his two about and I guess this is
the real one and the other ones that the one
he burned was a decoy. But this raises the question
again or did did he make multiple living John Agars.

(01:00:34):
I mean, I've got to go in that direction that
there's there's still a suitcase full of John Agars, maybe
five John Agars. Anyway, he had to get one of
them out. We never find out what happened to the
other a Gars. I assume there's a scene later where
the police come back. And I was imagining a scene
where Friends is like, you know, hurriedly flushing extra John
Agars down the toilet to destroy the evidence. It's like

(01:00:58):
in Good Fellows. Some are going down the toilet. He's
alway stuffing John Agar's in his underwear and stuff. Uh yeah,
So Sally gets John Agar out of his tube and
he wakes up, and John Agar's mad. He starts like
throwing things at mister Franz, and you know, he's tiny.

(01:01:20):
It doesn't really do anything But mister Franz explains his position.
He's like, he says, why do my dull people always
hate me? At first, you know, he says, I take
care of your every need. You no longer have to
worry about work, or paying the bills, or paying your
taxes or taking care of a household. All you ever
have to do is spend time with me and have fun.

(01:01:41):
I never allow you to feel pain. I never let
your needs go unmet. You sleep away the long boring
hours and your tubes, and then you only wake up
when it's time for a party. Isn't this the perfect life?
And you know what, John Agar and Sally totally ungrateful
for everything mister Franz is doing for them. John Agar,
yell's change us back the way we were, But mister

(01:02:04):
Franz says, no, I like you better the way you are.
M Uh. Then we segue to mister Frands taking quite
a while to explain how the shrinking works is in it?
What exactly is the principle here? Hey, it's all based
in the optics of projection, right. It's it's which feels

(01:02:25):
like a very sort of like a v way of
trying to understand scale. Uh, Yeah, there's not. It's like
it's even the scene is even kind of light on
techno babble um, Like there's not even any just techno
babble to sort of make you feel like something high
in science was going on. No, it's just like, well,
you know how projector works, well like that except with

(01:02:46):
your body. Yeah, so he can like move a projector
farther away from the wall and the image gets bigger
and vice versa. And at first I thought this was
an analogy, but then it turns out that's just what
he's doing. He's using like photo I don't know, yeah,
like optics to I don't understand it. But another thing
to note, did you notice the same thing when Franz

(01:03:07):
actually goes over to the table where the machine shrinks people.
He's trying to demonstrate for Bob and Sally by shrinking
a cat. But then when we see where they are,
like from their perspective, a shelf is blocking their views,
so they would not actually be able to see the
demonstration at all. I didn't notice those. I was just

(01:03:27):
too distracted by the cat because I was thinking back
to incredible shrinking man. I was like, are they gonna
have to fight? That cat. What's gonna happen with the cat? No, Instead,
he shrinks the cat and makes a super hute tiny kitten. Yeah. Yeah,
the cat becomes a kitten that fits in a match box,
which is adorable. And then they bring out a bunch
of other two people. Mist Friends is like, well, let's
have a little two people party. So they get a

(01:03:50):
lady named George Elaine and a marine and a marine
uniform named Mac and a couple of g willakers soakop
teenagers named Stan and Laurie. And I guess that's the
whole gang. There are other two people who we just
never see woken up. Yeah, Like, I guess the nurse
two person is only brought out when somebody needs medical attention. Maybe.

(01:04:12):
Well know, the nurse he was talking about was just
a straight up doll, so I don't know if he
makes them. He's like, care, get get your healthcare from
this doll, and they have to pretend. I don't understand.
But so they have a party. Friends puts on a
hip swing record and it's you know, playing playing hot music,
and they get out tiny refreshments. There's like a flatter

(01:04:33):
with a tiny champagne bottle and some kind of food
on it. It looks weird. Yeah, so, I mean two
friends his credit like he's trying in his own, you know,
his warp perspective. He's trying to give them a good time,
show him a good time. He's not making them run
around and rat wheels or anything. Oh yeah. So Sally
and Bob are like this is terrible, but the others
are very complacent. Especially at first. Georgia Laine's like, I

(01:04:55):
don't know, I like being a doll, and one of
the I think it's Laurie, says, hey, are you too engaged?
And then mister Franz implies that he will shrink a
priest so that he can properly marry Bob and Sally.
But then there's a weird line I didn't understand. So
Sally does not like the fact that she has been shrunk,
and then Laurie the teenager says, hey, look at it

(01:05:19):
this way. We all sometimes have to do things we
don't want to do just to have some freedom like this.
M Yeah, it sounds like she's really stretching to normalize
being kidnapped and shrunk by a mad dollmaker. Yeah. No,
And here's the scene where like they dance to the
record a little bit and then Laurie sings the song
my Living Doll. This is this is good. This is

(01:05:40):
a fun little song. But also I believe Franz is
like mouthing the words along to him like he's really
he's really into it. And again, the whole throughout the
whole movie, you really buy into Franz. Uh. You feel
that this is a guy who is uniquely lonely and
his loneliness has been warped into this, uh, this level

(01:06:01):
of control and manipulation. Yeah, there's a whole action sequence here,
by the way, So the puppet people are partying and
then Amiel shows up. He's oh, he's here to talk
to friends about something. And this is one of those
scenes where friends is like, oh, my human friend, I
hate you. Be quiet. I must get back to my dolls. Yeah. Yeah,
but but there is legitimate tension here because, yeah, they

(01:06:24):
try and call some for some help. They get the telephone,
they're yelling into the telephone. It takes, you know, all
all of them working together to to do this physically,
but they cannot be heard. The music is too loud,
their voices are too small. But the whole time here
is like, are they gonna be able to pull it off?
Is is he going to come back into the room

(01:06:44):
and catch them? Is he I was just expecting somebody
to be squashed, to be made an example of, or
he'd feed them to a you know, I don't know,
an ape or something. Well, there's multiple attempts. They try
to call somebody on the phone. Also, while he's distracted,
they try to rebigulate themselves, like yeah, you remember they
put the marine on the table and they're trying to

(01:07:05):
operate the stuff on the controls on the machine, but
they run out of time. It seems like it almost works,
but mister Franz is coming back in, so they scamper
back up to the table, and it seems like the
props keep changing size in relationship to them throughout the sequence.
But then Franz puts them all back in their tubes.
So while our puppet people are asleep, the detective comes

(01:07:27):
back to investigate Frans again. You know it's are you
sure you aren't turning people into dolls? And meanwhile there
is a kid in the office who wants to get
her doll repaired. I think this might be Bertie Gordon's kid. Yeah.
But in the meantime, this is when she oh, she
discovers the miniature cat in the matchbox and starts playing

(01:07:48):
with it, and yes, it is very cute. Yeah, And
he's like, no, you can't play with that anymore right now,
You've got to get it back, and she's like, no,
I'm never giving this bag. This is a cat that
fits in a matchbox, you crazy old man, and this
is mine forever now. Yeah. So we're going into the
third act. So Emil shows up and he needs friends
to repair his Jekyl and Hide puppet, which by the way,

(01:08:12):
looks exactly like Dracula. But Emil reveals that the police
have been questioning him about friends, and this really gets
Frands spooked and he decides like, okay, I got to
destroy all my dolls, and Sally actually overhears him talking
about this. He's got to destroy all the dolls because
the police are onto him. But before he does that,

(01:08:34):
he's going to go to the theater repair Emil's doll,
and then he's going to take the shrink friends out
of their tubes, take them to the theater with him
in the suitcase, where he's going to give them a
big going away party. Yeah, I mean it's even a
little darker than that, Like it's pretty it's he's basically
saying that it's going to be a total murder suicide situation,

(01:08:55):
like I'm going to destroy you all and kill myself,
but it's all right because we're all going to die
together because you're my friends. And it's very creepy. It's
like it the creepiness it seems intentional and definitely shines
through Oh yes, yeah. But also Sally overhears this, and
then she really does not show the appropriate level of

(01:09:16):
urgency in telling all of the other people. Like, so
they get taken out of the tubes and they're all
getting ready for the party, you know, bathing and getting
dressed and stuff, and then it's like, hey, Sally, what
did you say about he's going to destroy us all?
And then Sally's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So
he takes them to the theater. There's a whole sequence
at the theater. Several things to discuss. One is he

(01:09:38):
tries to make them act alongside the Jekyl and Hide
slash Dracula puppet, and this is where we get the
scene of the attack on the puppet. So he's making
them go into the I don't know, the little playbox
and act out the parts in the play that I
guess in reality would be done by puppets. So but

(01:09:58):
when he makes John Agar go in there, John Agar says,
you know this Jekyl and Hide puppet. He is a monster,
but he's not half the monster you are. And then
he grabs the puppet and rips its head off and
smashes it, which is kind of a ridiculous looking sequence,
but it works on other levels because it's like puppets

(01:10:18):
are another thing, these little things made via his craft
or or tweaked via his craft, Like these are the
things that Franz actually cares about, and this is like
his one Agar's one chance to lash out at him.
Oh and then Franza this line was hilarious. He goes, no,
stop it, Bob the puppet. You're destroying the puppet. But

(01:10:40):
I wish there was a term for that thing. You
would call it, like absurd specificity in dialogue, or like
a pronoun should be used, but instead people specify the
noun in a way that sounds ludicrous. Another example I
was thinking of is in m I feel like this
is specially comes in scenes where the dialogue is accompanying

(01:11:03):
special effects shots instead of just like normal people on
a set. So one of the other examples that comes
to my mind is in Superman for the Quest for Peace,
where the evil villain Nuclear Man. I think it goes
like this. At one point he says I will hurt people,
and then Superman says, no, the people. How would you

(01:11:27):
compare this to the line in trol Too where the
guy yells they're eating her and then they're going to
eat me. Slightly different? Maybe no, no, no, yes, that's
actually similar, very related thing. Just the narrating of events
that everybody in the room can see happening, that you

(01:11:49):
would have no need to explain. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
I guess it's different. Maybe it head writers and maybe
not a troll too, but maybe writers who wrote for radio.
I don't know, Yeah, because it would make sense if
you did not have visuals, and you need to like
establish blow for blow what is supposed to be happening,
and right and so forth. But at any rate, the puppet,

(01:12:11):
you're destroying the puppet. Well anyway, Franz here gets interrupted
by a stage hand and in the meantime, the doll
people all scatter and escape, and there's a big adventure
sequence where Bob and Sally they run. They make it outside.
They are briefly menaced by a rat, but then they're
in a really shocking twist there's a cat that comes

(01:12:35):
to the rescue by attacking the rat that's attacking them.
Who would have expected it. That's a real twist. Bird.
So I think they're playing is they got to get
back to the building they came from and get back
into mister Franz's office so they can rebigulate themselves in
the machine, and along the way they get attacked by

(01:12:58):
a dog, but then a liveryman chases the dog away.
They reinfiltrate the office by getting inside a parcel. They
like get inside a box that's addressed to the office.
The mail carrier takes them to the office and then
they rebigulate just before mister Franz arrives to stop them.
And then so like they so, Bob and Sally are

(01:13:20):
restored to regular size, and then we get just such
a weird and abrupt ending. I'd say this is an
all time like top five weird off putting endings movie.
Absolutely like for the time period. If you had to
predict the ending for this movie, you would think, all right,

(01:13:40):
they get big again, they saved the day, and our
last shot is surely going to be our heroes reunited,
maybe talking to the police or something, and then then
then it'll be closed credits. But that's not what we get. No, Instead,
the two of them are rebigulated. No idea what's going
on with the other puppet people. Last time we saw them,
they scattered the theater and Franz was looking for them,

(01:14:02):
and we don't know what happened to them. And then
back in the office, Franz is standing there and he says,
don't leave me, Please, don't leave me. I'm all alone,
and sad music plays and we zoom out on a
couple of empty glass tubes, and that's the end. Yeah,
it's such a weird moment for us to feel bad

(01:14:23):
for Frans one last time. Instead of ending on a
happy note for the release of all his kidnapping and
experimentation victims, we don't end on his demise or his arrest.
It's just implied that I guess something will come of this.
It's just him feeling super sad that his only friends
are being taken away from him. And the weird thing

(01:14:44):
is that again due to the especially to the performance
and you know, the way the scenes constructed here the
moment it is executed well enough that you can't help
but feel it hit a bit. But then, at least
with me anyway, I was like it sunk in for
a second. Then I'm like, whoa, whoa wa wait a minute,
I'm not feeling sorry for this guy. Trip quit trying
to make me feel sorry for the man who kidnapped

(01:15:05):
and shrunk people and was going to going to kill
them all and himself in the final moments of this
film if he headed his way, Yeah, it doesn't make anything.
So like we don't see the villain get his come upance,
we don't see all of the good characters like restored
to normal size. We have no idea what their fate is.
And then it just plays sad music and ends right there,

(01:15:28):
like ends right at the moment before there would be
some kind of resolution. Yeah, like what if misery had
ended this way or silence of the lamps or something,
you know, I think a better ending would have been,
like maybe he like falls down an elevator shaft and
then suddenly we discover oh, here are those five additional

(01:15:49):
broken tubes of John Agars and then John Agars eat him.
I think that would have been good. That'd be really good.
But no, no no, no, maybe that's not not fifties enough.
That would have been more like a seventies ending. What
if it just ended with John Agar doing the speech
from the Incredible Shrinking Man. Does the infinitesimal become the infinite?

(01:16:09):
I don't know. Hopefully John Agar's character has grown as
a person because of this experience, yeah, but the movie's
not concerned with that. It's more concerned with France. He
seems to be weirdly enough, the twisted heart and soul
of this picture. Yeah. So I think it should become
a yearly tradition, much like you might watch Halloween or

(01:16:32):
even Halloween three on the night of Halloween, or much
like we watch The Wickerman every May Day. I think
people should watch Attack of the Puppet People every year
on the night of the Watergate break in. All right, yeah,
why not? Why not? You know they have that HBO
series coming out about the White House Plumbers, the concerns,

(01:16:55):
you know, the Watergate. I wonder if they are going
to include anything about Attack of the puppet people. I
think that would be great. It seems like the tone
of the show would lend itself to covering that little
historical tidbit. All right, we're going to go ahead and
close it out here, but a reminder that Stuff to
Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with Tuesdays
and Thursday's episodes being our core episodes. On Monday's we

(01:17:19):
do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a short form
episode a monster fact or an artifact, and then on
Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to talk about
a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And if you
want to see a complete list of all the movies
we've covered on Weird House Cinema, well, you can go
to a couple of places. I blog about these episodes
at some mutemusic dot com. But also if you use
a letterbox that's l ett er boxb dot com, we

(01:17:42):
have a profile there it's weird House, and we have
a list of all the movies we've covered a link store.
You can listen to them and it's pretty neat. You
can see them in order. The little posters arranged arranged
like miniaturized people in tubes for your pleasure and your delight.
Here's thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If
you would like to get in touch with us with

(01:18:02):
feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
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(01:18:23):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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