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.
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.