Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. Our miniaturization theme continues
Speaker 1: from last week with Weird House Cinema's third miniaturization film,
Speaker 1: following Doctor Cyclops from nineteen forty nineteen fifty seven's The
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man, which we talked about last week, and
Speaker 1: now we're going to go just one year ahead into
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight with Bert Eye Gordon's Attack of the
Speaker 1: Puppet People. I think a pretty obvious cash in on
Speaker 1: the popularity of The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it's not
Speaker 1: like a Shrinking Man Incredible Shrinking Man rip off. There
Speaker 1: are other also elements of Doctor Cyclops in there. There
Speaker 1: are also some I think some clear there's a clear
Speaker 1: homage to nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not a rip off of The Incredible Shrinking Man in
Speaker 1: that it doesn't have any real similarity to the story,
Speaker 1: but I would say probably is in that they are
Speaker 1: trying to make a quick book on the idea of
Speaker 1: shrink movies right after there had just been a really
Speaker 1: big one on the other hand, Oh no, no pun intended.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, Bertie Gordon, I think it was
Speaker 1: a perennial fascination of his to make movies about big
Speaker 1: things getting small or small things getting big, Yeah, which
Speaker 1: are essentially the same exercise. Like there's when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, you know, what's the difference between a
Speaker 1: movie in which a man fights a giant crab or
Speaker 1: a movie in which a wait, let me now, I've
Speaker 1: lost my own train of thought in this What is
Speaker 1: the difference between a movie in which a normal size
Speaker 1: crab fights a tiny man or a normal sized man
Speaker 1: fights a giant crab. You have just discovered a Galilean relativity,
Speaker 1: that magnitude really only means something in the context of
Speaker 1: a frame of reference. Yeah, yeah, so yeah. There's a
Speaker 1: kind of baseline physical profundity to a lot of these
Speaker 1: blow up movies and shrink movies. But that is the
Speaker 1: element brought over from The Incredible Shrinking Man. What is
Speaker 1: not brought over is the sort of the character complexity
Speaker 1: and the the I don't know all the wisdom and
Speaker 1: insights of the Incredible Shrinking Man, which, if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard last week's episode. I do recommend you go back
Speaker 1: and listen to that one, because I think Rob, you
Speaker 1: and I were both It's fair to say shocked by
Speaker 1: how interesting and thoughtful The Incredible Shrinking Man was as
Speaker 1: a story. Absolutely yeah, yeah, just just really solid and thoughtful.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, far more thoughtful movie than anticipated. I would
Speaker 1: say that this movie as well, was more thoughtful than anticipated.
Speaker 1: I had a much lower bar for this one. I
Speaker 1: was expecting just pure spectacle, pure cash in, and I
Speaker 1: mean that would have been fine. I was looking forward
Speaker 1: to that experience. It is more thoughtful than I expected,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily in ultimately constructive ways. No, I'd say
Speaker 1: the thoughts here do not really seem to build on
Speaker 1: one another as they did an Incredible Shrinking Man. It's
Speaker 1: more like it's a shrink movie. And occasionally there are
Speaker 1: some thoughts, yes, but I know what you mean. Also
Speaker 1: by comparing this to James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, one
Speaker 1: of the great monster movies of all time, because you
Speaker 1: know the universal Frankenstein series. With each movie it has
Speaker 1: to one up the Mad Scientists. So the original Frankenstein
Speaker 1: has the titular Frankenstein, the mad scientist who makes the creature,
Speaker 1: and they got to get an even more mad scientist
Speaker 1: for the sequel. So they come up with doctor Septimus Praetorious,
Speaker 1: a fantastic villain, and his hobby is making homunculi. So
Speaker 1: he has these little jars with tiny people in them,
Speaker 1: including like a little like king and a little queen,
Speaker 1: and I think the little king is always trying to
Speaker 1: get out of his jar into the little Queen's jar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we wacky sequence, and I like, is that a
Speaker 1: great classic monster movie. But another strange alleged fact about
Speaker 1: Attack of the Puppet People is that, if reports are
Speaker 1: to be believed, this film played an unintentional role in
Speaker 1: American history. And the role is this, Okay, it is
Speaker 1: June seventeenth, nineteen seventy two, the night of the Watergate
Speaker 1: break in, So agents of the Nixon White House have
Speaker 1: sent out burglars to break into the headquarters of the
Speaker 1: Democratic National Committee at the in the Watergate Complex in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. They're they're trying to do some espionage. They
Speaker 1: were there to I think like photographed documents and maybe
Speaker 1: plant bugs and stuff. So that's the famous burglary that
Speaker 1: kicks off Watergate. But the thing that was the sort
Speaker 1: of like set the fuse burning on everybody finding out
Speaker 1: about the Watergate break in was that the burglars caught
Speaker 1: that night, and the burglars had a spotter who was
Speaker 1: supposed to radio them on their walkie talkies and let
Speaker 1: them know if the police showed up so they could
Speaker 1: get out of there. But according to an article called
Speaker 1: the Bartender's Tale, How the Watergate Burglars Got Caught by
Speaker 1: Craig Shirley, published in June twenty twelve in The Washingtonian,
Speaker 1: this spotter, who was across the street at the Howard
Speaker 1: Johnson's Motor Lodge. His name was Alfred C. Baldwin the Third,
Speaker 1: did not notice the arrival of police because he was
Speaker 1: too absorbed in watching a movie on TV. And that
Speaker 1: movie was Bert Eye Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People. So,
Speaker 1: if this is to be believed, if Attack of the
Speaker 1: Puppet People had been even slightly less amusing of a film,
Speaker 1: the Watergate burglars might not have been caught and American
Speaker 1: history could have unraveled in a very different way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What a strange place for alternate universe is to split
Speaker 1: around Burt Eye Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People. What
Speaker 1: scene do you think it was that when the police
Speaker 1: showed up and this guy could not be bothered to
Speaker 1: look out the window. Oh well, there plenty of candidates
Speaker 1: for scenes that couldn't have been at It had to
Speaker 1: have been, in my mind, it had to have been
Speaker 1: the various special effects sequences or various scenes in which
Speaker 1: miniature people are averting about. You don't think he was
Speaker 1: glued to the TV during one of the many elevator
Speaker 1: scenes or the scenes of mister Franz receiving a phone
Speaker 1: call saying that he should come out to the lobby
Speaker 1: to meet someone. Yeah, yeah, probably not one of those scenes,
Speaker 1: but it's worth noting on that. Yeah, the Attack of
Speaker 1: the Puppet People is a movie that you don't expect
Speaker 1: it to necessarily grab you right away. You gotta let
Speaker 1: it set in, you gotta let it get through. It
Speaker 1: needs to travel to another location before it it kicks
Speaker 1: in with the spectacle. Okay, I got another beef with
Speaker 1: this movie, and this is not going to turn into
Speaker 1: just right on Attack of the Puppet People because highly
Speaker 1: amusing film. I'm gonna say overall, this is what I
Speaker 1: do recommend for be cinema purposes. But this is one
Speaker 1: where the title and the poster just lie. They just
Speaker 1: lie to you. The title is attack of the puppet People.
Speaker 1: The only plausible candidates for the titular puppet people are
Speaker 1: not puppets. They're people who have been shrunken to the
Speaker 1: size of dolls. And these doll people do not attack
Speaker 1: anyone except in one instance where the thing they attack
Speaker 1: is a puppet. So the title would only make sense
Speaker 1: if it was attack of the puppet by people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the poster, to your point, shows multiple little people
Speaker 1: wielding a knife like it's a medieval battering ram against what.
Speaker 1: I guess we were talking about this before we recorded.
Speaker 1: We're not sure that we assume this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be a dog, but it looks kind of like a
Speaker 1: Tasmanian devil, yeah, or like a like a wolverine or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this animal is. And the poster
Speaker 1: tagline is doll dwarves versus the crushing giant beasts. Again
Speaker 1: highly inaccurate, completely misleading. There is a There are brief
Speaker 1: scenes towards the end, this is not even a major
Speaker 1: part of the movie, fleeting moments of the puppet people
Speaker 1: being threatened by animals, including a rat and a dog,
Speaker 1: but they're never like in the same shot, and they're
Speaker 1: over in a few seconds. Yeah, it's not like I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess what they were going for is like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you remember those great sequences in The Incredible Shrinking
Speaker 1: Man where he fights a spider or a housecat? Will
Speaker 1: prepare for more of that in Attack of the Puppet People.
Speaker 1: I guess they figure by the time you get to
Speaker 1: those scenes. Most theaters have a policy where it's too
Speaker 1: late to get the money for your ticket back. Yeah. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's let the people know what's in store for them. Here, Joe,
Speaker 1: what's your elevator pitch for Attack of the Puppet People?
Speaker 1: All right, people keep disappearing at the offices of Dolls Incorporated,
Speaker 1: a small company run by the eccentric old mister Franz.
Speaker 1: The mailman vanishes without a trace. His former secretary was
Speaker 1: never heard from again. Also, you are not allowed to
Speaker 1: play with the freakishly lifelike dolls in glass tubes over
Speaker 1: in the corner display case. That's it, all right, Let's
Speaker 1: listen to the trailer idea. John agar is the nice
Speaker 1: looking young man introduced by John Whyte to pretty June Kenny,
Speaker 1: and when boy meets girl, well they do what comes naturally.
Speaker 1: But the loss of love has made this mild mannered
Speaker 1: man into a maniac. A maniac who wants to make
Speaker 1: you a plaything, and the fear awsome fact is he
Speaker 1: knows how to do it. Why I'm your friend? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to watch this one before proceeding with
Speaker 1: the rest of the episode, it's widely available for digital
Speaker 1: purchase in streaming. You can also pick it up on
Speaker 1: DVD as part of the MGM Midnight Movie series as
Speaker 1: a two pac with Village of the Giants, and I
Speaker 1: think it's also available as a straight up blue ray.
Speaker 1: I would also add that, as of today, I think
Speaker 1: watching this movie is the best way to see unedited
Speaker 1: scenes from the amazing Colossal Man. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's again.
Speaker 1: Kind of a kind of a shame. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: optimistic though, and hope that the reason for this is
Speaker 1: because somebody's just about to put it out in some
Speaker 1: sort of restored special edition blue ray, especially since to
Speaker 1: get into the connections here on this one, the director
Speaker 1: the producer story credit as well goes to Bert Eye Gordon,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty two through twenty twenty three. He
Speaker 1: passed away earlier this month at the age of one
Speaker 1: hundred years old. Right, So we sort of ended up
Speaker 1: here by saying we wanted to do a Bert Eye
Speaker 1: Gordon movie, and we were originally going to do The
Speaker 1: Amazing Colossal Man, but as you noted, that's like it's
Speaker 1: not on disc and then that led us to The
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man, and then somehow we ended up back
Speaker 1: with Bert Eye Gordon for the rip off of The
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man. Right, so we've come back around to
Speaker 1: Burt Eye Gordon before the month is out, Bert Eye Gordon,
Speaker 1: b Ig, Mister Big. Those were his initials. That was
Speaker 1: his nickname because he did a number of films involving
Speaker 1: big bugs, big humans, or humans so small that everything
Speaker 1: else seems big. In the case of this picture. He
Speaker 1: was an icon of nineteen fifties beast cinema. His earliest
Speaker 1: credit is producer on nineteen fifty four Serpent Island, but
Speaker 1: he moved into directing and fighting with the follow up
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five King Dinosaur, and then in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven he began busting out his Giant Man movies. The
Speaker 1: first Giant man movie did was nineteen fifty seven's The Cyclops,
Speaker 1: about an area of Mexico where giant radiated animals and
Speaker 1: a twenty five foot tall man with a disfigured face,
Speaker 1: one eye and savage instincts, you know, rule the countryside. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever watched The Cyclops in
Speaker 1: its entirety, but that one has Lon Cheney Junior in it.
Speaker 1: The same year he also gave us The Amazing Colossal Man.
Speaker 1: This is another atomic enlargement tale, but one that explores
Speaker 1: the emotions of a rational human being at the center
Speaker 1: of the change, played by Glenn Langan in a role
Speaker 1: that I always liked. Again, would love to come back
Speaker 1: and do this film when we have a better way
Speaker 1: to watch it. It's maybe we'll discuss this a little
Speaker 1: bit when we get to the part in this movie
Speaker 1: where they're watching The Amazing Colossal Man. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: he followed this film up with a sequel, War of
Speaker 1: the Colossal Beast, in which they say that Glenn survived,
Speaker 1: but he's now disfigured and savage, played by a different actor,
Speaker 1: and they dress him up in the same Cyclops mask.
Speaker 1: From the earlier picture, so that kind of completes his
Speaker 1: Giant Man trilogy. But then he did a Giant Spider
Speaker 1: picture titled Spider or Earth Versus the Spider, and then
Speaker 1: this movie Attack of the Puppet People. Wait, so you
Speaker 1: could say that in fifty eight he may have had
Speaker 1: two different movies, both inspired by the incredible Shrinking Man,
Speaker 1: this one where it shrinks humans, but also maybe Earth
Speaker 1: Versus the Spider because it involves humans fighting a giant
Speaker 1: spider puppet. I suppose, so, though I guess Giant Spider.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you start thinking of like a full
Speaker 1: list of Giant Spider movies, they're quite a number of them.
Speaker 1: Gordon remained active throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and
Speaker 1: even came back to direct twenty fifteen Secret of a
Speaker 1: Psychopath while in his nineties. Of his post Puppet People films,
Speaker 1: I'd say some of the more notable ones include nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties Tormented. This one was featured on MST. It has
Speaker 1: Joe Turkle in it. Nineteen sixty two is the Magic Sword,
Speaker 1: also an MST three K classic. This one starred Basil Rathbone,
Speaker 1: Estelle Wynwood and Gary Lockwood. Very fun sword and sorcery
Speaker 1: sort of movie, you know, very much for the kids.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but this one does look fun.
Speaker 1: I considered it for the show. Oh yeah, we could
Speaker 1: totally do magic swords someday. It's it's it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. And the MST three K episode was was
Speaker 1: great fun as well. Nineteen sixty five Village of the
Speaker 1: Giants also an MST three K episode. This one had
Speaker 1: Tommy Kirk, bow Bridges, Ron Howard and more Joe Turkle.
Speaker 1: This one kind of attack of the Killer Teenagers. They're
Speaker 1: like giants, sort of sacop teens in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe so, and I yeah. And this one if
Speaker 1: I didn't mention already, this one was also a future
Speaker 1: in an MST three K. But I have a less
Speaker 1: clear picture of this one. It may be only solid ones.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty six is Picture Mommy Dead. This had Don
Speaker 1: Amici Jajaga Boor in it. And this is an evil
Speaker 1: Stepmon film. Nineteen seventy two is Necromancy starring Orson Wells.
Speaker 1: Orson Wells, Yeah, Orson Wells with for a quick payday
Speaker 1: on this one, and it's not supposed to be very good.
Speaker 1: Every July, Peas grow there and then seventy six Food
Speaker 1: of the Gods, a giant killer animal film based on
Speaker 1: a work by H. G. Wells in the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven Empire of the Ants, A pretty late in the
Speaker 1: game giant Ants film based on Wells, starring Joan Collins.
Speaker 1: Haven't seen it, heard very conflicting reviews. Some say it's
Speaker 1: a hoot, others say it is a it is a
Speaker 1: kind of gross bore. It's certainly no Phase four, all right.
Speaker 1: George Worthing Yates screenplay credit on this so of nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one through nineteen seventy five, So it may have
Speaker 1: been Gordon's story, but someone had to put it together
Speaker 1: into a screenplay, and I suppose that's where Yates comes in.
Speaker 1: His writing credits go back to the twenties and thirties,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of the adventure films, including a nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight Lone Ranger film and a nineteen forty seven
Speaker 1: Sindbad the Sailor film starring Douglas Fairbanks, Junior, Marine O'Hara,
Speaker 1: and Anthony Quinn. But in nineteen fifty four you see
Speaker 1: his credits take a sharp turn down the atomic turn
Speaker 1: Bike with the Giant Ant movie Them. Afterwards, he worked
Speaker 1: on fifty five Conquest of Space and it came from
Speaker 1: Beneath the Sea, fifty sixes Earth Versus the Flying Saucers,
Speaker 1: and he did some uncredited work apparently on the amazing
Speaker 1: Colossal Man. Oh, these are some respected sci fi movies
Speaker 1: them and Earth Versus Flying Saucers and stuff. Yeah, along
Speaker 1: with puppet People. He worked on War of the Colossal Beast,
Speaker 1: followed by fifty eight Spacemaster X seven and Gordon's The
Speaker 1: Spider and Tormented. I'm also very intrigued. I haven't seen this,
Speaker 1: but I'm intrigued by this nineteen fifty eighth film that
Speaker 1: he was a writer on Frankenstein nineteen seventy, which indeed
Speaker 1: is supposed to take place in nineteen seventy and stars
Speaker 1: Boris Karloff as Baron Frankenstein. I would love to know
Speaker 1: what writers in nineteen fifty eight thought nineteen seventy would
Speaker 1: be like. I think I read that they originally were
Speaker 1: thinking it was not quite nineteen seventy, it was just
Speaker 1: a few years into the future. But they're like, nope,
Speaker 1: this is two futurists. We got to bump it up
Speaker 1: even more. By nineteen seventy, every family will own a
Speaker 1: car the size of a battleship. All right, let's get
Speaker 1: into the cast here. John Agar is back. This, of course,
Speaker 1: was the star of Tarantula, which we've covered not too
Speaker 1: long ago. He plays Bob Wesley. Agar lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: one through two thousand and two. Longtime American actor who
Speaker 1: appeared in a bunch of films from forty eight through
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. You can basically divide his work
Speaker 1: into two categories, the war movies in the Westerns, and
Speaker 1: then on the other side, the B movies, as we
Speaker 1: talked about in our Tarantula episode and Who. When it
Speaker 1: comes to the war movies and the West Arns, he
Speaker 1: worked with folks like John Wayne. But in the B
Speaker 1: movie category he's in stuff like The Mole People from
Speaker 1: fifty six, Revenge of the Creature from fifty five, and
Speaker 1: Hand of Death from sixty two. It's John Agar. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you would expect. He's total cornball in this,
Speaker 1: but I would not change it for anything. It's got
Speaker 1: to be John Agar. Yeah, I mean he's the dependable lead.
Speaker 1: You know. I can imagine if you're a director. Not
Speaker 1: only were would you be happy to have him, you'd
Speaker 1: wish you had a whole suitcase full of them. Oh
Speaker 1: I see what you did there. Yeah, all right. We
Speaker 1: also have our our villainous character here, or evil dollmaker
Speaker 1: slash puppetmaster slash shrinkinader. This is mister Franz, played by
Speaker 1: John Hoyt, who Lift nineteen oh five through nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: You know, I have some questions about how this character
Speaker 1: is written, but I think John Hoyt is actually much
Speaker 1: better than the part deserves. Really, he brings an interesting
Speaker 1: take on the role. I mean, so, this is an
Speaker 1: inherently a creepy villain, a guy who shrinks people down
Speaker 1: into dolls and wants to control their every move. But
Speaker 1: John Hoyt, I think, makes the interesting decision of making
Speaker 1: him ultimately even creepier by giving him very gentle, mild
Speaker 1: mannerisms and making it seem like, oh, how could this
Speaker 1: guy hurt anyone? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Like,
Speaker 1: it's the kind of role that, by all rights, should
Speaker 1: have gone to somebody like John Carradine, who, okay, would
Speaker 1: have physically had a similar presence on the screen and
Speaker 1: would have seemed a nice, nice and tall looking or
Speaker 1: at least thin enough that he looks tall in comparison
Speaker 1: to our shrunk characters. But this generally does not come
Speaker 1: off as lovable. But yeah, Hoyt's take on this character
Speaker 1: like you can't help but buy into the heart of
Speaker 1: the character at times and ways. And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how much of this is his performance and how much
Speaker 1: of it is the script. At times it feels like
Speaker 1: too much effort is made to make you feel for
Speaker 1: this guy who is a kidnapping and human experimenting villain.
Speaker 1: Yes so. Hoyt was an American actor best known for
Speaker 1: When Worlds Collide from fifty one, Spartacus from nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: and Brute Force from forty seven. He has a lot
Speaker 1: of credits going back to in the nineteen forties lots
Speaker 1: of TV. He acted in such films The sixty three'es X,
Speaker 1: The Man with the X ray I's nineteen sixty fourth,
Speaker 1: The Time Travelers, and nineteen seventy four's Flesh Gordon. His
Speaker 1: many TV roles include bits On at the original Battlestar Galactica,
Speaker 1: The Six Million Dollars Man, Koltchak, The Knights Stalker, Planet
Speaker 1: to the Apes, the TV series Hogan's Heroes Get Smart,
Speaker 1: The Monkeys, the Original Outer Limits, and much more. This
Speaker 1: is not really a one to one comparison, but I
Speaker 1: kept thinking about Annie Wilkes from Stephen King's Misery with
Speaker 1: this guy. You know, the way that he's without you know,
Speaker 1: the overt violence and aggression you see from Annie and
Speaker 1: Wilkes and Misery, but you know he's he's that kind
Speaker 1: of like I love you and therefore I must keep you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this for you. I'm I'm I'm saving you
Speaker 1: from the world, that sort of thing. Yeah. He at
Speaker 1: one point he gives a speech about how, look, you'll
Speaker 1: never have to pay taxes again now that I've made
Speaker 1: you into a doll. But as sure, he never has
Speaker 1: to break out the sledgehammer. Um, he just sort of
Speaker 1: his worst threat really is like, well, I'll just put
Speaker 1: you back in the tube for a long time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's And in fact, I kept thinking that he would
Speaker 1: have to squash somebody to make an example out of them,
Speaker 1: and that would you know, up the antie for making
Speaker 1: him a believable villain, but they never did. Still, really
Speaker 1: really good performance. Yeah, kudos, Yeah, thumbs up. John Hoyt. Now,
Speaker 1: really our main character in this outside of the evil
Speaker 1: puppet Master here is Sally Reynolds played by June Kinney
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty one. I
Speaker 1: think if you look up on Jenue in the dictionary,
Speaker 1: you would get a picture of this character. The character
Speaker 1: is someone who are Rives sort of like bride eyed
Speaker 1: and innocent and unsuspecting of anyone and then is confronted
Speaker 1: with a sinister plot of shrink Nation. Yeah, given the
Speaker 1: limits of this role, I think she's She's really good
Speaker 1: in it, you know, she's especially when she's up there
Speaker 1: with John Agar and Jagar you know, again solid dependable,
Speaker 1: but his character as well discuss as we get into
Speaker 1: the plot there's not a lot really to latch onto
Speaker 1: there either. And I don't know, you can see she's
Speaker 1: one of thos, one of those those performances with Jim
Speaker 1: Kinney where I feel like you see the wheels the
Speaker 1: gears turning in her head even when you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to for a film like this anyway. She was a
Speaker 1: fifties B movie starlet that was active from the early
Speaker 1: fifties to the early to mid sixties. Her films include
Speaker 1: fifty eight The Spider, nineteen sixty one Bloodlust, and nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven's Teenage Doll. Ironically enough, does she play a
Speaker 1: doll in that too? I don't think so. I forget
Speaker 1: exactly what the ride up on Team n Doll was,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's the Shrink film all right,
Speaker 1: Just a few other players have none. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go through all the Shrink characters and the side characters,
Speaker 1: but there's a character named Stan. He's one of the
Speaker 1: belief the newlyweds that have been shrunk, played by Ken Miller,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty seventeen. A notable
Speaker 1: youth actor of the day, his credits include fifty seven's
Speaker 1: I Was a Teenage Werewolf in nineteen sixty four Surf Party.
Speaker 1: Then we have a character by the name of Georgia
Speaker 1: Lane played by Laurie Mitchell, who lived nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 1: through twenty eighteen. Model turned actor, best remembered as Queen
Speaker 1: Yelana from nineteen fifty eight's Queen of Outer Space, which
Speaker 1: also starred Jean Jacoboor with a screenplayed by Charles Beaumont,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about before a lot of connection to
Speaker 1: the classic Twilight Zone. All right, we have a little
Speaker 1: girl wander into We have multiple little children wandering and
Speaker 1: ask questions about the dolls, which is not surprising most
Speaker 1: of the movie takes place at a doll shop. But
Speaker 1: one of these little girls is played by Susan Gordon,
Speaker 1: who plays a little girl named Agnes. This was Bert's daughter,
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty nine through twenty eleven. She was apparently
Speaker 1: a last minute replacement for another child and this was
Speaker 1: their first acting gig. Apparently her this is one of
Speaker 1: those situations where her parents didn't really want her to
Speaker 1: get into acting, but you know, she kept she kept
Speaker 1: at it, and she ended up acting into the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, with appearances and such titles as Tormented, Alfred
Speaker 1: Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, The Original Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Hour,
Speaker 1: and My Three Sons And finally, the music on this
Speaker 1: picture is by Albert Glasser, who lived nineteen sixteen through
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, film composer who worked in the forty
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties mostly. He apparently started off as a
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers music department copyist, but moved up and made
Speaker 1: a name for himself mostly in B movies, and he
Speaker 1: worked for Burt Iye Gordon several times. Well. Speaking of
Speaker 1: the music, one of the first thing when we were
Speaker 1: watching this, first thing that made my eyes light up
Speaker 1: with joy was when in the credits you realized that
Speaker 1: this movie has a theme song like a song, a
Speaker 1: song popular music song written for the film. The title
Speaker 1: song is called Your My Living Doll, music by Albert Glasser,
Speaker 1: who you just mentioned in Don Ferris, lyrics by Henry
Speaker 1: Shrage Shrage, I don't know how you say that, and
Speaker 1: then sun by cast member Marlene Willis. That's right. She
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty two to nineteen eighty two. She's yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's in the film playing Laurie, one of the
Speaker 1: shrunk people. This is only one of I think two
Speaker 1: different film roles that she did. But she has a
Speaker 1: lot of variety show appearances from from back in the day.
Speaker 1: So you show up on variety show. So I guess
Speaker 1: we would think of her primarily as a as a
Speaker 1: musician who also did some acting gigs here and there.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about a shrink movie that has a
Speaker 1: song with lyrics about being a doll. It's called your
Speaker 1: my living doll, and they sing it in the movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's classy. Attack of the doll people would would have
Speaker 1: been far more fitting, right, It would have matched up
Speaker 1: with the song, and yeah, it would have been a
Speaker 1: little more honest. Where does the puppet thing come from?
Speaker 1: Well as well, discott. I mean, they do share the
Speaker 1: stage with some puppets, and puppets are part of the plot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, all right, we can get to that. Oh
Speaker 1: but another thing I wanted to note is there are
Speaker 1: there are puppet people who we never meet in the film.
Speaker 1: We see them in a glass display case in the office.
Speaker 1: We also see them in the credits. So as the
Speaker 1: credits are rolling, we see people in glass tubes appearing
Speaker 1: across the screen, and I think only of a couple
Speaker 1: of the ones in the credits ever show up in
Speaker 1: the film. Now, are the ones in the credits refresh
Speaker 1: my memory? Are they moving at all? Or is it
Speaker 1: seemingly the same special effect that they use for the
Speaker 1: people in the actual film? They they are not moving.
Speaker 1: I think there's it's the same effect. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I took to be just two D paper cutouts
Speaker 1: of the people that were carefully held in such a
Speaker 1: way that you would not reveal that they were two
Speaker 1: d to the camera, yes, which sometimes made for like
Speaker 1: awkward hand posture with respect to the camera, like you're
Speaker 1: you're holding this tube of John Agar and you're staring
Speaker 1: directly at his ear and realizing that it's really yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we open on a shot of a tall office building.
Speaker 1: I don't know what city this is supposed to be in,
Speaker 1: maybe New York, but we learned this is the Tilford
Speaker 1: Building and inside there is a Brownie troop. So girl
Speaker 1: Scout troop is getting off the elevator and they're headed
Speaker 1: for a visit to an office called Dolls Incorporated. Inside there,
Speaker 1: the troop leader meets with the secretary. He was a
Speaker 1: very friendly and professional young woman. And the secretary calls
Speaker 1: on the phone to let mister Frans know they're here
Speaker 1: and then tells them they are welcome to go check
Speaker 1: out the dolls on the wall display, and they do that,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, oh, but excuse me, not those
Speaker 1: dolls right next to the other dolls in the hermetically
Speaker 1: sealed glass tubes with the suspiciously human looking flesh. I
Speaker 1: did not mean you could play with those dolls because
Speaker 1: mister Franz is very particular about them. Let's go look
Speaker 1: at the other ones. He is big about just having
Speaker 1: his dark secrets just open for display for anyone that
Speaker 1: happens to wander into his business. Yeah, so you're like
Speaker 1: shrinking people into dolls. And why would you have them
Speaker 1: in the front room of your office. He doesn't even
Speaker 1: have them in a vault or anything. Well, I'm at
Speaker 1: His response would be, how could I keep them in
Speaker 1: the back room? I get lonely. I need to look
Speaker 1: at them. But he's always in the back rooms. He's
Speaker 1: having his visitors and secretary look at them. But what
Speaker 1: do I do when I come into the front room.
Speaker 1: I would get lonely if I couldn't see them. I
Speaker 1: keep one tube of John Agar in the bathroom just
Speaker 1: so I have some company. Yeah, so we zoom in
Speaker 1: on the tube dolls while we get a horrible dramatic
Speaker 1: music sting. Duh, And of course we see the very
Speaker 1: realistic looking people, except they do look kind of flat
Speaker 1: and I think they are paper cutouts. Anyway, So we
Speaker 1: cut to some time later and a different young woman
Speaker 1: is wandering the holes of the building. She consults a
Speaker 1: classified ad that she's cut out from the newspaper. It's
Speaker 1: in her hand and it says that says general office
Speaker 1: girl wanted easy work, good pay. Apply to mister Franz
Speaker 1: Dolls Incorporated, Tilford Building, fifth floor. And this is June
Speaker 1: Kenny as Sally Reynolds. So she lets herself into the
Speaker 1: office and then wanders around looking at things, and ends
Speaker 1: up picking up a figurine from the desk to examine it.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly there's a hand on her shoulder from behind,
Speaker 1: and she whirls around and here is John Hoyt as
Speaker 1: mister Franz. What would you guess? Is the first thing
Speaker 1: he says to her, like hello, or are you here
Speaker 1: about the job? The first thing he says is, young lady,
Speaker 1: do you like my dolls? She says, oh, yes, I
Speaker 1: think they're lovely. And then he takes around to meet
Speaker 1: some of them. So he shows off. Oh here's a bride,
Speaker 1: isn't she lovely? Here's a housewife going shopping. Oh here
Speaker 1: she's very important. This is my nurse. She helps keep
Speaker 1: my little people well. So he's already like taken the dolls,
Speaker 1: taken them all serious, and Sally notices this. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you treat them like real people. And he says, but
Speaker 1: of course they're my friends. My name is mister Franz.
Speaker 1: And she is creeped out, as many people would be,
Speaker 1: so she tries to leave, but mister Franz runs to
Speaker 1: the door to stop her. Good move, and he starts
Speaker 1: giving her a job interview there while he's preventing her
Speaker 1: from leaving. The main thrust of the job interview is
Speaker 1: are you married? Answer is no? Do you live with
Speaker 1: any family or roommates? Answer is no? And he's like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're perfect, You're exactly what I need for this job.
Speaker 1: You're hired next victim. Yeah, And I guess the I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess it's just that, like Sally is,
Speaker 1: so is so goodhearted and innocent, she doesn't notice. Maybe
Speaker 1: that the that The entire thrust of the job interview
Speaker 1: is would anybody notice if you went missing? Yeah? Even
Speaker 1: in this interview, though, Franz is constantly doing this, he's
Speaker 1: always playing the pity card, a self pity card. You know.
Speaker 1: There's the loneliness thing, but also the well, I and
Speaker 1: I'll pay you a standard rate, maybe even a little more,
Speaker 1: though it'll be difficult, you know, He were something to
Speaker 1: that effect, where he's he's like, it's always about what
Speaker 1: a bad time mister Franz is having. If you've seen
Speaker 1: what we do in the Shadows, mister Franz is kind
Speaker 1: of an emotional vampire. Yeah, he's always just like, oh
Speaker 1: so lonely, I couldn't I don't know what I would
Speaker 1: do without you. Yeah, it's very lonely and controlling, and
Speaker 1: it is all about putting the blame for his loneliness
Speaker 1: on anyone in his vicinity, and in this case they're
Speaker 1: mostly people he's kidnapped and and experimented on. Right, So
Speaker 1: he eventually pressures her into consenting to answer a ringing telephone,
Speaker 1: and then he goes back to take the call in
Speaker 1: the rear. So here we get a good look at
Speaker 1: the layout of the office which will spend most of
Speaker 1: the movie in. There's sort of a front room where
Speaker 1: like there's the secretary's desk in a waiting area and
Speaker 1: dolls in display cases on the walls, and then there's
Speaker 1: a middle room, which is the factory. This is equipment
Speaker 1: for making dolls. You get like plastic injection molding and
Speaker 1: conveyor belt for dollheads, and then these tables covered in
Speaker 1: parts arms and legs and stuff. And then there's a
Speaker 1: back room behind a door that says no admittance, and
Speaker 1: beyond that door there's a room that has a desk
Speaker 1: and a telephone, as well as a couple of operating
Speaker 1: tables with some big ray gun aimed at them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he goes, he takes the phone call and it's from
Speaker 1: a mister Grant who's like, hey, do you know somebody
Speaker 1: named Janet Hall. She was supposed to start work with
Speaker 1: us this week, but she never showed up. And we
Speaker 1: find out, of course, that was the previous secretary who
Speaker 1: mister Brand says he doesn't know where she went, but
Speaker 1: he again begs for pity. He's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: miss Reynolds, Janet took such good care of things. I
Speaker 1: don't even know where the cash register is. But then oh,
Speaker 1: and then so Sally goes out to start doing her job,
Speaker 1: I guess, and we get the music swelling ferociously with
Speaker 1: a dun dune done as it zooms in on the
Speaker 1: tube in his arm, and it's obviously Janet damn it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there she is tubed up, shrunk and tubed. Okay, so
Speaker 1: some time passes. Miss Reynolds is apparently settling into her
Speaker 1: new duties. Everything seems to be going all right, But
Speaker 1: sometimes life throws a curveball at you. Sometimes you're just
Speaker 1: sitting there punching the keys on a typewriter and a
Speaker 1: room full of dolls and in walks John Agar. He's
Speaker 1: ready to sweep you off your feet to Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: Missouri and a whirlwind of arrows. And that is at
Speaker 1: this moment, I've realized exactly what this movie needed. So
Speaker 1: it's a late fifties b horror film. So in the orcast,
Speaker 1: you need three figures. Really, you need the sparkly eyed
Speaker 1: on Junue. You need a creepy old man with a
Speaker 1: science or dull related secret. And to make the triad complete,
Speaker 1: you need a grass fed USDA Prime rectangle. And John
Speaker 1: Agar is exactly what the doctor ordered. He's uh oh,
Speaker 1: and his character just sucks. He's he's a salesman named
Speaker 1: Bob Weslie, and as soon as he comes in and
Speaker 1: starts talking to her, he is a pushy jerk, Like
Speaker 1: you get the feeling this is. This is a salesman
Speaker 1: who makes his employees asked permission every time they want
Speaker 1: to drink from the water cooler. Uh and uh you know.
Speaker 1: So the first thing he does is he's like, I
Speaker 1: need to see mister Franz, and Sally tells him mister
Speaker 1: Franz is busy, can't be disturbed, so he just ignores her,
Speaker 1: like barges right past her to throw open the door
Speaker 1: and look in the back. Yeah. Yeah, he this is
Speaker 1: a This is a character that I got the impression
Speaker 1: that he needed to be shrunk down to size, you
Speaker 1: know that. Yes, he this probably did him some good
Speaker 1: character wise. Oh. He introduces himself as he says, I'm
Speaker 1: Bob Wesley, the best salesman in Saint Louis. So maybe
Speaker 1: that says it. Maybe this is supposed to be Saint
Speaker 1: Louis or maybe what if not? What's he doing in
Speaker 1: New York or wherever? Right, No, he's from Saint Louis
Speaker 1: because at one point he talks about taking her back
Speaker 1: to Saint Louis with him. Oh okay, yeah, why does
Speaker 1: it seems like a weird brag a strange flex if
Speaker 1: you're in the big city, in the big Apple. You know,
Speaker 1: But despite how impressive and important John Agar is, he
Speaker 1: still can't see mister Franz, because Sally explains, he's in
Speaker 1: the back back room, the one labeled no admittance, and
Speaker 1: he cannot be disturbed while he's in there. She can't
Speaker 1: even call him on the phone. He'd be furious. And
Speaker 1: I think once you've seen the whole movie, you can
Speaker 1: probably assume. Oh, in the scene he's back there playing
Speaker 1: with his shrunken humans. Yeah, he's he's having key time
Speaker 1: for them or something. But John Agar's confused by this.
Speaker 1: He's like, mister Franz, how could he ever be furious
Speaker 1: at you? He's as mild mannered as a kitten. How
Speaker 1: is that even possible? And so they start to talk,
Speaker 1: and Sally admits that she's a little bit uneasy about
Speaker 1: mister Franz, but she hesitates to say why, and John
Speaker 1: Agar turns on the charm. He apologizes for his earlier behavior,
Speaker 1: and he says, I want to be friends, okay, and
Speaker 1: the charm seems to work. She agrees to be friends,
Speaker 1: and she starts to explain she gets a little weirded
Speaker 1: out when mister Franz gets into one of his peculiar moods.
Speaker 1: When he quote talks to them, he seems so serious,
Speaker 1: almost as if he expected them to talk back, and
Speaker 1: John Agar asks, what do you mean talks to who?
Speaker 1: And she says his dolls, to which John Egar responds
Speaker 1: by just laughing in her face. I'm not sure why
Speaker 1: is he mocking her for believing, he assumes incorrectly that
Speaker 1: mister Franz talks to his dolls. This reaction, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense that it might just be bad writing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know he comes He does
Speaker 1: come off incredibly unlikable because it feels like he's laughing
Speaker 1: at her, even if he's supposedly laughing at mister Frantz.
Speaker 1: I think he is laughing at her. I think the
Speaker 1: point is he's like, of course he's not talking to
Speaker 1: his dolls. You are silly for thinking he does that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, you know, The Incredible Shrinking Man
Speaker 1: was all about a guy who became more self aware
Speaker 1: the smaller he'd got. So maybe some positive change is
Speaker 1: in store for John Agar. Yeah. So we cut to
Speaker 1: the next morning or some other day, and there's an
Speaker 1: elevator scene. John Agar is back. He's pestering Sally in
Speaker 1: the elevator on the way up to their office. Good lord,
Speaker 1: how many people are in this elevator. This is not
Speaker 1: an elevator, this is a room. Yeah. I was taken
Speaker 1: aback by this as well, because if my count is correct,
Speaker 1: they're like fourteen people in this elevator scene. And I
Speaker 1: just did I didn't do extensive research, but I glanced
Speaker 1: around at some stills from famous cinematic elevator sequences, and
Speaker 1: I feel like you're generally looking at eight to ten
Speaker 1: people tops, but fourteen. This is incredible. This is like
Speaker 1: a freight elevator. You would think buildings would have a
Speaker 1: dedicated elevator for John A. Gar Alone. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: given his sales credentials. Okay, But also here in this scene,
Speaker 1: there's a whole thing about the mail carrier bringing a
Speaker 1: letter for Janet Hall, the previous secretary, and it has
Speaker 1: to be signed by her, but she's not there. So
Speaker 1: Sally Reynolds offers to take the letter, and then mister
Speaker 1: Franz says he'll take it because he expects to see
Speaker 1: it or see her again. The point is Janet Hall
Speaker 1: is missing, and mister Franz takes the letter. He promises
Speaker 1: to give it to her, but later Sally finds the
Speaker 1: letter in the garbage, and this raises her suspicions. Also,
Speaker 1: we learned that the mailman is new because the old
Speaker 1: mailman quote old Ernie, who used to deliver to the building,
Speaker 1: mysteriously went missing two days before his retirement, right around
Speaker 1: the time mister Franz made that incredibly realistic mailman doll
Speaker 1: that no one is allowed to touch. And oh, and
Speaker 1: then also we get a scene later where mister Franz
Speaker 1: like closes the door and hanging on the back of
Speaker 1: the door is just a mail carrier's satchel. This is
Speaker 1: just adding to his crimes. He's interviewing with the post
Speaker 1: office at this point. Yeah, oh man, you don't want
Speaker 1: to mess with that, so you know, much like mini
Speaker 1: movies are padded out with extraneous scenes of people driving
Speaker 1: to the next location or parking cars when they arrive,
Speaker 1: this movie is padded out with a lot of scenes
Speaker 1: of people arriving at the office, calling in to say
Speaker 1: they've arrived, walking back and forth between the rooms and
Speaker 1: the office and so forth. And to be clear about
Speaker 1: driving scenes, not all driving scenes and movies are extraneous.
Speaker 1: Sometimes filmmakers use them for a good stylistic reason, maybe
Speaker 1: to establish a tone or a mood. But a lot
Speaker 1: of B movies, you know, they don't accomplish much in
Speaker 1: terms of style. The driving scenes are just some filler
Speaker 1: to get you to the target run time of eighty
Speaker 1: two minutes. And I think a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of like human padding scenes in this are the same
Speaker 1: way as just people arriving in places saying they've arrived
Speaker 1: and so forth. Not much is really getting done there
Speaker 1: in terms of plot or mood. Yeah, I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: there was at least one essay from emberto Echo where
Speaker 1: he gets into this, or maybe more than one where
Speaker 1: he's talking about movies where he was talking about literature,
Speaker 1: like what happens when you have like dead time in
Speaker 1: movies dedicated to characters moving from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: Writing in elevators. I think there was one who is
Speaker 1: also talking about what, like what does it mean when say,
Speaker 1: James Bond spends a lot of time pouring his coffee?
Speaker 1: You know, James Bond book and so on one level,
Speaker 1: having these kinds of moments in your film or just
Speaker 1: your general storytelling, you can highlight the mundane to either
Speaker 1: intentionally or accidentally, then highlight some sort of supernatural or
Speaker 1: element that will present itself or some sort of supernatural
Speaker 1: or not supernatural, but some sort of supernormal stimuli. But
Speaker 1: it also is the sort of thing that clearly occurs
Speaker 1: in motion pictures just by virtue of amateur filmmakers or
Speaker 1: filmmakers that are just kind of cranking it out. And
Speaker 1: I tend to think that this picture is more of
Speaker 1: the latter, as opposed to some sort of pointed attempt
Speaker 1: to make the shrunk scenes feel more amazing. It's interesting
Speaker 1: though you raise the case of James Bond pouring his
Speaker 1: coffee and stuff. I do think specifically in the case
Speaker 1: of James Bond, a big part of the esthetic of
Speaker 1: the Bond books and the Bond films is the stereo
Speaker 1: feeling that emerges between like sex and death on one hand,
Speaker 1: and consumption of luxury food and drink items and use
Speaker 1: of like luxury hotel and automobile facilities on the other end.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, exactly what the James Bond feeling
Speaker 1: is is it's danger. It's like erotic and life and
Speaker 1: death thrills alongside luxury goods. Yeah, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: a basic too. When there's food in a movie, if
Speaker 1: someone orders a meal, you want to see that meal.
Speaker 1: I'd forget what I was watching the other day. I
Speaker 1: was watching something with my wife, I think some TV
Speaker 1: show and a character ordered some meal or some dish
Speaker 1: and we never got to see it, and that kind
Speaker 1: of made me mad on some level, like, like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to see what they ordered, Like, show me
Speaker 1: the food. I think that's something most good directors understand.
Speaker 1: Showing food and drink is an important part of setting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we do have some food and drink sequences coming up. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. Oh. We do get a scene with a
Speaker 1: like a doll clothing vendor where mister Franz is asking
Speaker 1: Sally which article of doll clothing she likes best, and
Speaker 1: she picks out, oh, white organdy with blue ribbons, and
Speaker 1: he says, oh, it's a pity you can't model it
Speaker 1: for us. So he's still being a creep. And then oh,
Speaker 1: and this is also the scene where Sally discovers the
Speaker 1: letter to Janet Hall torn up in the trash Dun
Speaker 1: dun dune. Yeah. Oh, also here we introduce a new character.
Speaker 1: This is mister Franz's old friend, a Meal, and it
Speaker 1: is through a meal that we learn a lot of backstory,
Speaker 1: So I think they knew each other from back in
Speaker 1: the day when they were both in the puppet show business.
Speaker 1: So mister Friends was once a puppeteer a performer, and
Speaker 1: Amiel is in town to do a string of big
Speaker 1: puppet shows at the theater. It seems like he is
Speaker 1: still a world class puppeteer. And we learned later that
Speaker 1: he's doing some kind of puppet adaptation of Doctor Jekyl
Speaker 1: and mister Hyde. Now I should throw in here. I
Speaker 1: didn't cover Michael Mark earlier. He's the actor playing Emil
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen eighty through nineteen seventy five. Some of
Speaker 1: his uh bigger films were Son of Frankenstein from thirty nine,
Speaker 1: The Waspwoman from fifty nine, and a slew of other pictures.
Speaker 1: He was also in Return of the Fly from fifty nine.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in this, in this picture, it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun little role. He's also the character
Speaker 1: who frequently has has shown up to to greet mister Friends.
Speaker 1: Mister Friends, it's like, oh, I have all my only
Speaker 1: friends are the dolls? What will I do without them?
Speaker 1: And like here's an actual, like real life friend. He's
Speaker 1: like Hey, buddy, can we hang out? And he's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if I must, if I must, but I really need
Speaker 1: to get back to my dolls. Yeah. He's constantly trying
Speaker 1: to get Emil out of his office so that he
Speaker 1: can go shrink people some more. You know, Emil as
Speaker 1: like the guy who shows up from you know, the
Speaker 1: Life before to talk to the villain. He kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of like Doctor Strowski and Bride of the Monster,
Speaker 1: because he's like generally concerned about his old friends, like
Speaker 1: asking about him, like, you know, how, how's your wife? Oh?
Speaker 1: That's right. So here is another thing we get from
Speaker 1: mister Friends as emotional history. So we learned he was
Speaker 1: once married to a beautiful, golden haired woman named Emma,
Speaker 1: but she left him. Mister Friends says, my Marionettes were
Speaker 1: playing in Luxembourg and she ran away with someone she
Speaker 1: liked better, an acrobat, And I was thinking, what's what's
Speaker 1: the story? Is Luxembourg significant? Is that a place where
Speaker 1: people run away? Maybe that's just incidental. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure where the connection would be there other than she
Speaker 1: had enough of mister Friends if he found somebody better,
Speaker 1: and he has never let it go and refuses to
Speaker 1: take a chance on any new human beings in his
Speaker 1: life that have not been completely managed, shrunken down, and
Speaker 1: completely controlled by him. She left him for an acrobat
Speaker 1: who promised never to shrink her. Yeah, but anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm happy now because I have my daughter.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm into. I don't want to come back
Speaker 1: to show business. His friend tries to get him to,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, come come, come do show business again,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I don't want it, but I will
Speaker 1: repair your puppets for you, so that there's that. Oh.
Speaker 1: Also we see he still knows how to operate puppets
Speaker 1: because they go to the theater and he puts on
Speaker 1: a little show for Emil, and I don't I'm confused
Speaker 1: by this theater setup. So the people in this large
Speaker 1: theater are all watching this tiny puppet show in a
Speaker 1: box about three feet wide, Like it looks like a
Speaker 1: normal size auditorium, so people might be seated like eighty
Speaker 1: feet away, and these puppets are less than a foot tall,
Speaker 1: and the action is taking place in this little three
Speaker 1: foot space. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I've seen
Speaker 1: a number of puppet shows over the years, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they've I mean, it's it's certainly a medium where it's
Speaker 1: better if you can be up close for it, especially
Speaker 1: the smaller scale stuff. But I've also seen puppetry in
Speaker 1: venues where my seating wasn't that good, and maybe it
Speaker 1: was a little harder to make everything out, but it
Speaker 1: was still pleasant and amusing, So I'm not sure. I
Speaker 1: guess it could go either way. But if the scene
Speaker 1: is making you doubt it, then I think the scene
Speaker 1: has some shortcomings for sure. Yeah, once again, here Emil
Speaker 1: tries to tempt mister Friends back into show business, but
Speaker 1: he's content where he is in the doll business, and
Speaker 1: he says, why must someone who is content have something
Speaker 1: wrong with him? And Emil says a contentment is not natural,
Speaker 1: but you know he's not going to budge him. So then, oh,
Speaker 1: then we cut away to one of my favorite scenes
Speaker 1: in the movie. That is the scene at the drive
Speaker 1: in movie theater where John Agar and Sally are I
Speaker 1: guess on a date for some reason, Why are they
Speaker 1: on a date? Did we see any basis for like
Speaker 1: a romance being established other than him nagging her and
Speaker 1: saying he wanted to be friends? And then then that's right.
Speaker 1: Next step today wanted to be friends? Okay, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: they go to the drive in and they watched The
Speaker 1: Amazing Colossal Man on the big screen. But I love
Speaker 1: this because Bert doesn't just casually drop it at It's
Speaker 1: not one of those moments where it's like, hat, did
Speaker 1: you notice that The Amazing Colossal Man is on in
Speaker 1: the background? No, no, no, We watched several clips from
Speaker 1: the film featuring big Glenn Manning freaking out over his size,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's wonderful. I like the idea too,
Speaker 1: that drive in viewers were watching this movie and had
Speaker 1: previously watched The Amazing Colossal Man, perhaps at the same
Speaker 1: drive in, and now they're watching like drive in through
Speaker 1: a drive in screen. Yes, there are also some time,
Speaker 1: I think tongue in cheek comments from Agar's character about
Speaker 1: you know, about trying something new, which felt like maybe
Speaker 1: it's kind of a bird eye Gordon like, I usually
Speaker 1: make movies about big things, now I'm making one about
Speaker 1: small things. Haha, wink wink. But I may be over
Speaker 1: analyzing the whole the whole sequel. Do you think he
Speaker 1: had realized what his initials spelled by this point? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not sure at what point because who
Speaker 1: wasn't it gave him that nickname. I want to say
Speaker 1: it was Forrest j Ackerman or somebody like that, so
Speaker 1: that that nickname may have been bestowed pretty early on. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: this drive in date leads to some plot developments, because,
Speaker 1: as is well known, if you watch a Birdeye Gordon
Speaker 1: movie at the drive in on your first date, the
Speaker 1: next step is immediate and irreversible progression to full wedlock.
Speaker 1: So they decide to get married. And how seriously, how
Speaker 1: bizarre is the proposal in the scene? How I don't
Speaker 1: even how does it develop? These just like she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: are you going to go back to Saint Louis And
Speaker 1: he's like, you could come with me? And she says,
Speaker 1: and do what he says, become missus. Bob Wesley. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to remember that The Amazing Colossal Man is
Speaker 1: a very stirring film about about the growing distance between
Speaker 1: a man and his wife, and so it can it
Speaker 1: can make one maybe even a little bit impulsive about
Speaker 1: the need to hold on to people you're you've known
Speaker 1: for like quite a week, and and and maybe want
Speaker 1: to want to actually lock that down with a wedding ring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes you hold fast to the nearest pushy salesman. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they're gonna, yeah, they make plans. They're gonna fly
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas and get married the very next day,
Speaker 1: and then they're gonna move to Saint Louis together. And
Speaker 1: so Bob tells her, you know what, you don't even
Speaker 1: have to tell have to tell mister Franz, I'll tell
Speaker 1: him for you. I'm gonna go in in the morning
Speaker 1: and tell him that that you're not coming back to work.
Speaker 1: That's I guess that's how these dynamics worked in the fifties. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think she says she didn't want to face him
Speaker 1: because she felt bad, because of course he'd he'd like
Speaker 1: guilt tripper about it. We know what he would do.
Speaker 1: He is a creek so and and can be very
Speaker 1: forceful with his self pity. So yeah, get John Agar
Speaker 1: in there. He's he's a cold hearted hunk. He can
Speaker 1: exactly Yes, this pushy salesman will not be bothered by
Speaker 1: his please for pity. But then back at home, it's
Speaker 1: the next day and Sally, you know, where's where's Bob?
Speaker 1: She receives a call from mister Franz. It seems Bob
Speaker 1: has left town without her. How horrible, And so she
Speaker 1: goes into the office and mister Franz is like, oh,
Speaker 1: that wasn't very thoughtful of him. But Sally doesn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Could John Agar possibly have treated her this thoughtlessly. Oh. Also,
Speaker 1: now mister Franz has a tube with a tiny John
Speaker 1: Agar in it, and she's like, wow, it really looks
Speaker 1: like him. It could almost be him, except he wasn't
Speaker 1: this small. And mister Franz gives a speech in response
Speaker 1: to her, saying, you know, it really looks like him.
Speaker 1: He says, thank you for the compliment. You know, it
Speaker 1: is the aim of every composer to fit the world
Speaker 1: within the limits of his symphony. A writer wants to
Speaker 1: put all of life between the covers of his book. Well,
Speaker 1: if I can make my dolls in the image of
Speaker 1: those I know and love, I'm satisfied. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: reminded for the first time here as we're recording it that,
Speaker 1: even though last episode was our first shrink movie in
Speaker 1: a while, the episode before that, if I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker 1: Clash of the Titans, that of course, also has these
Speaker 1: scenes where like Zeus is handling these miniature versions of
Speaker 1: people and controlling and manipulating them. And that's basically what
Speaker 1: mister Franz is creating for himself here. He's setting himself
Speaker 1: up as the self obsessed god that treats everyone in
Speaker 1: his life like they are little playthings that he has
Speaker 1: complete control over. Well, he could have just taken a
Speaker 1: page out of your book and got a miniature's hobby.
Speaker 1: He didn't have to shrink all these salesmen and secretaries.
Speaker 1: That's true. I was actually clipping out some minis while
Speaker 1: watching the movie and didn't realize the irony of that
Speaker 1: until it was a good ways. Then I have one
Speaker 1: of you and JJ and everything. So Sally's I think
Speaker 1: she's seen enough. She knows what's going on now, so
Speaker 1: she goes straight to the cops. She says, please help,
Speaker 1: my boss turned my fiance into a doll. And the
Speaker 1: detective treats her like she's out of her mind until
Speaker 1: she starts to mention other people to whom she thinks
Speaker 1: the same thing has happened. There is Janet Hall, the
Speaker 1: previous secretary. There's a maleman named Ernie and so forth,
Speaker 1: and what do you know? The detective starts leafing through
Speaker 1: his files and he finds that these are all missing persons.
Speaker 1: But that makes me think, wait, the detective never put
Speaker 1: it together that like half of the missing persons in
Speaker 1: town all have a connection to the same doll company.
Speaker 1: Oh well, Amy, we don't know that he's a good detective,
Speaker 1: but he appears not to be. But I did ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of like this see the sequence kind of got
Speaker 1: it took sim me because it seems like he's just
Speaker 1: gonna laugh her off. But then he's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: actually these are all missing people's cases. And then he's like,
Speaker 1: let's go check it out. And part of me gets
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up in the plot here, and I'm like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: nail him. Get this guy that we're gonna actually arrest
Speaker 1: him here. Yeah, I know what you're saying that there
Speaker 1: was a nice plot movie. I think a lesser movie
Speaker 1: would have just had him laugher off completely and then
Speaker 1: move on to the next thing. But now she makes
Speaker 1: a logical case. She's like, what about all these missing people?
Speaker 1: Those are actually missing people. So we get further investigation.
Speaker 1: So Sally and the detective go to Dolls Incorporated. The
Speaker 1: cop is like, look, Friends. I hear you've been turning
Speaker 1: people into dolls? Is that true? And he, you know,
Speaker 1: Friends are sitting there with John Eggar in a tube
Speaker 1: at a table, and he denies it. He's like, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's silly. How could I turn people into dolls? And
Speaker 1: the detective asks, how come that doll you're holding looks
Speaker 1: exactly like her boyfriend because it's a little John Egar there,
Speaker 1: And he replies by setting it on fire. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: drop the match in there, and woof, John Agar goes
Speaker 1: up in flames and it's just completely incenterated. Now. Of
Speaker 1: course Sally is horrified, but then the leads to mister
Speaker 1: Friends opening up maybe my favorite set piece in the film.
Speaker 1: This is the best image from the movie. Yeah, opens
Speaker 1: up the suitcase and what's in there but six tubes
Speaker 1: of John Agar. A suitcase full of John Agars. Looks
Speaker 1: like Santa came early this year. It's so many John Agars?
Speaker 1: What would you do with them? All? Yeah? And I
Speaker 1: mean I was trying to piece that together, like why, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, how because we'll get into exactly how
Speaker 1: Friends as miniaturization is supposed to work in a bit,
Speaker 1: and he never it's never mentioned that he can create copies, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we have a plurality of Agars
Speaker 1: in the picture. It's never explained in context with friends
Speaker 1: his method of miniaturization, Like are these just mere backups
Speaker 1: because he likes this guy so much, just in case
Speaker 1: a friend gets smashed or eaten by a neighborhood cat
Speaker 1: or I was wondering too, is this like a fuel
Speaker 1: source because we see how quickly John Agar goes up
Speaker 1: in flames. Perhaps a canister of this is enough to
Speaker 1: like power an airplane to fly from New York to
Speaker 1: London or something. Oh yeah, John Agar, the energy source
Speaker 1: of the future. You can imagine something like this facility
Speaker 1: powered by one hundred percent clean burning John Agar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess. The other less fun interpretation is
Speaker 1: he also makes super accurate dolls that can in this
Speaker 1: case serve as as as a decoy for his actual
Speaker 1: miniaturization efforts. But there's nothing else in the picture to
Speaker 1: back that idea up either, So it's but it's still
Speaker 1: such a delightful sequence. It's so weird and wacky when
Speaker 1: he opens that suitcase and there are all these John
Speaker 1: Agars in there all right, So after the suitcase of agars.
Speaker 1: The detective leaves, and obviously Sally is quite embarrassed. She
Speaker 1: wants to quit. She's like, how can we go on
Speaker 1: after this? I need to I need to leave. I'm
Speaker 1: never coming back. But then Friends locks the door. He
Speaker 1: gets even creepier. He says, how could I ever bear
Speaker 1: to let you go? And he approaches her and we
Speaker 1: see her her screaming, and then the lights go out.
Speaker 1: And what happened was she loses consciousness, and when she
Speaker 1: wakes up again, she is lying down on a strange
Speaker 1: surface with her head on some kind of rope or something.
Speaker 1: And then she sits up and she finds she's dressed strangely,
Speaker 1: and the rope her head was lying on was not
Speaker 1: a rope but a telephone chord of enormous proportions. And
Speaker 1: what she's wearing is a napkin. That's right. Miss Reynolds
Speaker 1: has been shrunken. So she's surrounded by all these huge objects, say,
Speaker 1: a rotary telephone bigger than she is, a big scaffolding
Speaker 1: of drawers and shelves with paint cans and stationary and
Speaker 1: chemistry equipment, all of monstrous size, and right off the
Speaker 1: bat here, I think we need to compare the shrink
Speaker 1: effects in this movie with last week's movie, The Incredible
Speaker 1: Shrinking Man. The Incredible Shrinking Man is wonderful in many ways,
Speaker 1: but with the effects, I think it really made you
Speaker 1: feel the alien horror of changes of scale. And so
Speaker 1: the gigantic sets representing matchboxes and sewing needles and everything,
Speaker 1: the mousetraps, they looked spectacular, but they also made you
Speaker 1: feel how truly frightening it would be to be in
Speaker 1: the same environment you live every day but a couple
Speaker 1: of inches tall. Oh yeah, absolutely. By comparison, the special
Speaker 1: effects and gigantic sets in this movie are not even
Speaker 1: close to as good. Now. They are quite amusing, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I mean, this movie is a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but they do not at all make you feel that
Speaker 1: scale change as the kind of nausea or horror that
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man does. One way that puppet People really
Speaker 1: does not compare is that the scaled up stuff all
Speaker 1: around them feels totally inconsistent in respect to the size
Speaker 1: of their bodies. Like, are the puppet people bigger than
Speaker 1: a telephone or smaller than a door knob? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get the fear that like Basically, Burt and his people
Speaker 1: were like, hey, you your team, or you're building a
Speaker 1: giant door knob. You you're building a giant telephone. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't really there weren't really any details about exactly
Speaker 1: how all these things should scale to each other. I
Speaker 1: will say this, this sequence where she wakes up and
Speaker 1: she's small, first of all, compared to Incredible Shrinking Man.
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man is is a lot of the film
Speaker 1: is about the dread and the gradual acceptance of becoming small,
Speaker 1: these changes in scale. Here she's just suddenly small, so
Speaker 1: it's shocking. And if nothing else, we do get a
Speaker 1: nice scream here from her, a nice scream face with
Speaker 1: hands on both sides of her face while she's looking
Speaker 1: at a giant rotary telephone. Yeah. I mean that's got
Speaker 1: to be if you woke up and saw that phone,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you scream? She's like, I have to answer this
Speaker 1: thing all day long? Yea. So, so mister Franz comes
Speaker 1: in and he starts giving his villain speech. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: surely you aren't afraid of me, are you? And he
Speaker 1: gives a long speech explaining his motives. What goes on
Speaker 1: with people now that they're shrunken. His methods. Oh, first
Speaker 1: of all, he like very creepily makes her dress up
Speaker 1: in doll clothes, and then he brings out tiny John Agar.
Speaker 1: He gets his two about and I guess this is
Speaker 1: the real one and the other ones that the one
Speaker 1: he burned was a decoy. But this raises the question
Speaker 1: again or did did he make multiple living John Agars.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got to go in that direction that
Speaker 1: there's there's still a suitcase full of John Agars, maybe
Speaker 1: five John Agars. Anyway, he had to get one of
Speaker 1: them out. We never find out what happened to the
Speaker 1: other a Gars. I assume there's a scene later where
Speaker 1: the police come back. And I was imagining a scene
Speaker 1: where Friends is like, you know, hurriedly flushing extra John
Speaker 1: Agars down the toilet to destroy the evidence. It's like
Speaker 1: in Good Fellows. Some are going down the toilet. He's
Speaker 1: alway stuffing John Agar's in his underwear and stuff. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So Sally gets John Agar out of his tube and
Speaker 1: he wakes up, and John Agar's mad. He starts like
Speaker 1: throwing things at mister Franz, and you know, he's tiny.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really do anything But mister Franz explains his position.
Speaker 1: He's like, he says, why do my dull people always
Speaker 1: hate me? At first, you know, he says, I take
Speaker 1: care of your every need. You no longer have to
Speaker 1: worry about work, or paying the bills, or paying your
Speaker 1: taxes or taking care of a household. All you ever
Speaker 1: have to do is spend time with me and have fun.
Speaker 1: I never allow you to feel pain. I never let
Speaker 1: your needs go unmet. You sleep away the long boring
Speaker 1: hours and your tubes, and then you only wake up
Speaker 1: when it's time for a party. Isn't this the perfect life?
Speaker 1: And you know what, John Agar and Sally totally ungrateful
Speaker 1: for everything mister Franz is doing for them. John Agar,
Speaker 1: yell's change us back the way we were, But mister
Speaker 1: Franz says, no, I like you better the way you are.
Speaker 1: M Uh. Then we segue to mister Frands taking quite
Speaker 1: a while to explain how the shrinking works is in it?
Speaker 1: What exactly is the principle here? Hey, it's all based
Speaker 1: in the optics of projection, right. It's it's which feels
Speaker 1: like a very sort of like a v way of
Speaker 1: trying to understand scale. Uh, Yeah, there's not. It's like
Speaker 1: it's even the scene is even kind of light on
Speaker 1: techno babble um, Like there's not even any just techno
Speaker 1: babble to sort of make you feel like something high
Speaker 1: in science was going on. No, it's just like, well,
Speaker 1: you know how projector works, well like that except with
Speaker 1: your body. Yeah, so he can like move a projector
Speaker 1: farther away from the wall and the image gets bigger
Speaker 1: and vice versa. And at first I thought this was
Speaker 1: an analogy, but then it turns out that's just what
Speaker 1: he's doing. He's using like photo I don't know, yeah,
Speaker 1: like optics to I don't understand it. But another thing
Speaker 1: to note, did you notice the same thing when Franz
Speaker 1: actually goes over to the table where the machine shrinks people.
Speaker 1: He's trying to demonstrate for Bob and Sally by shrinking
Speaker 1: a cat. But then when we see where they are,
Speaker 1: like from their perspective, a shelf is blocking their views,
Speaker 1: so they would not actually be able to see the
Speaker 1: demonstration at all. I didn't notice those. I was just
Speaker 1: too distracted by the cat because I was thinking back
Speaker 1: to incredible shrinking man. I was like, are they gonna
Speaker 1: have to fight? That cat. What's gonna happen with the cat? No, Instead,
Speaker 1: he shrinks the cat and makes a super hute tiny kitten. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the cat becomes a kitten that fits in a match box,
Speaker 1: which is adorable. And then they bring out a bunch
Speaker 1: of other two people. Mist Friends is like, well, let's
Speaker 1: have a little two people party. So they get a
Speaker 1: lady named George Elaine and a marine and a marine
Speaker 1: uniform named Mac and a couple of g willakers soakop
Speaker 1: teenagers named Stan and Laurie. And I guess that's the
Speaker 1: whole gang. There are other two people who we just
Speaker 1: never see woken up. Yeah, Like, I guess the nurse
Speaker 1: two person is only brought out when somebody needs medical attention. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Well know, the nurse he was talking about was just
Speaker 1: a straight up doll, so I don't know if he
Speaker 1: makes them. He's like, care, get get your healthcare from
Speaker 1: this doll, and they have to pretend. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: But so they have a party. Friends puts on a
Speaker 1: hip swing record and it's you know, playing playing hot music,
Speaker 1: and they get out tiny refreshments. There's like a flatter
Speaker 1: with a tiny champagne bottle and some kind of food
Speaker 1: on it. It looks weird. Yeah, so, I mean two
Speaker 1: friends his credit like he's trying in his own, you know,
Speaker 1: his warp perspective. He's trying to give them a good time,
Speaker 1: show him a good time. He's not making them run
Speaker 1: around and rat wheels or anything. Oh yeah. So Sally
Speaker 1: and Bob are like this is terrible, but the others
Speaker 1: are very complacent. Especially at first. Georgia Laine's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I like being a doll, and one of
Speaker 1: the I think it's Laurie, says, hey, are you too engaged?
Speaker 1: And then mister Franz implies that he will shrink a
Speaker 1: priest so that he can properly marry Bob and Sally.
Speaker 1: But then there's a weird line I didn't understand. So
Speaker 1: Sally does not like the fact that she has been shrunk,
Speaker 1: and then Laurie the teenager says, hey, look at it
Speaker 1: this way. We all sometimes have to do things we
Speaker 1: don't want to do just to have some freedom like this.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, it sounds like she's really stretching to normalize
Speaker 1: being kidnapped and shrunk by a mad dollmaker. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: And here's the scene where like they dance to the
Speaker 1: record a little bit and then Laurie sings the song
Speaker 1: my Living Doll. This is this is good. This is
Speaker 1: a fun little song. But also I believe Franz is
Speaker 1: like mouthing the words along to him like he's really
Speaker 1: he's really into it. And again, the whole throughout the
Speaker 1: whole movie, you really buy into Franz. Uh. You feel
Speaker 1: that this is a guy who is uniquely lonely and
Speaker 1: his loneliness has been warped into this, uh, this level
Speaker 1: of control and manipulation. Yeah, there's a whole action sequence here,
Speaker 1: by the way, So the puppet people are partying and
Speaker 1: then Amiel shows up. He's oh, he's here to talk
Speaker 1: to friends about something. And this is one of those
Speaker 1: scenes where friends is like, oh, my human friend, I
Speaker 1: hate you. Be quiet. I must get back to my dolls. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but there is legitimate tension here because, yeah, they
Speaker 1: try and call some for some help. They get the telephone,
Speaker 1: they're yelling into the telephone. It takes, you know, all
Speaker 1: all of them working together to to do this physically,
Speaker 1: but they cannot be heard. The music is too loud,
Speaker 1: their voices are too small. But the whole time here
Speaker 1: is like, are they gonna be able to pull it off?
Speaker 1: Is is he going to come back into the room
Speaker 1: and catch them? Is he I was just expecting somebody
Speaker 1: to be squashed, to be made an example of, or
Speaker 1: he'd feed them to a you know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: an ape or something. Well, there's multiple attempts. They try
Speaker 1: to call somebody on the phone. Also, while he's distracted,
Speaker 1: they try to rebigulate themselves, like yeah, you remember they
Speaker 1: put the marine on the table and they're trying to
Speaker 1: operate the stuff on the controls on the machine, but
Speaker 1: they run out of time. It seems like it almost works,
Speaker 1: but mister Franz is coming back in, so they scamper
Speaker 1: back up to the table, and it seems like the
Speaker 1: props keep changing size in relationship to them throughout the sequence.
Speaker 1: But then Franz puts them all back in their tubes.
Speaker 1: So while our puppet people are asleep, the detective comes
Speaker 1: back to investigate Frans again. You know it's are you
Speaker 1: sure you aren't turning people into dolls? And meanwhile there
Speaker 1: is a kid in the office who wants to get
Speaker 1: her doll repaired. I think this might be Bertie Gordon's kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, this is when she oh, she
Speaker 1: discovers the miniature cat in the matchbox and starts playing
Speaker 1: with it, and yes, it is very cute. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he's like, no, you can't play with that anymore right now,
Speaker 1: You've got to get it back, and she's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm never giving this bag. This is a cat that
Speaker 1: fits in a matchbox, you crazy old man, and this
Speaker 1: is mine forever now. Yeah. So we're going into the
Speaker 1: third act. So Emil shows up and he needs friends
Speaker 1: to repair his Jekyl and Hide puppet, which by the way,
Speaker 1: looks exactly like Dracula. But Emil reveals that the police
Speaker 1: have been questioning him about friends, and this really gets
Speaker 1: Frands spooked and he decides like, okay, I got to
Speaker 1: destroy all my dolls, and Sally actually overhears him talking
Speaker 1: about this. He's got to destroy all the dolls because
Speaker 1: the police are onto him. But before he does that,
Speaker 1: he's going to go to the theater repair Emil's doll,
Speaker 1: and then he's going to take the shrink friends out
Speaker 1: of their tubes, take them to the theater with him
Speaker 1: in the suitcase, where he's going to give them a
Speaker 1: big going away party. Yeah, I mean it's even a
Speaker 1: little darker than that, Like it's pretty it's he's basically
Speaker 1: saying that it's going to be a total murder suicide situation,
Speaker 1: like I'm going to destroy you all and kill myself,
Speaker 1: but it's all right because we're all going to die
Speaker 1: together because you're my friends. And it's very creepy. It's
Speaker 1: like it the creepiness it seems intentional and definitely shines
Speaker 1: through Oh yes, yeah. But also Sally overhears this, and
Speaker 1: then she really does not show the appropriate level of
Speaker 1: urgency in telling all of the other people. Like, so
Speaker 1: they get taken out of the tubes and they're all
Speaker 1: getting ready for the party, you know, bathing and getting
Speaker 1: dressed and stuff, and then it's like, hey, Sally, what
Speaker 1: did you say about he's going to destroy us all?
Speaker 1: And then Sally's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he takes them to the theater. There's a whole sequence
Speaker 1: at the theater. Several things to discuss. One is he
Speaker 1: tries to make them act alongside the Jekyl and Hide
Speaker 1: slash Dracula puppet, and this is where we get the
Speaker 1: scene of the attack on the puppet. So he's making
Speaker 1: them go into the I don't know, the little playbox
Speaker 1: and act out the parts in the play that I
Speaker 1: guess in reality would be done by puppets. So but
Speaker 1: when he makes John Agar go in there, John Agar says,
Speaker 1: you know this Jekyl and Hide puppet. He is a monster,
Speaker 1: but he's not half the monster you are. And then
Speaker 1: he grabs the puppet and rips its head off and
Speaker 1: smashes it, which is kind of a ridiculous looking sequence,
Speaker 1: but it works on other levels because it's like puppets
Speaker 1: are another thing, these little things made via his craft
Speaker 1: or or tweaked via his craft, Like these are the
Speaker 1: things that Franz actually cares about, and this is like
Speaker 1: his one Agar's one chance to lash out at him.
Speaker 1: Oh and then Franza this line was hilarious. He goes, no,
Speaker 1: stop it, Bob the puppet. You're destroying the puppet. But
Speaker 1: I wish there was a term for that thing. You
Speaker 1: would call it, like absurd specificity in dialogue, or like
Speaker 1: a pronoun should be used, but instead people specify the
Speaker 1: noun in a way that sounds ludicrous. Another example I
Speaker 1: was thinking of is in m I feel like this
Speaker 1: is specially comes in scenes where the dialogue is accompanying
Speaker 1: special effects shots instead of just like normal people on
Speaker 1: a set. So one of the other examples that comes
Speaker 1: to my mind is in Superman for the Quest for Peace,
Speaker 1: where the evil villain Nuclear Man. I think it goes
Speaker 1: like this. At one point he says I will hurt people,
Speaker 1: and then Superman says, no, the people. How would you
Speaker 1: compare this to the line in trol Too where the
Speaker 1: guy yells they're eating her and then they're going to
Speaker 1: eat me. Slightly different? Maybe no, no, no, yes, that's
Speaker 1: actually similar, very related thing. Just the narrating of events
Speaker 1: that everybody in the room can see happening, that you
Speaker 1: would have no need to explain. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's different. Maybe it head writers and maybe
Speaker 1: not a troll too, but maybe writers who wrote for radio.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, because it would make sense if
Speaker 1: you did not have visuals, and you need to like
Speaker 1: establish blow for blow what is supposed to be happening,
Speaker 1: and right and so forth. But at any rate, the puppet,
Speaker 1: you're destroying the puppet. Well anyway, Franz here gets interrupted
Speaker 1: by a stage hand and in the meantime, the doll
Speaker 1: people all scatter and escape, and there's a big adventure
Speaker 1: sequence where Bob and Sally they run. They make it outside.
Speaker 1: They are briefly menaced by a rat, but then they're
Speaker 1: in a really shocking twist there's a cat that comes
Speaker 1: to the rescue by attacking the rat that's attacking them.
Speaker 1: Who would have expected it. That's a real twist. Bird.
Speaker 1: So I think they're playing is they got to get
Speaker 1: back to the building they came from and get back
Speaker 1: into mister Franz's office so they can rebigulate themselves in
Speaker 1: the machine, and along the way they get attacked by
Speaker 1: a dog, but then a liveryman chases the dog away.
Speaker 1: They reinfiltrate the office by getting inside a parcel. They
Speaker 1: like get inside a box that's addressed to the office.
Speaker 1: The mail carrier takes them to the office and then
Speaker 1: they rebigulate just before mister Franz arrives to stop them.
Speaker 1: And then so like they so, Bob and Sally are
Speaker 1: restored to regular size, and then we get just such
Speaker 1: a weird and abrupt ending. I'd say this is an
Speaker 1: all time like top five weird off putting endings movie.
Speaker 1: Absolutely like for the time period. If you had to
Speaker 1: predict the ending for this movie, you would think, all right,
Speaker 1: they get big again, they saved the day, and our
Speaker 1: last shot is surely going to be our heroes reunited,
Speaker 1: maybe talking to the police or something, and then then
Speaker 1: then it'll be closed credits. But that's not what we get. No, Instead,
Speaker 1: the two of them are rebigulated. No idea what's going
Speaker 1: on with the other puppet people. Last time we saw them,
Speaker 1: they scattered the theater and Franz was looking for them,
Speaker 1: and we don't know what happened to them. And then
Speaker 1: back in the office, Franz is standing there and he says,
Speaker 1: don't leave me, Please, don't leave me. I'm all alone,
Speaker 1: and sad music plays and we zoom out on a
Speaker 1: couple of empty glass tubes, and that's the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's such a weird moment for us to feel bad
Speaker 1: for Frans one last time. Instead of ending on a
Speaker 1: happy note for the release of all his kidnapping and
Speaker 1: experimentation victims, we don't end on his demise or his arrest.
Speaker 1: It's just implied that I guess something will come of this.
Speaker 1: It's just him feeling super sad that his only friends
Speaker 1: are being taken away from him. And the weird thing
Speaker 1: is that again due to the especially to the performance
Speaker 1: and you know, the way the scenes constructed here the
Speaker 1: moment it is executed well enough that you can't help
Speaker 1: but feel it hit a bit. But then, at least
Speaker 1: with me anyway, I was like it sunk in for
Speaker 1: a second. Then I'm like, whoa, whoa wa wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling sorry for this guy. Trip quit trying
Speaker 1: to make me feel sorry for the man who kidnapped
Speaker 1: and shrunk people and was going to going to kill
Speaker 1: them all and himself in the final moments of this
Speaker 1: film if he headed his way, Yeah, it doesn't make anything.
Speaker 1: So like we don't see the villain get his come upance,
Speaker 1: we don't see all of the good characters like restored
Speaker 1: to normal size. We have no idea what their fate is.
Speaker 1: And then it just plays sad music and ends right there,
Speaker 1: like ends right at the moment before there would be
Speaker 1: some kind of resolution. Yeah, like what if misery had
Speaker 1: ended this way or silence of the lamps or something,
Speaker 1: you know, I think a better ending would have been,
Speaker 1: like maybe he like falls down an elevator shaft and
Speaker 1: then suddenly we discover oh, here are those five additional
Speaker 1: broken tubes of John Agars and then John Agars eat him.
Speaker 1: I think that would have been good. That'd be really good.
Speaker 1: But no, no no, no, maybe that's not not fifties enough.
Speaker 1: That would have been more like a seventies ending. What
Speaker 1: if it just ended with John Agar doing the speech
Speaker 1: from the Incredible Shrinking Man. Does the infinitesimal become the infinite?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Hopefully John Agar's character has grown as
Speaker 1: a person because of this experience, yeah, but the movie's
Speaker 1: not concerned with that. It's more concerned with France. He
Speaker 1: seems to be weirdly enough, the twisted heart and soul
Speaker 1: of this picture. Yeah. So I think it should become
Speaker 1: a yearly tradition, much like you might watch Halloween or
Speaker 1: even Halloween three on the night of Halloween, or much
Speaker 1: like we watch The Wickerman every May Day. I think
Speaker 1: people should watch Attack of the Puppet People every year
Speaker 1: on the night of the Watergate break in. All right, yeah,
Speaker 1: why not? Why not? You know they have that HBO
Speaker 1: series coming out about the White House Plumbers, the concerns,
Speaker 1: you know, the Watergate. I wonder if they are going
Speaker 1: to include anything about Attack of the puppet people. I
Speaker 1: think that would be great. It seems like the tone
Speaker 1: of the show would lend itself to covering that little
Speaker 1: historical tidbit. All right, we're going to go ahead and
Speaker 1: close it out here, but a reminder that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursday's episodes being our core episodes. On Monday's we
Speaker 1: do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do a short form
Speaker 1: episode a monster fact or an artifact, and then on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to talk about
Speaker 1: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And if you
Speaker 1: want to see a complete list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've covered on Weird House Cinema, well, you can go
Speaker 1: to a couple of places. I blog about these episodes
Speaker 1: at some mutemusic dot com. But also if you use
Speaker 1: a letterbox that's l ett er boxb dot com, we
Speaker 1: have a profile there it's weird House, and we have
Speaker 1: a list of all the movies we've covered a link store.
Speaker 1: You can listen to them and it's pretty neat. You
Speaker 1: can see them in order. The little posters arranged arranged
Speaker 1: like miniaturized people in tubes for your pleasure and your delight.
Speaker 1: Here's thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.