“Full Moon Pictures presents”

Oh God, it’s happening. I delayed for seven years, watching the occasional Dollman or Demonic Toys movie, but there are still Puppet Master sequels to watch, and eventually I must watch them.

“A Charles Band Production”

Don’t be too impressed – IMDB says Band produced 30 movies that year.

“A Joseph Tennent Film”

Since his previous Puppet Master sequel only a year earlier, director David DeCoteau had made about seven movies under various aliases.

Retro Puppetmaster

It’s so retro that Puppetmaster is one word again – a throwback to the first movie, or a misspelling due to overall franchise confusion and underpaid titles writers?

Flashbacking from 1944 to “long ago” Cairo, a sorcerer is stealing the secrets of the gods, and everyone in this temple is repeating their lines of dialogue in order to pad the scene.

Vincent Price-ish sorcerer holding scroll of forbidden secrets:

To Paris 1902, and enter flamboyant Ilsa, who is acting her heart out, and uptight Marguerite, who seems to be appearing in this movie at gunpoint and reading her lines phonetically. “Don’t go into any opium dens,” Ilsa is advised as she heads for a puppet show. She meets Young Toulon (now played by Greg Sestero, soon to become infamous in The Room) backstage when sewer-dwelling Dark City fellows hire hit men to take out a hobo after the show.

Sestero is not strangling this hobo, he’s checking for signs of life:

The prop and costume budget on this movie seems higher than the talent budget. “I understand. You’re a 3000-year-old sorcerer from Egypt and you want to teach me the secret of life.” Afzel (Jack Donner, DiCaprio’s dad in J. Edgar) shows Young Toulon how to resurrect the soul of his dead hobo friend into a mute wooden puppet with oversized arms, telling him this is the most precious power in the history of the world, which I dunno. The new wooden puppets are cool: I call them Skeletal Surgeon, Primitive Screwhead, Sergeant Cyclops and Hobo Hulk.

“It is time to act,” say the Dark City Goons, and not a moment too soon… oh, but that’s not what they meant. While Toulon is off being arrested and beaten by Ilsa’s ambassador father’s soldiers, the DCGs head to the theater and psychically murder all the puppeteers by blurring the film over their faces. Cornered, Afzel proactively blurs himself to death.

Blur-attack:

Self-blur suicide:

After all this plot and dreadful dialogue delivery, Toulon only has 30 minutes left in the movie to transfer the souls of his dead friends into the wood puppets and direct them to murder the DCGs. “We shall be avengers.” It’s actually not bad as far as origin stories go.

They set out to search the country for the Dark City Goons, but they’re standing right in the other room, so we get our first showdown straight away: the DCGs’ film-blurring powers vs. a bunch of stabby, strangley little puppets. The DCGs are dispatched by a falling chandelier, then the voice of Sutek shouts “live again,” and two of them do, with newly green-glowing hands. The remaining DCGs (their leader, the appropriately-named Stephen Blackehart, was later in Super and both Guardians of the Galaxy) decide to get to Toulon by kidnapping his girl.

Lovely Ilsa: Brigitta Dau, a voice on My Little Pony in its least-popular era:

Blackehart, probably:

Second showdown, on a train this time, where everyone talks real slow to allow the puppets time to get into position. It’s all kinda underlit and non-dramatic, so DeCoteau tries tilting the camera around to build some energy. The puppets team up on one guy and Toulon punches the other out the window. As with the rest of the Puppet Master movies, it feels like they’re desperately stretching out scenes to make a contractually-obligated runtime.

In 1944 postscript, properly aged Toulon (series fave Guy Rolfe) builds anticipation for another movie by telling his puppets that he’ll tell them what happened to the original puppets “at another time” – but it would be four long years before the clip-show Puppet Master: The Legacy, a cheap and shitty move even by this series’s standards, then came the Demonic Toys faceoff, and in the 2010s a new nazi-themed trilogy began, so I guess we’ll never know.

“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

FM made this between Puppet Masters 3 and 4, and the year after Dollman, now fully invested in Puppets, Dolls and Toys, dreaming of franchise crossovers to come.

“Screenplay by David S. Goyer”

Goyer later wrote The Puppet Masters (no relation!), the Blade movies (arguably his peak) and the latest Batman movies.

“Directed by Peter Manoogian”

Manoogian isn’t a made-up alias for Charles Band, but a guy who worked on The Howling, Trancers and Ghoulies.

Opens with POV shot of a demonic-toy and grandfather-clock-filled dream sequence, and I’m afraid the budget might be spent already. Then undercover cop Jude (Tracy Scoggins of Toy Soldiers, no relation to demonic toys, and Watchers II, which was a remake, not a sequel to Watchers) is explaining her dreams to scruffy boyfriend/partner Matt (Jeff Celentano of American Ninja 2: The Confrontation), and enter the Goyer trademark dialogue: “You got your piece? Then let’s dance.” While Matt is clumsily arresting arms dealers, he’s killed and an enraged Jude (I keep typing “Dude” by mistake) follows them into – where else? – a conveniently unlocked warehouse. As an injured criminal stumbles into a toy company, I’m checking to see how long ago Child’s Play came out, oh, was it four years before this?

Chicken Boy:

Hold up, movie is getting too action-packed this early on, so suddenly we’re asked to care about a rebel chicken delivery guy named Mark, played by Bentley “grandson of Robert” Mitchum, who also starred in hits like Nice Guys Finish Dead and Real Men Don’t Eat Gummi Bears. He is friends with the gross security guard (Pete Schrum, Santa Claus in Trancers) at the conveniently unlocked toy warehouse. After long periods of time without any toys, demonic or otherwise, finally the injured baddie (possibly Barry Lynch of The Call of Cthulhu) is killed, followed soon enough by the security guard, and we’re off. If the guard worked here for years, how come tonight the demonic toys kill him? It’s something to do with Jude the cop, her pregnancy and/or dreams. An actual kid with glowing eyes (Daniel Cerny, who’d go on to star in Children of the Corn 3 before getting involved with a movie called Bitch Slap) explains all this but I was barely listening, just caught the line “we feed off your fear” and reminisced about Ghostbusters 2.

Trick-or-treating flashback:

Intense surviving baddie (longtime stuntman Michael Russo of The Toxic Avenger and Death Wish 4) and Jude have their “you killed my partner/boyfriend” standoff extended, the chicken delivery guy helps out, and in a moment of Cube-like genius, a dirty-haired girl drops in from the air ducts. More top-notch dialogue: “I played the old houdini act on your lady friend back there, chicken boy.” Flashback to 1925 in which some lady gives a stillborn demon baby to trick or treaters. Homeless girl dies, as does the demonic jester toy, but the talking baby gets away. Did I dream it or was there some decent stop-motion for a second?

Isn’t that Bob Stoeckle of Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh?

What of the toys? Baby Oopsydaisy speaks, which was a bad move. The jester, with its long coiled tail with a rattle at the end that I only now realized was supposed to resemble a rattlesnake, and the sharp-toothed teddy bear aren’t bad, and there’s a robot tank that you don’t see too often. As opposed to most Puppet Master murders, demonic toys are slow, painful, and take teamwork. A single Puppet is a killing machine. I think it’s clear who’s going to win when these groups face off.

Jester, jack-in-the-box, whatever:

The movie is foul and stupid, and I hated watching it, and afterwards vowed to not watch any more bad movies on purpose, but writing it up days later is kinda fun, so maybe I’ll just limit to one shitty Full Moon direct-to-video possessed-toy flick per Shocktober.

I never especially wanted to see Dollman or Demonic Toys, but I definitely want to see Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, and you gotta start at the beginning. It’s a cheap and stupid little direct-to-video sci-fi flick, but it’s got its moments. The lead girl is introduced beating the hell out of a local drug dealer, and the hero is a tiny detective from another planet chasing down an evil disembodied head. And there are occasional moments of hilarity, some of them intentional (like the dialogue on Dollman’s home planet). Also, Dollman has angry violence issues, so there are bunches of bodies including an exploding henchman.

The floating head is Sproog, played by something called Frank Collision, the rogue alien doll man is Tim Thomerson, best known from the Trancers series, and the girl got a plum role in Born In East L.A. Jackie Earle Haley plays a henchman. Director Pyun has been “much vituperated against” according to his IMDB page.

Puppet Master 4

“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

FM was on fire since the last Puppet Master sequel. They’ve got a Jeffrey Combs sci-fi pic, the aforementioned Netherworld, more Trancers and Dollman and Subspecies movies, at least two dinosaur pictures, two kids movies, four or five more sci-fi movies, and Charles Band involved himself in a castle horror starring Adam Ant.

“starring Gordon Currie”

“THE Gordon Currie,” you might be asking, “twelfth-billed in Friday The 13th Part 8?” That’s the guy. He’d go on to appear in the intriguing but disappointing Waydowntown and play opposite Kirk Cameron in the Left Behind movies.

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“Screenplay by…”

Holy crap, five writers! This is gonna be great! Among them, four are mainly known from this and part five, but Douglas Aarniokoski broke out into directing, assisting Robert Rodriguez and Terry Gilliam before helming his own Highlander sequel.

“directed by Jeff Burr”

Experienced horror director Burr had recently helmed Stepfather II and Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. IMDB reviewers rave: “Okay!” “Worth a look!” “Good enough!”

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Judging from the glowing metal box during the credits, it seems Puppet Master might be trying to rip off props from the Hellraiser series. Oh and now they’re stealing the short glowing-eyed druids from Phantasm. “It is known that those in the upworld are close to discovering our secret, the secret Andre Toulon stole from us those many years ago.” You can tell we’ve got supernatural underground beasties here, and an attempt to get all mythological and use fancy english. Should be no trouble with five writers.

A girl in a lab is working on “The Omega Project” (not the jazz jam band, the “hot nude babes” website or the Japanese film production company – it’s something involving robot arms and colored blocks), receives a package containing a murderous alien puppet, then gets clawed to death. This is one of those movies where every time something happens, we’re gonna see the druids watching it in their magic pool of liquid. Same thing happens ten minutes later to her colleage in another lab. Are subterranean aliens hoping to harness the power of robotic arms moving colored blocks??

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Enter our star Rick, a laser-tag-playing robot programmer prone to talking into a microcassette-corder who lives in the ol’ hotel with his doll Hook, until a visit from his girlfriend Susie, her hot psychic friend Lauren and some asshole named Cameron, Rick’s robotics rival. The artificial-intelligence thing is a nice addition, but come on movie, another psychic in the same hotel? And did they shoot this through a mirror? What is all this glare on the lens? A Bob Vila joke right next to a SCUD missile joke – timely.

Cameron, R.I.P.
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The kids happen upon Toulon’s trunk as Puppet-Toulon lurks outside. They resurrect the killer puppets with Toulon’s formula, marvel at them for a minute, then go off to bed when lightning knocks out the power. Good idea! C&L pull out the series’ first ouija board while Rick plays laser tag (no shit) with Tiny and Drill. The ouija opens a gateway through which more alien demons appear and mangle Cameron to death.

Laser Puppet Master would have been a great title:
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Guy who plays a security guard appeared the following year in crappy Donald Sutherland flick The Puppet Masters – no relation!

The “magic to create life” is in a numeric formula on Rick’s computer. Decapitron’s head turns into a cameo by Toulon. Apparently the puppets are no longer mad at him from the events of Puppet Masters 1 & 2. I think at this point we’ve “rebooted” and are pretending those two didn’t exist. I think when Toulon, speaking through the unconscious third girl, says “you must transcend linearity,” he is telling us to forget about parts 1 & 2 and just go with it. Physics according to the movie: laser tag guns can wound alien puppets, light travels at around one foot per second, and even though puppets are made of cloth and wood they can still make kung-fu punching sounds when they collide

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Toulon dubs Rick the new puppet master, the evil alien is defeated (but not destroyed), and we proceed to part five, which I’m guessing was shot right around the same time.


Puppet Master 5

“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

In between parts 4 and 5: a Lovecraft adaptation, some sexy business, more sequels, and Shrunken Heads from Richard Elfman, director of Forbidden Zone.

Aaand we’ve got the same director and stars as part 4. Confirmed, shot at the same time.

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“Kind of a queer doll for a grown boy to have.” That’s Duane Whitaker, who appeared the same year in Pulp Fiction as one of the dudes who ties up Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames. Since then he’s been in both Rob Zombie sequels. A real movie star in a Puppet Master flick!

Dreeeeam seeeeequence:
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We join Rick at the police station where he’s being arrested for all the deaths from part 4, then it’s on to the first recap of the series, greatest hits from part 4 (there’s some laser tag, of course).

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Some dullsville setup: the new head of Rick’s robotics company is pulling some weapons-dealing trickery, hires the lamest thugs to break into the hotel and steal the puppets. Meanwhile, with no Phantasm monk assistants left, the giant underground puppet transfers his soul into a demon puppet in a drawn-out bit of hammery, saying junk like “drink deep from the fountain of evil, my child.”

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Ever since trying to gain some goodwill by fighting nazis in part III, the series has been going out of its way to bring Bad Guys into the series to become puppet victims, not just innocent psychics. It’s okay for Jester to nail one of the petty thieves in the balls with a meat hammer, but the demon puppet does all the real killing. These guys aren’t evil enough to deserve Death By Jester, just some slapstick. Hey, it’s Torch! Was he even in part 4? The Demon shoots ghost lasers at Torch until Six-Shooter wounds it. Aaaand Rick talks to his computer which is channeling the now-hospitalized psychic girl from part 4.

The filmmakers apparently confused computer code with German:
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Timely references: a gross country guy uses the phrase “achy-breaky”

Up to the 65-minute mark it’s kind of boring. The thieves’ deaths are all demon-scratches and red lighting, and as before, everyone makes a huge deal of Decapitron, who doesn’t even seem all that cool to me. Oh wait, I looked down to type this and now Doctor Whoever, the weaponry robotics bigwig, is fighting Rick with a giant wrench in the elevator. Oh good, Torch is unharmed from the laser hit, and he and his buddies don’t take kindly to the bespectacled man who just konked out their friend.

Decapitron is not cool:
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Epic (well, three-minute) puppet battle follows. All puppets survive, the demon doesn’t, happy epilogue. The movies are becoming disappointingly tame and formulaic. Fortunately they changed things up in the next movie, but unfortunately it’s the worst-rated in the series.

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Puppet Master 6

“Full Moon Pictures presents”

Our six favorite puppets are in cages while a new fake Toulon runs off and burn/buries another cage on a cool-looking night-and-fog set. Hope he buried Decapitron (update: no, it was the deformed puppet body of his former assistant, but Decap isn’t in this sequel anyhow). Lots of editing and fancy angles… we may be in the hands of a Raimi disciple.

The poster is for a mid-60’s Italian swords-and-sandals flick:
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“Curse of the Puppet Master”

So we’re done with the sequel numbering. A montage of puppet scenes from earlier movies plays over the credits, and it’s not for recap purposes like in part five – just good ol’ footage recycling.

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“directed by Victoria Sloan”

This is actually David DeCoteau from part III. Why would the guy who has only ever made bad movies use an alias for a bad movie? In fact, his previous Puppet Master entry was one of the good ones – you’d think he’d want some fan recognition. Maybe the DeCoteau table at the conventions was getting too hot. From the writer of Hellraiser Deader, ugh.

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“Another Magoo goes to college” says the fake Toulon to his daughter. So the lead’s name is gonna be Magoo, huh? And now a guy named Tank whom I recognize from the video box. Picked-on sensitive Tank (Josh Green, who made it to 42nd-billed-in-Pearl-Harbor before throwing in the towel) makes fancy wood figurines, gets hired by puppet-crazy Mr. Magoo, introduced to our gang, who are let out of their cages for dinner. Movie doesn’t look so bad but this is some clumsy-ass dialogue.

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Magoo bought the puppets at auction? So much for the long careful setup stringing the sequels together. Oh um Magoo (George Peck – best known as “man with luggage” in a Susan Sarandon flick) is being questioned by the cops about the disappearance of his previous assistant in an extremely drawn-out scene. Come to think of it, 30 minutes have passed and nothing has happened (pre-credits foggy mystery doesn’t count).

Magoo wants the boy to make a 444-piece puppet – that’s 2/3rds of the devil. Maybe it comes with a 222-piece accessory pack. One piece is the size of his hand – the puppet will be as big as the house!

“What is man except a being at war with himself.”
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Jane Magoo (Emily Harrison – the best actor here – who went on to play “girl” in a David Spade film) is back and there’s some kissing and what not. Tank roughhouses with hooligans. Mr. Magoo pep-talks Tank. The last 30 minutes of this movie had better be pretty cool.

A hooligan broke Tiny! Puppets are sent after the hooligan and we have our first groin-drilling of the series. I am liking the drunkenly tilting camera. An investigation follows and our puppet friends become cop killers. The effects in this movie ain’t worth a damn – no stop-motion or cleverness, just out-of-frame hands waving puppets around, and sometimes strings I can see.

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Magoo turns Tank into a way silly Max Headroom robot and the puppets, who were totally cool with all this a second ago, decide to kill him. Roll credits? I like the bonkers ending and the short runtime, but let’s face it, I’m just trying to stay positive over a turd of a movie.

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I am Puppet Master’d out, so there will be a very long delay before I move on to part 7…

Puppetmaster

“Full Moon Productions presents…”

According to IMDB, this was Full Moon’s first feature. They’d go on to make some of my favorite direct-to-video absurd low-budget semi-horror movies of the early 90’s, including Stuart Gordon’s Pit and the Pendulum, the Louisiana sex/devil cult story Netherworld, and many Puppet Master sequels, plus movies that screamed “rent us” from the new-release shelf with names like Trancers, Subspecies and Dollman, but never quite seemed worth the three bucks.

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“A David Schmoeller film”

Or more accurately, a David Schmoeller VHS tape (were any Puppet Master movies released to cinemas?). He wrote and directed a Klaus Kinski torture film called Crawlspace, which I meant to watch last week instead of Pin… but foolishly did not.

“Puppetmaster”

Titles were re-capitalized to Puppet Master for the sequels, maybe to avoid confusion with Hsiao-hsien Hou’s acclaimed drama The Puppetmaster (whose runtime is longer than any two Puppet Master sequels put together).

“starring Paul Le Mat”

One could argue that Le Mat is an actual star, having played a title role in Demme’s Melvin and Howard and third-billed in American Graffiti. I didn’t find him photogenic, hence no screenshot… oh wait, this might be him screaming:

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“and introducing Robin Frates”

This was pretty much the last time anyone heard from Robin Frates, except those who saw Schmoeller’s follow-up film The Arrival (not the Charlie Sheen one), which sounds appealingly like a sort of alien vampire Benjamin Button.

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“special appearance by Barbara Crampton”

Star of Re-Animator and From Beyond! You’d think if her appearance was so special, she could’ve been given a better role than “woman at carnival.”

The theme music is nicer than this movie deserves.

Budget tip #1: Low-to-ground POV shots require no actual puppet effects, and are fun to watch. These are just great, the camera running behind feet and cars, jumping over suitcases and across piano keys.

William Hickey (Wise Blood, Prizzi’s Honor) is Toulon, the inspecifically-foreign-accented titular magician. He’s been discovered by sinister nazis, so he hides Happy/Sad Clown, Oriental Mustache and Hook-hand behind a wall panel and bites a bullet. The end.

The short-lived Toulon #1:
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No wait! “Yale University, present day.” A dumpy Paul Le Mat dreams in color that he is dreaming in black and white while being attacked by leeches (I hope that’s exactly how the scene read in the script). Is Yale a carnival, or have we changed location to a carnival? Enter “woman at carnival,” visiting a psychic (Irene Miracle of Inferno) who lacks a stereotypical gypsy accent. Ooh they’re playing the ol’ scam-gypsy-who-sees-real-visions card as Barbara dreams up a puppet attack.

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“I want you to recreate in your mind your wildest sexual fantasy.” Two sex-crazed psychic researchers (Balding Ponytail and Too Much Lipstick) call Le Mat (on the phone, disappointingly) to arrange a meeting at the hotel where Toulon died, where they’re met by their cynical psychic friend, their dead friend Neil, a crabby Mews Small (Scott Baio’s mom in Zapped!) and introducing Robin Frates.

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While our psychic friends creep around the place seeing visions and acting eccentric, Tiny (little puppet head and human hands emerging from a ribbed sweater) kills the peeping crabby lady and plays games with dead Neil. In true Friday the 13th fashion, the puppets go after the sexually active couple first – Too Much Lipstick is killed offscreen by Drill Head and a female puppet barfs leeches onto her tied-up husband. Tiny, boasting some impressive stop-motion, wounds the cynical drunk girl then Hook finishes her off in the elevator (if they were aiming for a Dressed To Kill reference, the editor wasn’t cooperating).

Dead Neil explains: “Metaphysically speaking, I killed myself, and using the techniques of the old puppet master I brought myself back to life.” But then Neil stupidly disrespects the killer puppets and they gang up on him, brutalizing a rubber hand before breaking out the drill and leeches (honestly the leeches aren’t very scary).

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Written and produced by Full Moon head Charles Band, who had produced everything from Laserblast and Robot Holocaust to Stuart Gordon’s Dolls, Trancers and Ghoulies, TerrorVision and Troll, Clive Barker’s disowned first two pictures, and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama – pretty much everything I watched on HBO at 2am in 1992. Effects by oscar-nominated Dave Allen, who worked on The Stuff, The Howling and Equinox.

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Puppet Master 2

Hook, Clown, Drill, Tiny and Leech Woman resurrect Toulon using a magic potion before the credits even roll. This one is gonna be good.

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“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

In the two years between the original and the sequel, Full Moon and Charles Band have involved themselves in a parallel-universe thriller, a sexy fantasy-horror starring Sherilyn Fenn (premiering the same week as Twin Peaks), Stuart Gordon’s Robot Jox and its Gordon-unaffiliated sequel

“directed by David Allen”

So they’ve handed the franchise right over to the effects crew. Part II is from the writer of Subspecies and cinematographer of Screwball Hotel (I’ll bet that’s not how they sold it on the poster).

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A U.S. government paranormal research van is poking around the old hotel, bearing bearded Lance (Demonic Toys), dark-haired Wanda, jokey cynic Patrick, serious Carolyn (of Robot Jox 2) and older new agey “truth comes from feeling” Camille (Frightmare, Night Shift). They tell us Paul Le Mat survived the first movie but wanted too much money for the sequel so he’s locked in an asylum. Then introducing the neighborhood Comic Relief Farmer and his pitchfork-bearing wife – “They say Satan’s got a suite of rooms in there!”

Tiny and Clown take care of pseudo-psychic Camille in secret, then Drill brains Patrick with everyone watching, is captured and dissected. I hope Drill will be okay!

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The filmmakers overestimate the computing power of an Amiga 2000:
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Toulon (a new actor) wanders in with an Invisible Man getup, calling himself Eriquee Chaneé (get it? Chaney?) claiming the hotel is his, then the group is joined by Collin “Corbin’s Brother” Bernsen, our first glimpse of star power (heh)

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The farmer’s brains are removed by Leech Woman (movie is really into brains; I sense a zombie connection) who is then melted by the wife, immediately replaced by Torch, who burns her up, in a particularly poorly-lit scene. So Toulon is collecting brains to brew up a new batch of magic puppet juice and live another 50+ years as a puppet himself.

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Flashback: Toulon remembers years ago in Egypt when he was a powerful magical puppetmaster but a crappy actor, and as punishment, an old merchant burns up the puppets using his mind. Hmmm.

The scene I remember best from the entire series (below): a boy is torturing his GI Joes with a whip, tries to play rough with Torch. The scene I remember least: pointless seaside romance between Carolyn and Corbin’s brother. Even adding a flamethrowing puppet and resurrecting Toulon from the dead, it’s not a better movie than the first one, which at least had characters which weren’t all interchangeable sexy college students.

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Hook carves up Lance and Wanda, Puppet Toulon (I like him, a short guy with hard marble contact lenses) threatens Carolyn, and I’m not sure why the puppets turn on him then resurrect Camille to go terrorize an institute for “mentally troubled” children, but there you go.

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Puppet Master 3

“Berlin – 1941”

Nazi experimenters succeed in reviving the corpses of dead soldiers. A young puppetmaster is interested.

Looks like something out of Day of the Dead:
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“Full Moon Entertainment presents”

This was Full Moon’s year. They had Stuart Gordon (Pit and the Pendulum), Trancers II (the Helen Hunt-starring sequel to a mid-80’s Charles Band film), and future sequel-bait Subspecies and Dollman.

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“starring Guy Rolfe”

Finally a consistent Toulon – he’d play the part through 1999. Guy had been around – not just in stuff like Dolls (in which he also played a puppetmaster), but in Tashlin’s Alphabet Murders and Nick Ray’s King of Kings in the 60’s.

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“directed by David DeCoteau”

The prolific Mr. DeCoteau had made such classics as Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama (which I have seen more than once) and Dr. Alien, would go on to make such classics as Frankenstein Reborn!, Final Stab and Wolves of Wall Street.

Sinister Eric Stein confronts Toulon about the Hitler-mockery satire of Toulon’s puppet show. Mrs. Toulon (Sarah Douglas of the first two Superman movies and Return of the Living Dead III) looks on. The stop-motion effects are still cool and still only one second long at a time. Two important and great new additions: the six-shooter cowboy puppet, and giving the puppets wordless voices (cowboy’s Jack Nicholson laugh is my favorite).

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Gestapo Krauss (Richard Lynch) and Dr. Hess (Ian Abercrombie of Inland Empire) fight over Toulon’s fate. T’s wife is killed in a raid, then Tiny and Drill kill the nazis escorting T into custody – can’t argue with that. While T cries over his wife (along with the puppets, making the ending of part 2 more inexplicable) and gives his revenge monologue, the main general (a Bond movie regular) calls on the search. Leech Woman is still not interesting, even when she’s supposedly T’s murdered wife recurrected to kill Stein.

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A distractingly weird-looking “young boy” (turns out it’s a short 22-year-old), also on the run, stays with Toulon while Six-Gun takes out the general (plenty of stop-motion plus a fall from a high window – along with the period costumes, looks like Full Moon is ramping up the budget). Toulon creates Blade, modeled after Krauss (who himself is modeled after Klaus Kinski), replacing his broken Hitler doll.

Kraus/Kinski/Blade:
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There’s actually a story here, not just a bunch of idiots at a hotel getting killed one at a time. Hess turns out to be decent (well, as decent as any nazi scientist trying to reanimate dead soldiers can be), the father of the “boy” turns traitor to win his freedom, both die, Toulon strings up Krauss and escapes Germany with the “boy.” Weird to turn a slasher horror flick into a nazi adventure, but there you go.

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“Photographed at Universal City Studios Hollywood” – there’s that budget I was talking about. Too bad it won’t last.

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EDIT: Thanks to Frederic for pointing out the correct model of computer the filmmakers are misusing in part two. Apologies to Commodore 64 heads for the error.