Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Usamah Harvey
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Mandeep Tyson
The acting in this movie is really good.
dougdoepke
Two scientists and a crew are summoned to a jungle laboratory where a weird scientist measures people with a ruler.Poor Cyclops, he's more of a bumbler than a mastermind. But then his eyesight must be around 1000-1000. Actually, actor Dekker pretty much low-keys the role, considering how malevolent he can be, e.g. Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Among the Living (1940). Here his Cyclops is in the middle of the jungle with all this sophisticated equipment and coke bottle eyeglasses. Just what is he trying to do with his special 'shrink-em down to edible size' formula. I must have missed his Grand Plan, unless it was to feed his hungry cat on the cheap. Anyhow, the little people don't have to do much acting, just a lot of scampering while Cyclops makes a mess of the furniture.What's really arresting is not so much the storyline, but rather the special effects. I expect Paramount popped a bundle putting together some of the little people sets. Anyhow, maybe I'm as blind as Cyclops, but I couldn't spot any trick photography, which makes the whole weird thing seem more believable. Then too, there's all that talk about radium, uranium and pitchblende, all several years before the big brains turned that stuff into an A-bomb. Maybe that was his Grand Plan, after all. Actually, I thought the movie was more fun than scary, sort of like a Hollywood version of Blind Man's Bluff.
gavin6942
A mad scientist working in the South American jungle (Albert Dekker) miniaturizes his colleagues when he feels his megalomania is threatened.When I watched this I did not find it too terribly interesting, almost more of a hokey comedy with science fiction elements. But I did not realize it was from 1940. To have a film in 1940 shot in Technicolor is interesting enough, but then to be a film about shrinking people...Science fiction of the 1950s loved shrinking people and growing animals. But this film beat them all. Was it the first? I have no idea. But it mixes comedy with camera work, and also color... and even a hint of Greek mythology to boot. Viewed in the proper context, this is quite the film.
Robert J. Maxwell
Albert Dekker is a reclusive mad scientist hiding away in a laboratory in the Peruvian jungle. Boy, are three scientists back in the states surprised to get an invitation from Dekker to join him. The three surprised scientists are Charles Holton, Janice Logan, and Thomas Coley. They make the arduous journey to Peru and are joined by a lowbrow miner, Victor Kilian, for reasons the script doesn't bother to deal with. At Dekker's laboratory they meet Pedro, Frank Yaconelli, a lovable and sometimes comic Peruvian peasant. I knew the minute I saw him that he was a tostada. That's the function of minorities in movies like this. Dekker, in a padded suit and thick spectacles, greets them and asks them to look through his microscope and tell him what they see. "Iron crystals." Thank you -- and good-bye. The visitors are aghast. They made this trip just so that they could spend 30 seconds looking through Dekker's microscope? Well -- yes. The scientists are offended and curious about what's going on. They discover that Dekker has built his lab next to a super-rich vein of radium ore, which he is using in experiments that shrink living organisms. When Dekker discovers that they have discovered the nature of his discovery, he shrinks them too. Alas, he finds that his now-shrunken five human beings are beginning to grow imperceptibly back to their normal size, so he asphyxiates one, blasts another with his shotgun, and pursues the remaining three until, with pluck and ingenuity, they send Dekker tumbling into a bottomless well. They grow back to normal size and return to civilization, vowing not to tell anyone because who would believe them? Who would believe them indeed? The set designer was obviously influenced by Universal's earlier monster movies because Dekker's lab is a crumbling stone affair like Frankenstein's castle. Most of the movie consists of the tiny humans running around, trying to escape. First they are dressed in white, toga-like strips of cloth, except for the Peruvian peasant who wears what appear to be diapers. Later, they appear in designer clothes of various colors, still modeled after the Romans, nicely tailored for Janice Logan, who looks awfully cute prancing around in her little ensemble.It's too bad she's not much of an actress, but then nobody in the story is particularly magnetic. Dekker huffs and puffs and does everything but cackle like a maniac. Thomas Coley, as the male lead, is a lankylooking galoot, to borrow a phrase, whose performance is actually embarrassing. To be fair, nobody could do much with the dialog. For some reason the main players don't use contractions when they speak, so that "can't" is always "can not", and "I'll" is always "I will." I don't know how important any of that is, though, or whether it was important at all to contemporary audiences. The special effects are the thing. And considering the period, they're not too bad: mattes, rear projection, over-sized sets -- sometimes a combination of effects. Not as good as "King Kong," but still an extravaganza for the 1930s. And it's in Technicolor too. (Supervised by the ubiquitous Natalie Kalmus, who never contributed anything to Technicolor except her name.) Winton Hoch, a real scientist, had a hand in the photography. He was later to win awards with films like John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." The runaways survive all kinds of threats or, in some cases, they don't. They're attacked by cats, alligators, a berserk blind man, and they're threatened by a chicken. Only Pedro's faithful dog plays it straight with them, man's best friend after all.One wonders if the people who made "The Incredible Shrinking Man" saw this film. It's difficult to believe they didn't. The improvised togas look familiar, and there's that pet cat, Satana, who tries to eat them in a frightening scene.An amusing diversion.
MartinHafer
This is an awfully entertaining and unique film, though it does seem a bit reminiscent of THE DEVIL DOLL. Both are wonderful films about slightly mad people who have a secret for shrinking people and both excel due to exceptional special effects. However, this movie is one where the mad doctor doesn't actually intend to shrink a group of outsiders--at least not initially. A small group of people trek through the Andes to a very remote region to meet a brilliant scientist who is doing experiments with radium. However, even though they were invited, the doctor soon tells them to get lost!!! The people went through a lot to get there and are understandably irked at the doc. So, because the people refuse to leave and the doc is at heart a real jerk, he decides to use his evil shrink ray to make them all itsy-bitsy (about a pound or so each)! Now so far, the film is pretty interesting and could have degenerated into a lousy B-movie (like in ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE). However, decent writing really saved the film. Instead of the little people just running away or trying to save themselves (which they initially do), they decide to stay and fight! This really helped the film and made the shrunken people more 3-dimensional and people you could care about and root for in the film. And all this is done using what were, for the time, exceptional special effects. About the only problem, and boy is it minor, is that at one point an American Aligator attacks the little folks. Sure, they aren't native to South America, but this is such a tiny quibble, who cares?? An entertaining film for kids and adults like me who just haven't chosen to grow up!!
