The two that started a sprawling chronology of films show us exactly how to keep it weird and make it creepy. I’ve often heard horror fans bemoan a lack of more original creature designs. People want more outlandish, more inspired, and frankly weirder monsters. And boy, if you like killer toys, you need to watch Puppet Master.
Puppet Master (1989): A Psychic Murder Mystery with Pacing Issues
Kicking off our Full Moon February series of reviews, I’ve got to acknowledge the most iconic of the creations Full Moon Productions has made. The Puppet Master series is one of those film franchises that has always been near and dear to me because they were partially one of the series that got me into horror in the first place. They’re a gateway drug that is just the perfect blend of silliness and well-made horror to entice an audience with pure fun.
The first film sets itself up as a psychic murder mystery in which our main cast attempts to understand how they were telepathically contacted by a dead man through fragmented visions of the deceased. It’s a very clever setup, and in retrospect, I appreciate it more now than when I first watched it for evil puppets murdering people. I would like it even more…if this film didn’t have a massive problem in that our first glimpse of the puppets in action killing around the 40-minute mark.
The acting in this is your typical 80’s B-movie fare, and nobody quite stands out as particularly great or memorably terrible. The best of the cast is Irene Miracle playing the fortune teller & southern belle Dana, who spends a hilarious amount of screen time talking to her taxidermied dog. Many of the dryline deliveries in this film add to the comedy we get, unintentional and otherwise.
Directing and Puppets: Schmoeller’s Creepy Creations Shine
David Schmoeller’s directing is as always well done and reminds me a lot of the work he did in Crawlspace, but he’s at his best highlighting the real stars of the show: the puppets! They’re all very doofy looking, but Schmoeller manages to eke out some genuinely creepy shots of them here and there, with Blade and Leech Woman being by far the most memorable in this regard. If they had given this film ten extra minutes of them causing mayhem, it would be golden.
RATING: 6.5 (Killer Toy Franchise Starters)/10. An above-average movie with some hard to ignore pacing and script issues. It’s sleazy at points like most of its low-budget contemporaries of the time, but it’s just weird and unique enough to stand out among them with its bizarre story and even more bizarre killers. It’s a cult classic that I’ve come to embrace fully, flaws and all, but this is one you’re going to have to give some serious time to win you over.
Puppet Master 2 (1990): A Gory, Campy Upgrade
Oh, look, the budget kicked in!
Charles Band took everything learned from the first production and gave us a rollicking good time back with 2. There’s a real sense of growth creatively, and a major overhaul tone-wise to go more in line with the phantasmagoria and humor of the first. It has the vibes of 60s & 70s horror almost, composed to the tune of something like The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but it has all the new age effects & camp of films like the still new to the scene Child’s Play series. Coincidentally, Child’s Play 2 was released barely eight days apart from this film. Happy accidents, huh?
Puppet Master had a big problem in that it slowed down to a snail’s pace past the 20-minute mark. 2 does away with the slow burn mystery in favor of a ridiculous and gory roller coaster, at the heart of which is a plot in which the puppets are removing people’s brains for their master, the resurrected Andre Toulon.
Andre Toulon and Special Effects: Undead Excellence
Speaking of Toulon, I’m glad they fully realized his potential with this one for the sake of the great special effects they used on him. This is one of the few movies that has undead makeup so good you hope they get something to cover it up; then you have the unfortunate result of being more creeped out by the fake, fleshy doll mask he ends up putting on.
David Allen and his puppeteering crew hit their stride with the effects this time around, especially with their expanded influence on the cinematography. A lot of the best of this film is due to Allen taking over as director for this installment. After all, who truly knows better how their effects work on screen than the person making them?
Say what you will about puppets murdering people being silly; the uncanny stop motion in this film will always put a tingle up my spine. If you don’t believe me, watch that shot of Blade jumping off the bed and running and tell me it doesn’t look freaky. These movies achieve the impossible by taking the ridiculous killer doll angle and coming up with very non-ridiculous ways to show their killing sprees.
RATING: 9 (Magical Puppet Flamethrower Immolations)/10. More SFX madness and makeup enhance a bonkers script. They took everything the first did and crank up the fun by several orders of magnitude. I hate that Allen never returned to the directing chair, because this is the blueprint for great Puppet Master films.
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