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Attack of the Puppet People

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  • Narm: It's almost impossible not to laugh when Bob angrily destroys the Dracula-style puppet in front of the distressed Franz, who for some reason does not simply reach down and push him away from it or use the strings to simply lift the doll beyond his reach. Bob's "rage" comes across as a childish tantrum and the way he flops the puppet around while tearing it apart is accidentally hysterical.
  • Nightmare Retardant: There is absolutely nothing scary about the film for even a second. At most, the idea of the film is scary—being shrunk tiny and held against your will to amuse a very cruel and lonely old man—but aside from that, there are no scares of which to be had. At most, two of them are briefly menaced by a dog, but that's all. Nothing about Franz is remotely scary considering what a fussy little man he is to begin with and while he does show some dirty feelings towards poor Sally, he still doesn't actually do much as the film's villain other than shrink them and have little garden parties for them.
  • Padding: Franz gathering the puppet people to meet Bob and Sally happens in real time. It's painful.
  • Special Effects Failure: There's a lot of obviously cardboard backdrops and set pieces; most notably, rather than using dolls for long shots, the Puppet People are shown in "stasis" in their tubes as little photo cut-outs, and are always tilted towards the camera.note  Most objects fail at properly changing size to fit the scale they're supposed to be as well — e.g., the rotary phone.


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