Albert Dekker is one of the most memorable mad scientists in the movies in this quick sci-fi adventure story. He’s one big bald crazy turnip down in the South American jungle where he’s secretly built a radium-powered ray that shrinks people down to the size of GI Joe toys. When some fellow scientists get nosey about his work, he shrinks ’em down and pretty soon they’re fighting for their lives against hungry cats and crocodiles.
It’s an entertaining little flick and the special effects are great, but the overall pace is a bit lumpy and no other actor except Dekker gets much of a character to work with. Once they get shrunk, the good guys here barely even speak anymore. They just run around and look scared or angry. This is perhaps most notable though as the first science fiction movie shot in Technicolor, and gorgeously so. The scenes inside Dekker’s green flashing radium chamber are the most dazzling, but the whole film glows like a comic book come to life.
Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack of King Kong fame.