Directed by Dave Allen
Starring Elizabeth Maclellan, Collin Bernsen, Gregory Webb and Charlie "Tits McGee" Spradling
One killer doll movie deserves another, I guess. A long, long time ago, I inducted the original, old-school Charles Band micro-budget classic Puppet Master into the IHR, but it's been literally years since I've even thought about any of the sequels. And folks, this fact really confounds me. There was a period of time where this was my FAVORITE horror series. Then again, this was also during high school, when I also thought that Freddie Prinze Jr. was going to be a superstar actor of the highest caliber. Sometimes, the Lick Ness Monster accuracy rate is decidedly less than stellar.
Don't get me wrong - Puppet Master is a fun series, but it's MILES away from being anywhere near my favorite horror series these days. The first one is a legit good movie that manages to take the "killer doll" movie trope and throw the twist in that the weaponified killers were probably the GOOD guys. Don't ask. I'll do my best to explain later. A couple of the sequels (Parts III and VI, a.k.a. Curse of the Puppet Master) are also pretty worthwhile in their own right. This flick, released on video store shelves via the amazing Full Moon Features direct-to-video empire in 1991, falls somewhere in the middle.
The first thing you should know about the movie is that it picks up almost RIGHT after the first one ends, so seeing that movie is imperative. In it, we were treated to the admittedly low-budget but very fun action at the Bodega Bay Inn, a place where Andre Toulon - a man hiding from Nazi officials in the 1940s - mastered the art of transplanting souls into inanimate objects. Three guesses as to what happened from there. You'd never guess that a group of psychics would descend upon said hotel and that the vast majority of them would be sleazy bilkers trying to use the hotel for monetary gain and that the majority of the dolls' killings would be cheered by the audience. Well, the psychics are gone and the dolls are back for this go-round, and they re-unite their dead master Toulon before the opening credits can even roll.
The victim characters in this film aren't quite as interesting as they were in the first movie. This time, we're blessed with one of those pre-TAPS groups of paranormal researchers who have heard about all of the shenanigans and goings-on at Bodega Bay and want a piece of the action, even going so far as to stay overnights at said hotel where tons of violent unsolved murders took place. Critics of horror movies who say that its characters are stupid have plenty of ammunition here. Our star character is Carolyn Bramwell (Maclellan), established as our lead by the amount of time the camera is focused on her. Also along for the ride is the movie's resident beefcake couple, Lance (Jeff Weston) and Wanda (Spradling, whose nude scene in this movie used to get me through some lonely nights), as well as Camille (Nita Talbot), who gets kidnapped midway through the movie by the resident army of still-cool puppets.
Dave Allen, the guy who did the special effects for the first movie, is the director this time around. It shows in the puppet effects. For the time period, this stuff was actually pretty cutting edge. For a $780,000 budget, it was downright high-tech. They're still brought to life mainly with the art of stop-motion photography. In the first film, sometimes it looked like they were warping across the room at something akin to light speed. For my money, Blade is still the coolest of them, although the new addition in this film - Torch - has his share of cool moments. Unfortunately, most of his stuff occurs during a damn-near suicidal sequence in the middle of the film with an old couple living in the nearby wilderness.
Anyway, what we have here storyline wise is a kind of twist on Beauty and the Beast, with a mysterious stranger wrapped entirely in bandages showing up at the mansion midway through the movie. This stranger, of course, is the reanimated Toulon in disguise, and he sees Carolyn as a reincarnated version of his own deceased wife. Since Carolyn is in the process of getting romanced and eventually banged - well - by a fellow paranormal researcher, you can imagine how well this is going for the poor mummy's psyche. All of it builds toward a finale in the mansion with Toulon attempting to transmogrify souls into two life-sized mannequins. Note to all horror and action movie villains: any plan where the final step is horribly comlicated, i.e. the magical formula will only be activated at a certain time of day or at a moment of total eclipse, is destined for failure.
The cool stuff in this movie has already been spelled out. A decent plot, a good, solidly unnerving villain in Toulon (who would undergo a pretty baffling babyface turn in the further sequels), Charlie Spradling's breasts...there's plenty to like about this movie. I know that I've thrown out this complaint with other movies, but it goes doubly for the Puppet Master series. When they drag...they really, really, really drag. When I can't come up with any compelling metaphor for the level of draggage that these movies manage to achieve, you know it's bad. Long bits of scientific mumbo jumbo that serve no purpose other than to pad the movie's length, the endless bit with the aforementioned old couple, a couple monologues by Toulon...I think you get the idea.
What else is there to share? Not much. The movie delivers the goods on its intended level, as do the vast majority of movies that Charles Band produced during this time period. It's a pretty damn good movie to watch if you're half-awake, as its just dark and atmospheric enough to keep you awake but intermittently boring enough to keep you in a terminally zombie state. What?
** 1/2 out of ****. Not as good as the first, and a black sheep in the series in many regards, but still worth checking out.
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