Robert J. Maxwell John Hoyt is a doll maker in Los Angeles. He's an elderly man and is lonely. So when he finds himself liking someone, he shrinks them until they're about a foot tall and keeps them encase in glass tubes. They're still alive but unconscious unless he shakes them out into the fresh air, chats with them, and lets them play with each other.When she threatens to leave his employ, he shrinks his pretty new secretary, June Kenney. And when John Agar becomes a little suspicious, he joins the merry group that consists of a mailman, a Marine sergeant, two teeny boppers, and another somewhat sleazy ex secretary. It's an understandable notion. After all, Hoyt has created a model universe in which he is the absolute (and mostly benign) dictator.That's about it. You could almost write the rest of the screenplay yourself. During one of their R&R periods, the living dolls escape and use Hoyt's Extracurricular Anatomic Circumcisional Epenthetic Molecular Extractor (or EACEME, for short) to restore themselves to original size. Or at least Agar and Kenney do. The other twerps disappear without explanation. Hoyt is off to a jaunt in prison where he'll have plenty of company and they're all life sized, whether he likes them or not.But the plot isn't really worth discussing. It's character development that counts. Unfortunately there is no character development either. The whole point of the movie is to put on display some special effects -- eerie noises, matte shots, giant sets that sometimes don't match each other. Nobody involved in a particularly memorable actor with the exception of John Hoyt, whose picture this is. His character is the most complex -- gentle, needy, and careless of others' fortunes. He was the Martian with the third arm in a "Twilight Zone" episode. He was also Decius Brutus in MGM's "Julius Caesar." As a matter of fact this would have made a decent episode of "The Twilight Zone," resembling the touching story of Robert Duvall who falls in love with an animated doll who plays Mozart's pretty Sonata in A Major. Other sources, too numerous to list, include the physiologically oriented "Fantastic Voyage," "The Incredible Shrinking Man" which had metaphysical overtones, and "Dr. Cyclops," which didn't. Of course Dr. Praetorius in "The Bride of Frankenstein" had lots of fun with his miniaturized horny king and screeching queen, and not to mention the Lilliputians Gulliver ran into. Alice Liddel shrinks too but doesn't get nearly run over by a 1955 Ford.I didn't find this too much fun. Kids might, but I'm not even sure of that because they've been bombarded over the past couple of decades by such elaborate CGIs.

dougdoepke People are disappearing and it seems to center around a doll-maker's office-repair shop. Sweet young Sally applies as receptionist at the office and marvels at the life-like detail of the owner's array of dolls. Maybe this is a job she shouldn't have taken.Oddball slice of 50's sci-fi. Franz (Hoyt) may be a mad scientist, but he's hardly the standard cruel stereotype. Nonetheless, with an infernal machine, he does shrink people down to doll size and keep them in little glass cylinders. But, he's not power- mad like the usual nutcase. Instead, he's a lonely old man who must have company when he needs it. Thus his human dolls can be resuscitated at will so he can watch them party and have a good time. His situation is rather poignant instead of infernal. He really means them no harm, though he's clearly lost perspective.Rather surprisingly, Hoyt is excellent as the benighted Franz. The actor usually plays cruel types, but here he's almost genial and without a single snarl. Special effects are simple—an unobtrusive split screen separating the normal from the miniature. Thus, we get the two worlds coming together on the same screen. However somebody should have caught the fleeting shadow cast against a process screen near movie's end. I confess to liking this cheap indie, maybe because it breaks so many of the mad scientist rules. Nonetheless, the title is misleading and I can see 50's drive-in hot- rodders and their dates feeling cheated from a lack of scary scenes to cuddle up over.

AaronCapenBanner John Hoyt plays a lonely(and deranged) doll-maker who has invented a shrinking machine, and has systematically been shrinking various people he keeps in suspended animation, and revives when he wants company. His newest victims are his secretary Sally(played by June Kenny) and her fiancée Bob(played by John Agar) who are not going to accept this bizarre situation without a fight, and so lead an escape attempt. Obvious rip-off of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" has a good performance from Hoyt, but shoddy F/X and a ridiculous story, with few believable reactions from the characters because of the thin plot. Directed by Bert I. Gordon.

flapdoodle64 Bert I. Gordon (BIG) stands out as one of the more successful grade-Z auteurs of 1950's films, having made within a few short years a slew of monster/scifi ultra low budget films, all of which involve fantastical changes in the size of people or animals. BIG never made films as good or subversive as Roger Corman, but BIG made a lot of super-cheap films in a short time that made money, provided employment for actors, and provided material for drive-in theaters.Most of the BIG films involve people or animals that become giants, but this one involves a mad toy-maker who shrinks people so as to fulfill some kind of weird personal fetish. There is a crisis point about 2/3 way through this film where Mad Scientist Hoyt decides he must kill his shrunken pets...there is a hint of genuine horror at this point, and I was reminded of the real-life horror the Andrea Yates case, herself guilty of infanticide and simulatanously a victim of both poor mental health and fundamentalist religion. BIG borrows heavily here, from sources as wide-ranging as the Bride of Frankenstein to The Incredible Shrinking Man, as his visuals go. As far as BIG's patented FX techniques go, this is one of his more refined pieces, along with War of the Collosil Beast.Eternally geriatric John Hoyt, who was good in 'When Worlds Collide' and as Gene Roddenberry's original choice for the doctor of the starship Enterprise, plays the mad villain, and does a fine job of it. Hoyt's performance holds the film together, and despite the mad scientist schtick, he is ultimately more engaging than John Agar, to whom I have assigned the title World's Most Unlikable Actor.This is standard, mid-grade BIG fare, which is to say, an enjoyable waste of time for those who enjoy Drive-In era films. The story is not terribly complicated, and I think BIG padded things out so that this film would have sufficient running time for theatrical release, otherwise it could have been done as an episode of the Twilight Zone.BIG made this film for peanuts. Ten years after its release, TV schlockmeister Irwin Allen tweaked the concept slightly, and made the series 'Land of the Giants,' which at the time was the most expensive TV show ever produced, and ultimately much more tiresome than this quaint artifact.