Attack of the Puppet People

A lonely doll-maker shrinks people in order to have them keep him company in Bert I. Gordon’s 1958 film. Decent performances help counteract a plodding script and special effects of varying quality. 5/10

Attack of the Puppet People. 1958, USA. Directed & produced by Bert I. Gordon. Written by George Worthing Yates & Bert I Gordon. Starring: John Agar, John Hoyt, June Kenney, Michael Mark, Ken Miller, Laurie Mitchell, Marlene Willis, Jack Kosslyn. IMDB: 5.2/10. Letterboxd: 2.7/5. Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Metacritic: N/A.

Sally Reynolds (June Kenney) takes up a job as a receptionist with the ageing, kindly, but slightly creepy doll maker Mr. Franz (John Hoyt), and soon falls in love with travelling salesman Bob Westley (John Agar). However, she grows suspicious as she realises that her predecessor Janet (Jean Moorhead) and several other people connected to Franz have gone mysteriously missing. So when Bob asks her to marry her and move out to St. Louis with him, she jumps at the opportunity. The next day, Franz informs her that Bob has been calling, and left for St. Louis without her. Suspicious, Sally snoops around and finds a new doll which looks just like Bob, placed in a glass display tube next several other, extremely life-like, dolls.

Thus begins Attack of the Puppet People, directed directed by the notorious Mr. B.I.G., Bert I. Gordon, and written by George Worthing Yates from a story treatment by Gordon. It was released by American International Pictures as a double bill with Gordon’s own The War of the Colossal Beast in April, 1958.

Police sergeant Paterson (Jack Kosslyn), initially dismisses Sally’s claims that Franz has turned Bob into a doll, but when she points out that several people have gone missing, he decides to pay Franz a visit. However, Franz is able to convince the police that Sally just has an over-active imagination. After this, he confronts Sally and uses a shrinking machine to turn her small. She wakes up wearing a napkin, and Franz explains to her that he is lonely after his wife left him, and can’t stand the thought of more of his “people”friends” leaving him alone. He then brings out the tube with Bob inside, explaning that he keeps his “dolls” in a sleeping state with the help of a knock-out capsule. He says that the two should be happy to have been turned small, as they can now enjoy life without any mundane trouble, as he keeps them fed and clothed and always throws them a party when they are out and awake.

With that said, he brings out more of his “tiny friends” and serves cake and champagne from doll-size utensils and put on a rock record for the youngsters to enjoy themselves to. The friends incluce teenie boppers Stan and Laurie (Ken Miller and Marlene Willis), Georgia (Laurie Mitchell) and military man Mac (Scott Peters). The four seem to have consigned to their fates, but Bob and Sally convince them to try and escape.

They see their chance when Franz gets a visit from his old friend, marionette performer Emil (Michael Mark), who keeps him busy in the front room. The mini people first tru to call the police, but the police receptionist can’t hear their tiny voiced over the music. The three men then decide to perform a daring climbing operation over the gigantic furniture to reverse the process on Franz’ miniaturisation machine. However, Franz returns before they are able to conclude the procedure.

But — sergeant Paterson isn’t done yet, but returns to Franz with renewed suspicions, as he has learned that Bob has never arrived to St. Louis. Franz realises that the jig is up, and decides that rather than spending the rest of his life alone in prison, he is going to kill himself – but not alone. He plans on taking all his little friends with him to the grave. But not before a farewell party and a private marionette show at the theatre. He packs the little people in a briefcase and has them perform in a re-enactment of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde in the marionette theatre. But after dosing him with his own knock-out serum, Sally and Bob escape, and run through the concrete jungle toward Franz’s lab, chased by a giant rat and a snarling dog. Franz eventually takes up the chase, but when arriving at his lab, he is detained by an inquisitive brownie girl scout (June Jocelyn), just enough for Sally and Bob to turn themselves into normal size. Bob brushes Franz aside and tells him that he is going to the police. Desolate, Franz cries: “Please don’t leave me! I’ll be alone.”

Background & Analysis

Since 1954, producer/writer/director/special effects creator Bert I. Gordon, with the help of wife and colleague Flora Gordon, had made a handful of movies about giant lizards, insects and people, as grandiosely ambitious as they were cheap. However, in October, 1957, he was about to start production on one of his most successful films, with the opposite premise, tiny people. Of course, this was partly a way to try to cash in on another hit film that had come out that year, Universal’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, review). By now, Gordon had a working relationship with the studio that knew best of any Hollywood outfit how to make and market exploitation movies to the teen audience, American International Pictures. AIP execs hired Gordon to produce and direct the follow-up to his 1957 movie The Amazing Colossal Man (review), which became War of the Colossal Beast, and Attack of the Puppet People, both filmed back-to-back in the fall of 1957.

As usual, Bert Gordon wrote the story outline of the film. For the screenplay, he hired George Worthing Yates, a seasoned writer of thrillers and science fiction movies, who had also penned The Amazing Colossal Man. 1957-1958 were busy years in SF for Yates, as he wrote seven science fiction films during the period. In the fall of 1957, he was writing Attack of the Puppet People, War of the Colossal Beast and The Flame Barrier almost back-to-back.

Attack of the Puppet People is an unusual Bert I. Gordon film inasmuch as it is more of a character-based drama than a simple monster shenanigan. In the centre of it all is Mr. Franz, a likewise unususal “mad scientist”, as he is not performing experiments with designs of world domination on his mind. Franz is, in a way, a sympathetic character, lonely and socially awkward, who can’t stand the idea of the people he likes disappearing from his life – so he turns them into miniature friends instead. In a way, Franz has the mind of a child, and actually seems to think – or at least tries to convince himself – that he is doing the people he shrinks a favour, offering a life of ease and pleasure in the company of him and their tiny friends. A life of eternal tea parties, so to speak.

Unfortunately it would have taken a more sophisticated writer than Yates – and a more sophisticated director than Gordon – to really make anything of these themes. Franz never confronts the social reclusion and possession complex that his wife’s rejection has caused. It is built up as a motivation for his actions, but doesn’t develop into a character arc. In The Incredible Shrinking Man, it was the protagonist’s personal journey and transformation, more, really, than the physical transformation, that gave the film its power. In Attack of the Puppet People, Franz is the driving force and the only fleshed-out character, and by focusing on his journey, the film could have lifted itself out of the B-movie quagmire in which it now bobs. But of course, telling sophisticated stories was not the raison d’etre of AIP.

Gordon and Yates also miss out on the film’s obvious exploitation potential in regards to sex. Franz is, essentially, creating substitutes for his wife – dolls that are his to possess and dominate. From Tinkerbell to Playboy’s Femlins, tiny nude ladies have always been a popular male fantasy. We have recently reviewed the French sex comedy Nude in his Pocket (1957, review), with that exact premise, and Terror from the Year 5000 (1958, review), loosely inspired by Waldemar Kaempffertt‘s short story Bottle Baby, about a small naked woman appearing in the vacuum glass of a scientist. But the obvious sexual motivation for Franz’s actions are deliberately omitted by Gordon, a filmmaker who tended to shy away from sexual content – that is, until he found himself directing sex comedies in the 80s. AIP naturally insisted on a couple of exploitable shots, so we get one shot of Georgia bathing in a coffee can, and the scene in which Sally wakes up wearing a napkin. But these are clinically shot and Gordon refuses to play up the sex angle.

Doll makers creating miniature people for sinister purposes can be traced back at least to Fitz-James O’Brien’s 1859 short story The Wondersmith, an inspiration for the much better known 1932 novel Burn Witch Burn by Abraham Merritt, which served as a very loose inspiration for Tod Browning’s 1936 movie The Devil-Doll (review), in which scientists create miniature people that they use for burglary. Tiny “homunculi” also featured in James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, review), from which Gordon’s idea of small people kept in glass tubes is obviously lifted, and 1940’s Dr. Cyclops (review), which feels like the film most closely related to Attack of the Puppet People. Both films feature a group of people that are shrunk by a mad scientist and spend the film trying to escape their tormentor – be it that Franz is a much more sympathetic antagonist than Dr. Cyclops’ Dr. Thorkel.

Gordon’s feeble grasp of science, and his disinterest in the actual – theoretical – process of miniaturisation, is gleefully apparent in Attack of the Puppet People. Franz explains that the process is “quite simple, really”: his machine is based on the princioe of an ordinary image processor; the further away from the screen the projector is, the larger the image, and vice versa. So it’s just a matter of disintegrating living human beings on a molecular level, and then putting them back together again in desired size. Quite simple, really, especially since Franz’s long experience as a manufacturer of plastic dolls would have given him all the know-how he needs about molecular disintegration and reconstitution of human beings. This is perhaps not the dumbest science explanation in a 50s SF movie, but at least it is not far from it.

Bert Gordon is famous for his pocket-money special effects, preferring an in-camera bi-pack process for matte shots that he developed himself, rather than the standard, more expensive and time-consuming, matte process. This process resulted in effects shots of terrible quality, with the matted image often over-exposed or semi-translucent, and/or with chunky matte lines. Gordon was certainly aware of the limitations of this process, and therefore often used other, cruder effects that were nonetheless less susceptive to these quality problems – such as rear projection, and very often split-screen. Or, as in Beginning of the End (1957, review), in which he portrayed giant grasshoppers simply by placing the grasshoppers on a printed and blown-up photography.

For the most part, the effects in Attack of the Puppet People hold up better than in most of his films, because he relies less on matte shots and more on split-screen and practical effects, such as large sets and props. The giant sets are good, with much of the film taking place on a giant workbench with assorted bric-a-brac, and there’s a giant door and a drawer desk. The actors interact with props designed and manufactured by AIP’s resident monster and prop makers Paul and Jackie Blaisdell. There’s a giant platter with cups and saucers, a large ball of yarn, a coffee can, a napkin, a champagne bottle, scissors, a knife, paint cans, a paper airplane, a giant telephone, a matchbox, a razor, etc. The telephone was borrowed from a phone company. The Blaisdells was also responsible for creating the tubes that Franz keeps his “friends” in and the briefcase which he uses to transport them. In many cases, the props had to be created in two different sizes – large for the puppet people to interact with, and small for Franz and the rest of the actors to interact with. Paul Blaisdell also built both a life-size and a giant Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde marionette.

The scenes with the giant sets and props hold up really well, credit must be given to the Blaisdells and the set builders for being able to create such a large number of special sets and props on what must have been a small budget and tight schedule. When Franz interacts with the puppet people Gordon primarily uses split-screen, which eliminates his usual exposure problems. The split-screen is a bit shaky, but not so much that it bothers the viewer. The climactic race through the streets in the end, however, is full of usually dreadful Gordon effects, mostly mismatched rear-screen projections and a few terrible matte shots of a cat and a rat. The rat is big as a dog compared to a car it rushes by, and has almost inch-thick matte lines.

When actor John Hoyt handles the tubes with the dolls made from the lead actors, they actually look quite good a first glance. However, a second look reveals that they are not dolls at all, but simply photo cutouts of the actors, slightly curved and carefully held by Hoyt at an angle that doesn’t give away the illusion – something he doesn’t always manage to do.

John Hoyt’s performance can’t in all honesty be described as good. Hoyt was a respected character actor, but was more at home in sinister roles. He reportedly enjoyed playing the mild-mannered, seemingly kindly Mr. Franz, affecting a reasonably believable “European” accent. But he overplays Franz’s timidness to the point of absurdity, even while giving an understated performance. Nevertheless, his sincerity catches on, and once you’ve become accustomed to his caricatured performance, he starts growing on you, and he alone carries this film. Milquetoast leading man John Agar turns in another bland but competent performance as Bob, and June Kenney is OK as Sally. Michael Mark as marionette puppeteer Emil gets what may well have been the biggest role in his carrer, and illustrates why he was consigned to bit-parts. The rest of the cast play their small caricature parts as well as can be expected considering the script and direction. Among the faces are Ken Miller, who starred in Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957, review) and Laurie Mitchell, who played the title role in Queen of Outer Space (1958). This was also the first role of child actress Susan Gordon, the director’s daughter, playing one of the girl scouts. Gordon was a last-minute replacement when one of the other girls got sick.

As per usual, Bert Gordon’s direction is nondescript. Almost the entire story takes place in the doll factory, consisting of three rooms. Gordon had a top-notch cinematographer in hand, Ernest Laszlo, who went on to eight Oscar nominations and one win, but he is not able to give any lift to this low-budget production either, filming everything in a flat, uninteresting light. Albert Glasser provides a blaring jazzy/rocky score that becomes quite intrusive at times. The low-point in the film is when one of the puppet people, Laurie (Marlene Willis) breaks out into song. Not that the song itself is particularly bad – it actually sounds like something that could have been on the radio at the time. It was written by Glasser and Don Ferris, the band leader for Red Skelton’s houseband for 30 years, with lyrics by Gordon’s assistant Henry Schrage. Willis has a good singing voice – and she’s such a bad actor that it’s clear she’s in the film for her pipes, but as always in these films, the the song number is out of place and just grinds the movie to a halt. The song is called “You’re My Living Doll” and was re-released in 2003 on a CD called Jeepers Creepers, on which a number of Broadway performers sang songs from old horror movies. The song was actually performed by Susan Gordon on the record.

Attack of the Puppet People is a rather sympathetic little film, largely thanks to its unusual, creepily sympathetic villain, and the performance of John Hoyt. Despite the fact that it misses all its opportunities to explore the possible themes provided by the setup, the script by George Worthing Yates carries the forward in an acceptable manner, and Yates creates an entertaining film, despite a few dips in energy. If you’re looking for a piece of breezy, cheesy 50s SF entertainment, this is as good as any.

Reception & Legacy

The working title of the movie was “The Fantastic Puppet People”, in line with The Incredible Shrinking Man and The Amazing Colossal Man, but AIP executive James Nicholson didn’t think it had enough panache, so it was released as Attack of the Puppet People, in line with AIP’s Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957, review). This title is somewhat misleading, as the puppet people never attack anyone, but this was more a rule than an exception. In the UK, it was released as Six Inches Tall It was released in the beginning of April, 1958, as a double bill with Gordon’s own War of the Colossal Beast, and brought AIP a good profit.

The movie got decent reviews upon release. Charles Stinton at the Los Angeles Times thought it was “rather well made minor-key science fiction”, and said that Charles Worthing Yates‘ script was “several cuts above the average in this genre”. British Monthly Film Bulletin called it “amusing and intriguing”, but noted that it would have benefited from a more ruthless cutting.

Harrison’s Reports illustrates the interchangeability of the AIP titles, calling the movie “War of the Puppet People”. Nevertheless, the magazine gave the film a good review: “Much imagination has gone into the story’s treatment, and, thanks to the exceptionally good special effects work, the action holds one in tense suspense”. Motion Picture Daily called it “a rather imaginative story, peopled with convincing histrionics, and astonishing special effects”. The Film Bulletin complimented Bert I. Gordon for “creating a touch of real suspense here and there and generally bringing off the slight-of-hand adventures with a batty kind of interest”.

Today, Attack of the Puppet People has a 5.2/10 audience rating on IMDb, and a 2.7/5 rating on Letterboxd.

Bill Warren in his book Keep Watching the Skies! has few good things to say about the film: “Attack of the Puppet People is a lethargic, drab and inconclusive little picture, John Hoyt’s performance and one or two scenes make it make ot more watchable than most of Bert Gordon’s films, but it is also lacking in excitement and real interest”. Brian Senn in Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! is significantly more positive: “Technical faults aside, the film offers up an offbeat alternative to the many monster-on-the-loose movies of the 1950s. With some impressive props, an unusual storyline and an excellent central performance from John Hoyt as the sympathetic villain, Attack of the Puppet People remains one of Bert I. Gordon’s better endeavors.”

Dave Sindelar at Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings writes: ” I just wish the script was better, because it had possibilities; as it is, it falls short of what it could have accomplished.” His sentiments are echoed by Glenn Erickson at Trailers from Hell: “Attack of the Puppet People is a bizarre opportunity mostly missed, not because it’s silly but because it’s too tame — it doesn’t take any of its interesting ideas far enough.” Kevin Lyons at EOFFTV Reviews concludes: “Although it’s a likable enough bit of fluff, Attack of the Puppet People is like a lot of Gordon‘s work – a serviceable enough idea in search of characters, logic and a decent storyline.”

The film’s most lasting legacy might be its connection to the Watergate scandal. In 1972, members of Richard Nixon’s re-election committee broke into the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate hotel complex to plant microphones, but were caught red-handed by the police. The reason they got caught was that their lookout was so distracted by a movie he was watching on TV that he failed to notice the police car driving up. The movie was Attack of the Puppet People.

Cast & Crew

I have written at length about Bert and Flora Gordon elsewhere, so if you’re interested in learning more, you can, for example, head over to my review of Beginning of the End. In short, Bert I. Gordon and his wife Flora Gordon were a two-person all-round production crew, with Bert often co-writing, producing and directing his low-budget films, with a great deal of help from Flora. Flora has been described as an all-round production manager, doing everything from catering to production administration and generally keeping people happy on set. Bert is best known for his garden-variety special effects, often done in his own garage. Here, Flora was also a crucial collaborator, even if she often went uncredited. Bert Gordon specialised in all things giant, making good on his initials B.I.G. He was active as a producer and director all the way up to the late 80s, even making a comeback in 2015, but is probably best known for his string of black-and-white low-budget science fiction movies produced from the mid- to late 50s, starting with King Dinosaur (review) in 1955 and culminating in The Amazing Colossal Man (review) and its sequel War of the Colossal Beast, both made in 1958.

Flora Gordon worked on all of her husband’s movies between 1955 and their divorce in 1979. After that she struck out on her own (as Flora Lang) as a production manager on a handful of feature and TV movies, and worked as the unit production manager on the successful soap opera Dynasty between 1981 and 1985. She was one of the founding members of the Women’s Committee at the Directors Guild of America.

Few actors are as synonymous with 50s science fiction as John Agar, which is ironic, since he spent most of his career trying to escape his typecasting in genre films that was cemented during his stint with Universal in the mid-50s, starting with Revenge of the Creature (1955, review). Agar was already 10 years into a career which was mostly defined by his marriage to Shirley Temple when he signed on with Universal, hoping to become a serious leading man. However, the studio were grooming other stars, and that he was at best number 10 on the list, and was instead offered the studio’s monster movies, which he had no interest in doing, so after two years he quit, although found no better success escaping mole men, alien brains or invisible invaders elsewhere. Nevertheless, Agar always brought a level of professionalism to his work, and his somewhat bland but good-natured performances seemed to strike a chord with teenage audiences, or at least with low-budget film producers. For a lot more on John Agar, see for example my review of The Brain from Planet Arous (1957, review).

Born in 1901, screenwriter George Worthing Yates seems to have been writing short stories and treatments as early as the twenties, when his one of his westerns were adapted into film. From 1938 to 1954 he contributed to about a dozen screenplays, mostly B westerns, but also crime dramas and adventure films. In the thirties and forties he released a handful of mystery novels, sometimes working under pseudonym with another author. He found his stride with the first draft of the giant ant film Them! (1954, review), and after that worked almost exclusively in science fiction. He did a draft for George Pal’s and Byron Haskin’s semi-flop Conquest of Space (1955, review), but not much more than a few basic ideas of his were used for the finished film. He then contributed to such films as It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955, review) and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957, review), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), The Flame Barrier (1958), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), Space Master X-7 (1958), Frankenstein 1970 (1958) and Earth vs. the Spider (1958), making him perhaps the most prolific sci-fi screenwriter of the late fifties.

John Hoyt is perhaps best remebered today for playing the evil industrialist in George Pal’s epic When Worlds Collide (1951, review). A respected and prolific character actor, he has some SF pedigree, as he appeared in such sci-fi films Lost Continent (1951, review) Attack of the Puppet People (1958), X (1963), The Time Travellers (1964), Panic in the City (1968) and the soft-porn spoof Flesh Gordon (1974). He also appeared in a number of sci-fi series, and was almost part of the main cast of Star Trek, as he appeared in the first pilot for the series, which was turned down by NBC. He also appeared in an episode of the original Battlestar Galactica series in 1979. 

June Kenney’s mom set her on the path for showbiz in her childhood, curling her to dancing and singing lessons, and in her late teens, she moved to Hollywood in the early 50s, doing odd jobs, Playhouse theatre and a handful of small roles in movies and TV. It was Roger Corman who gave Kenney her breakthrough in 1957, by casting her in the lead of the teenage delincuency movie Teenage Doll. In 1957 and 1958 Kenney was a hot ticket in the teenage market, playing leads in half a dozen AIP movies, including Bert. I. Gordon’s Attack of the Puppet People (1958) and Earth vs. the Spider (1958). She continued in a few TV appearances and a couple more B-movies in the early 60s, before deciding enough was enough and took a job reading commercials in radio.

Michael Mark plays John Hoyt’s old friend Emil in Attack of the Puppet People. Mark was long a Universal stock actor, and appeared in four original Universal Frankenstein films: Frankenstein (1931, review), Son of Frankenstein (1939, review), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942, review) and House of Frankenstein (1944, review). The first film had him doing one of the film’s pivotal – albeit small – role, as the father of little Maria, who is accidentally drowned by the Frankenstein creature played by Boris Karloff. The image of Mark carrying the limp Maria in his arms, demanding vengeance, is film legend. He also had barely noticeable parts in sci-fis like 6 Hours to Live (1932) and Return of the Fly. Then suddenly he was upgraded to substantial supporting roles in Attack of the Puppet People (1958), and The Wasp Woman (1959).

Blonde charmer Ken Miller was another young actor who enjoyed a brief 15 minutes of fame during the explosion of teen movies in the late 50s. Like June Kenney, he started appearing in minor movie and TV roles in the early 50s, but was catapulted to his minor fame by American International Pictures. In Miller’s case, it was in a memorable supporting role as the happy-go-lucky prankster friend of Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, review), in which he sang the terrible song “Eenie-Meeney-Miney-Mo” out of sync with the background music (the editor’s fault, not Miller’s). In Attack of the Puppet People (1958) he was spared from singing, but instead had to do a rather embarrassing dance routine with Marlene Willis, in the way that middle-aged movie directors thought teenagers did in the 50s. Miller bravely fought his juvenile delinquent typecasting with small roles in war and drama films, but when his only substantial casting proved to be in Surf Party in 1964, he evidently decided to give up. Miller also had a minor career as a recording artist, with singles like “Take My Tip” and “Teenage Bill of Rights”.

Marlene Willis was a naturally talented singer, who appeared in several variety and talent shows as a child, both on radio and TV, in the early 50s. She was a regular on The Swift Show Wagon and Rockin’ Rythm in 1955 and 1956, and signed her first recording contract at the age of 15 in 1957. She appeared in two singing supporting roles in movies, Regal Film’s Rockabilly Baby (1957) and AIP’s Attack of the Puppet People, and did half a dozen TV appearances in the early 60s, after which she dropped out of acting. Her recording career also never amounted to more than half a dozen singles. She continued to perform in live circuits throughout the 60s.

Laurie Mitchell, playing another one of the titular lilliputians in Attack of the Puppet People, was born Mickey Koren, and was a juvenile model before entering acting under the moniker Barbara White, both in Playhouse theatre and in small roles in film and TV in the mid-50s. Her first movie role was as one of the pleasure girls accompanying Kirk Douglas in the beginning of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954, review). In 1957, after minor roles as barmaids and “girls” she dyed her hair blonde and took a new moniker, Laurie Mitchell. She was then cast in a co-starring role in Allied Artists’ teen musical comedy Calypso Joe (1957), which evidently caught the eye of AIP, casting her in Attack of the Puppet People (1958). Later the same year, Allied Artists again took advantage of her talents, casting her as Queen Yllana of Venus in Queen of Outer Space. Almost back-to-back, she filmed Richard E. Cunha’s Missile to the Moon. Both films were basically remakes of Cat-Women of the Moon (1953, review). This was the nadir of Mitchell’s movie career, although she carved out a decent career as a TV guest performer in the 60s and 70s.

This was the first screen credit for Susan Gordon, daughter of Bert and Flora Gordon, at the time age 9. She went on to appear in small parts in a handful of other films in the late 50s and early 60s, mostly her father’s, but also became popular guest star on TV. She is perhaps best known for playing co-lead in her father’s horror movie Picture Mommy Dead (1966), after which she retired showbiz.

Janne Wass

Attack of the Puppet People. 1958, USA. Directed by Bert I. Gordon. Written by George Worthing Yates & Bert I Gordon. Starring: John Agar, John Hoyt, June Kenney, Michael Mark, Ken Miller, Laurie Mitchell, Marlene Willis, Jack Kosslyn, Scott Peters, June Jocelyn, Jean Moorhead, Susan Gordon, Hank Patterson, Bill Hickman. Music: Albert Glasser. Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo. Editing: Ronald Sinclair. Set decoration: Jack Mills. Makeup: Phillip Scheer. Special designs: Paul & Jackie Blaisdell. Special effects: Bert I. Gordon, Flora Gordon, Charles Duncan. Produced by Bert I. Gordon for American International Pictures.