Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Future Shock (1994) (a.k.a. the “Satan’s Slut” movie)

If in the mid-late ’90s you watched a lot of movies over the weekend on USA Network (like me), you may recall being exposed to a quirky horror/sci-fi anthology film titled Future Shock. But, like me, you might not have even remembered the actual title of the film, instead only recalling a memorial scene where a shy, uptight man is driven to shout “Satan’s slut!” in recognition at seeing a woman’s dead body. Indeed, if you’re even more like me, you might have thought that the line “Satan’s slut!” was said multiple times, which, sadly, isn’t the case.

If not that, you might know this movie for Vivian Schilling, the writer/director and star of Soultaker of MST3K notoriety and who stars in the first segment, “Jenny Porter”. And if not that, you might have heard this movie stars Bill Paxton in its second and most well-known segment, “The Roommate”, or that the third writer/director to contribute to this anthology through its last segment, “Mr. Petrified Forrest”, is Matt Reeves, who created the TV series Felicity, directed the modern Planet of the Apes films, and has recently been tapped to fire up a new Batman film franchise yet again.

The narrative glue that brings this anthology together concerns Dr. Langdon (the hugely prolific Martin Kove), a psychologist who delves into the cutting edge of ’90s virtual reality for therapeutic purposes, treating his patients’ phobias and anxieties by subjecting them to intense and convincing false memories. Each of the anthology’s stories revolves around a different patient: a wealthy woman Jenny (Vivian Schilling) faces her fear of being home alone as she experiences being stalked by a mysterious wolf-like creature that defies even her paranoid security measures; a shy, neurotic, and easily intimidated morgue attendant George (Scott Thompson) gets stuck with the ultimate roommate from hell Vince (Bill Paxton), but things quickly get far more serious than just sleepless nights and late rent payments when George becomes the prime suspect in the brutal murder of Vince’s one-night stand, “Satan’s slut” (Timothi-Jane Graham); and a photographer Fred, after witnessing the sudden death of a close friend, has to choose between conquering his paranoia about death and a blossoming romantic relationship with a woman named Elfie (Pat Alexander)…that is, if he hasn’t already been marked by death itself.

As an anthology, it actually works quite well. The theme of being irrationally paralyzed by fear actually runs strongly through all three vignettes and the tone and quality remains consistent, although I do agree with the critical consensus—well, such as it is out there—that “Jenny Porter” is the best of the segments, especially in how it communicates a genuine feeling of helplessness and dread. It’s undermined a little by some constant shots of wolves and dogs where the story would have been better served by keeping the threat reduced to growls from an invisible source, but that’s a mild complaint for an otherwise genuinely well-presented and well-acted study of terror in isolation.

But that’s not to say the other two segments are worth skipping; far from it. “The Roommate” is darkly funny from how Bill Paxton captures the spirit of a grown-up bully in the same mold as the thug who kicks sand in the skinny guy’s face at the beach to George’s boss, who is (mostly) mute and communicates his emotions and instructions through very grim facial expressions. And while “Mr. Petrified Forrest” is probably ill-fitting for what is to some degree a horror anthology, it does its work through some pretty effective storytelling, like a fairly subtle scene where Fred’s father nearly breaks through his son’s paranoia but he realizes some badly timed news has made his efforts futile. It also has some beautiful shots, from Fred slowly watching a small plane that crashed and is burning in someone’s front yard to him sitting in bed bathed in blue and surrounded by film stock, highlighting his fear and its consequences better than dialogue ever could. There isn’t much to say about the framing story about Dr. Langdon because it isn’t much of a story in of itself, although it does also have a genuinely funny section in which a staff member frightens away a couple of prospective patients by arguing about a previous patient who went insane from the virtual reality treatment on the phone.

That said, there are some baffling creative choices here and there. There’s a bizarre sequence meant to communicate the idea of a “food chain” that involves a random man who is implied to have violently kicked a dog for no reason (!!). Also the ending, which sees Dr. Langdon apparently tempted by his own virtual reality device or questions his own sense of reality, and a brief scene where Jenny’s virtual reality experience is being observed by a group of doctors within the dream itself don’t really make sense and feel like remnants of an earlier draft of a script left in. This is somewhat supported by the fact that this movie had an indie comic book adaptation of all things, discussed by Linkara here, which does give more context to both the doctors and the ending with Dr. Langdon, but in my research I couldn’t verify if the comic is actually based on an earlier draft of the script, in which Dr. Langdon had much more sinister motives but was also himself a patient experiencing virtual reality, or if the comic was deliberately “dumbed down” for a stereotypical comic book readership or a little from column A and column B.

As for the movie itself, it doesn’t quite transcend its low budget, so it has an unpolished feel, which depending on your tastes is part of its charm or one of its flaws. Nor do all three of the segments seem to have been originally written for the virtual reality motif. Only “Jenny Porter” really feels as if it was intended for the framing story. “The Roommate” has a twist ending that really doesn’t make sense as part of George’s virtual reality experience while “The Petrified Mr. Forrest” has its own framing device of sorts, Fred having a near-death experience in Purgatory, which means in a way that the story is double framed. Again, though, the stories do share and effectively convey a common theme, which is more than can be said for a lot of movie anthologies.

While I’m more conscious of the flaws here than I was when I first saw the movie as a kid, I’m still very fond of it. It’s genuinely a solid anthology that I would still say is worth watching if you catch it on YouTube or dig up the DVD or VHS copy somewhere. This is even more true today, as it’s the sort of creative, low-budget movie that’s sadly an endangered species in our current era of mega-media monopolies and creatives who are spoiled by choice for potential platforms yet are starved of opportunities for getting their work out there.

 

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Puppet Master X: Axis Rising (2012)

It’s been a long, tough road, full of disappointments that would have broken a lesser person, but at last we come to the final mile, Puppet Master X: Axis Rising.

It’s entirely possible that watching all of these movies in such a short time frame—well, by the standards of my glacial posting schedule, anyway—has warped my perception of quality. I’m certainly seeing the merits of an entire franchise built around killer puppets more than I once thought I would, and I have spent many hours in vain fretting over Puppet Master continuity (or lack thereof). So when I say that Axis Rising really isn’t all that bad, my opinion might be as reliable as someone who’s been in a cult for ten years. But honestly it’s not the worst Puppet Master movie, and it’s definitely not as bad as Axis of Evil. For starters, they actually got the budget to use Six-Shooter!

Of course, it’s still plagued by all the problems that come out of recent Full Moon films. There’s the racism that would get even the most anti-tumblr blogger go, ”That’s so wrong,” and was on the same level as the buck-toothed Japanese tourist from Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong, but at least that was (allegedly) a comedy. Then there’s the script that seems to have been ab-libbed from a few notes scribbled down on a couple of deli receipts. Or to put it in Full Moon terms their recent output makes their own ’90s third-rate Anne Rice-y Subspecies saga look like an Akira Kurosawa film.

What plot there is directly follows up on the events of Axis of Evil (then shouldn’t that film have been Axis Rising and this one Axis of Evil? Well, yeah…). Ozu—still dressed like a geisha and not using a gun for reasons that can only be discerned from Charles Band’s fever dreams—is betrayed and killed by Moebius (!) (Scott King), a Nazi officer whose skills at infiltrating enemy territory is best illustrated by the fact that he shows up in full Nazi regalia out in the alleys of Los Angeles just to dispatch Ozu. But before Ozu dies she hands a captive Tunneler to Moebius, who then gives the captive puppet to a captive Austrian scientist, Dr. Freuhoffer (Oto Brezina), and his Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS-like aide, Uschi (Stephanie Sanditz). See, Moebius got his hands on the same secret knowledge about creating and preserving life from the Old Ones that Toulon did, because he [backstory needed], so he just happens to be having Dr. Freuhoffer develop a resurrection machine.

And as sick as I am harping on the franchise’s infamous lack of continuity there’s no reference to the events of Puppet Master III, no matter how obvious that would be. In fact, neither Dr. Freuhoffer or Moebius seem to even acknowledge that the Nazis have been after Toulon for the very same knowledge Moebius is currently using. Even though they could have made the connection with just one line.

…we’re though the looking glass here people. The looking glass of really sloppy continuity.

However Moebius got the not-so-secret secrets of Sutek, he’s oblivious to their applications to the world of puppetry, until Dr. Freuhoffer stumbles upon a way to create his own Axis-themed puppets.

Still, it is excusable given how tight this film is. The director couldn’t be expected to sacrifice the pivotal scene where Dr. Freuhoffer changes from his street clothes to a lab coat, after all.

Anyway…Danny and Beth (now played by Kip Canyon and Jean Louise O’Sullivan, respectively) are acclaimed as heroes by the military, barely managing to hide the truth about the involvement of Toulon’s puppets. Nor does any of this put a stop to Danny’s endless whining about how he can’t enlist with the army because of his bad leg. It does mean, however, that Danny and Beth are given a military escort in case they are targeted for retaliation. At the same time they are invited to meet a famous American general, who will be visiting Los Angeles instead of at the European or Pacific theaters because [half-assed explanation not found]. Unfortunately, the general’s visit comes to the attention of Moebius, who decides to test Dr. Freuhoffer’s team of puppets—Bombshell, Blitzkreig, Weremacht, and Kamikaze—by sending them to assassinate the general…

I guess I can sum up the problems with this movie by talking about the subplot, where Dr. Freuhoffer is only working with Moebius because he and Uschi (who, by the way, doesn’t deserve to even hold Dynanne Thorne’s riding crop) are holding his daughter captive and Uschi is sadistically toying with him erotically. Then Dr. Freuhoffer never mentions his daughter again and is genuinely in some kind of weird erotic yet unfulfilled dom/sub thing with Uschi, which is enough to get her killed by a jealous Moebius and turned into Bombshell by a Freuhoffer who genuinely mourns her. Then Dr. Freuhoffer seems to go along with Moebius 100 percent, especially because he has at least one perfect opportunity to kill him, even though he’s murdered the woman he apparently genuinely has fallen in love and/or has his daughter captive. Then Dr. Freuhoffer seems to turn against Moebius, but still isn’t upset when Bombshell, who really is all that’s left of Uschi, is destroyed. I’ve seen a lot of bad movies over the years, but this is the first time I’ve been almost positive that the script was being written as the movie was getting filmed.

To be fair, though, by the last act if you’re anything like me you would have given up trying to figure out what the hell Dr. Freuhoffer’s entire character arc is supposed to be. And Dr. Freuhoffer’s subplot seemingly gets almost half the screentime! You are getting more plot for your buck than you did with Axis of Evil, in that at least Axis Rising actually feels like it’s leading up to something. That something is the showdown between Toulon’s puppets and the Axis puppets. Okay, the showdown is less than epic because the puppets look cheaper than ever (especially Leech Woman, who looks like a discount doll picked up at a flea market) and they didn’t have the budget to show the puppets do…much, but honestly the very idea of Axis puppets is awesome.

Well, awesome, except for Kamikaze, who looks like…

…yeah.

Okay, you could make the point that, like the racist-patriotic dialogue from the last movie, it is appropriate to the context. After all, it’s a puppet designed by a Nazi sympathizer (well, depending on which point in the movie you’re watching) or even outside the Nazi connection someone who’s a European born sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. But context still doesn’t quite change the fact that Kamikaze would have looked offensively jarring in a 1972 movie, much less a 2012 one!

As for our protagonist…what is there to say? They’re both portrayed by better actors this time around, but the characters barely have any personalities to work through. There’s a few cute moments as Beth and Danny cope with being babysat by your standard issue military hardcase with a heart of gold, Sgt. Stone (portrayed to low-key perfection by character actor Brad Potts). You might think that Danny gets a real character arc, which ends with him realizing he can contribute to America’s war effort without actually being on the battlefield—what with him having killer puppets who are totally loyal to him, and all—but you’d be wrong! What passes for his character arc ends with him getting a promise from the general to allow him to finally enlist. You probably shouldn’t be getting your life lessons from the Puppet Master series anyway, much less from the tenth installment, but all the same ”People should contribute to a cause in one narrow way, regardless of their particular skills or disabilities” doesn’t strike me as a particularly solid moral.

So, you may be wondering as you read the above, how exactly is Axis Rising better than Axis of Evil? Well, you know, in militantly low-budget affairs like these a concept means everything, and having an enemy team of puppets is such a good idea it’s shocking it wasn’t done in, say, 4 and 5, which were handicapped with aggressively boring antagonists. Also the acting was slightly better, with more professional actors in the pot, and it felt like it actually had much more going on, albeit a plot where one of the villains’ motivations change with every act.

Between writing this and writing about Axis of Evil, I found out that Charles Band, like how even established indie and middle-tier directors have to do nowadays, is crowdfunding the latest installment in the Puppet Master saga. So if reading these reviews has whet your appetite for some killer puppet action, here’s my official ranking. (Keep in mind, though, that it’s all relative, so I’d definitely only recommend the top three for people who aren’t already Charles Band devotees).

1.  Puppet Master III
2. Puppetmaster
3. Puppet Master II
4. Curse of the Puppet Master [probably the one disagreement I’d have with most fans of the series, who’d probably put 4 & 5 on this slot if not higher, so…watch at your own risk!]
5. Puppet Master 4 & 5 (they’re already the same movie)
6. Puppet Master: Axis Rising
7. Retro Puppet Master
8. Puppet Master: Axis of Evil
9. Puppet Master: Legacy [dead last because it’s not actually a movie!]

Of course, I’ll be the first in line to watch the new movie, because I’m in this for the long haul! And with a new Puppet Master coming out maybe we’ll finally get an idea of what Legacy was supposed to lead up to…

Nah, just kidding, it’s also going to be about Danny and Beth’s adventures during World War II!

Can you feel my excitement?

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010)

We have hit the nadir, everyone.

The worst offense of Puppet Master: Axis of Evil isn’t really that it’s very bad, but that it’s very generically bad. Full Moon’s output the past decade or so has generally been a sour crop, but at least even Evil Bong and Gingerdead Man have that surreal, home-movie-filmed-in-your-garage quality to them that, for me at any rate, salvages a few of Full Moon’s movies in the 21st century. Plus for Evil Bong and Gingerdead Man an awesome voice for the titular bong and Gary Busey, respectively. With Axis of Evil, it’s like you’re getting your bad movie served watered down and mixed with flat soda to boot. Even the parts of it that are downright offensive—which we’ll get to, definitely—are somehow lazily, uncommittingly offensive.

Given Charles Band’s obsession with comics, I suspect this movie is the oddest Captain America adaptation ever, even more so than that Reb Brown ’70s Captain America movie where he doesn’t have a costume and only gets into a fight once. See, our new puppet master is Danny (Levi Fielher). He only wants to join his brother Don (Taylor M. Graham) who is fighting as a soldier fighting in World War II, but Danny was crippled by polio. Instead Danny switches between living with his mother Elma (Erica Shaffer) in Los Angeles and working for his uncle, who owns the Bodega Bay Inn.

Of course, instead of being exposed to a secret formula developed by a Nazi defector, Danny happens to not only befriend Andre Toulon, but witnesses him being menaced by two German agents and finds his body (using footage from Puppetmaster intercut less than seamlessly with original footage). Danny retrieves Andre Toulon’s hidden cabinet and returns to Los Angeles with it. He manages to work out how to revive the puppets—although he tells Don he doesn’t have time to fix Six-Shooter’s arms, a bit of handwaving so clumsy that his dialogue might as well have been “We just didn’t have the budget to animate Six-Shooter.”

Like most Puppet Master protagonists, Danny is surprisingly nonplussed at the prospect of living, sentient puppets, but to be fair he does have other problems. Danny gets even more self-conscious when he visits his girlfriend Beth (Jenna Gallaher), who works in a bomb factory, and is berated by her boss, Mr. Gifford (Mike Brooks), for—somehow not being able to disguise his limp long enough he can join the army and keep fighting throughout the war? I don’t know; “it was a different time” and all,  but berating a disabled polio survivor for somehow not miraculously deceiving the US Army into letting him join the war effort seems politically incorrect even for the 1940s. Honestly, what really seals this as a bad horror movie is that Mr. Gifford is set up as such an asshole, but he suffers no well-deserved karmic death.

Luckily, though, Danny is going to be given a shot at serving the war effort, whether he wants to or not. He recognizes one of Beth’s co-workers as one of the two men sent to kill Andre Toulon, Max (Tom Sondoval), and that gives him enough thread to untangle a conspiracy between Max and a Japanese spy, Ozu (Ada Chao), to blow up the very same factory Beth happens to work in. When Danny’s family pays the price for his nosiness and Beth is kidnapped, it’s time to unleash Toulon’s puppets, including a new one of Danny’s own making containing the consciousness of his freshly murdered brother…

I already pointed out the Captain America parallels, but the whole affair really does feel like a filmed Golden or Silver Age Marvel superhero origin story. You could replace Mr. Gifford with “Flash” Thompson or any of the nameless bullies who always appear in Stan Lee-penned origin stories, for example. The filmmakers also aren’t shy about recreating the casual racism of both the era and the comics from it. Danny and Don drop the “Jap” and the “Kraut” words like…well, like Americans from the time would have said them.

Unfortunately, the movie goes a little too far in its quest for uncomfortable authenticity. Alright, followers of this blog—all twelve of you—know that I’m not one of those cultural commentators to casually cry racism or misogyny or homophobia. Also I’m sure what the screenwriter, perhaps at the prompting of Charles Band himself, was deliberately going for a simple World War II morality tale, in the style of the comic books of the 1940s and Stan Lee’s heyday. There’s something to be said for that approach, especially after we recently got a Captain America movie that ducked the whole issue of 1940s social attitudes, not even really trying to establish that Steve Rogers pre-superhero was a forward-thinking guy like the comics have, to the point that even the Nazis got quietly shoved under the rug.

However, I cringed—not just physically, but on the level of my very soul—when Ozu first shows up looking like a geisha (despite the fact that she’s supposed to be pretending to be a Chinese-American in Chinatown!). And then when she has two goons who dress like they just stepped out of a movie about feudal Japan. And then when she battles the ninja puppet (yes, there’s a ninja puppet now, and it looks like it was put together during the lunch period right before art class) she says a line of dialogue that implies that the ninja should be on her side, because…ninja. I think I blacked out from sheer embarrassment by that point.

Again, I’m sure (well, reasonably sure) that the screenwriter doesn’t really believe that the Japanese of the 1940s went around acting like the modern age never happened. This was, after all, how the Japanese might have been depicted in a real comic book from the time. It’s just there’s a reason you can’t do these types of portrayals anymore, at least not without an injection of irony or without giving your ethnic villains a couple of humanizing aspects. It just doesn’t help that Beth earnestly spouts lines like “You’ll never defeat freedom and democracy!”to Max. Or that the two Nazi agents hate baseball but easily fit in with Americans just by pretending to like it. Or when Danny self-righteously lectures Ozu that kamikaze pilots may have guts but they’re not actually brave (whatever that means).

There is a tiny bit of humanization when Max seems to have fallen for Beth and is genuinely concerned for her even after he’s kidnapped her, but rather than becoming even just a half-baked subplot it just switches back to Max threatening to murder her.

Of course, none of this is helped by the fact that the acting is uniformly terrible. I haven’t really talked about the acting in this series much because I thought it didn’t need to be said that it was for the most part what you would expect from an outfit like Full Moon, but some of the performances here are outshone by the dubbing in Retro Puppet Master. I will admit that we do get a more than decent performance out of Tom Sondoval as Max, despite him playing a villain who barely even has one dimension, but even he doesn’t try to bother with the hint of a German accent or an obviously affected American accent, something that gets clumsily explained away by a line about his “excellent English.” By this point in the series, it’s probably no longer worth discussing at length that the puppetry has gotten so cheap and half-assed that just using the term “special effects” is a stretch.

There are really only two nice things I can say about the movie. One, for a low-budget film the set design is genuinely good-looking with an air of authenticity, especially with Danny’s patriotically decked bedroom. Two, at least it’s not a painfully self-aware “comedy” like most of Full Moon’s recent output or, to put it another way, at least it’s not Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong. Otherwise I don’t even know if I can justify why this movie exists. It’s a prequel that doesn’t even fill in any gaps in the movie’s mythos. I guess it’s meant to just milk more out of the World War II setting of what’s generally agreed to be the franchise’s strongest outing, but even there it’s a hollow effort. The money poured into the historical set design would have been better spent on halfway-decent puppetry. At least the film does have the triumphant return of Leech Woman in her full disgusting glory, I guess?

While writing this I was debating with myself over whether or not this is worse than Retro Puppet Master. I have to conclude that it really is. At least Retro had an interesting idea, however lazily executed, and a point for the series. Even that much cannot be said for this outing.

But you know what’s really sad? There’s one more movie in the series, and it revisits World War II again!  I suspect I might just end up copying and pasting most of what I said here.

 

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return (1999)

Oops, looks like I picked up the wrong long-running horror franchise! Well, okay, honestly I just need to take a break from the Puppet Master franchise, especially because we’re about to enter the Dark Age of Full Moon, when the company catastrophically tries to get into the joke. (If you don’t know what I mean, try watching Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust. Actually, no, for God’s sake don’t do that! No!)

Honestly I do think the original Children of the Corn is underrated today, especially by the usual standards of Stephen King adaptations. I probably would never go so far as to claim it’s a dishonored classic, but it is a film I’d recommend to the right person. The premise is fantastic, the setting is classic American gothic, and while the execution has its flaws it’s still got its pluses even there, most particularly in John Franklin’s performance that manages to give film history the most petulant dark messiah ever.  I do think it should have kept the ending of the source material where the protagonists are killed, but…to be honest, I say that about everything. Also the plot is not the most fertile ground for a string of sequels, but it was the ’80s and ’90s so we got them anyway.

…which is why calling it 666 does seem like they’re actually calling it film number 666 as a joke about how many damn sequels every horror movie got back then.

For what I suspect is the first time in the series someone actually willingly goes to Gatlin, Nebraska. A college-aged woman, Hannah (Natalie Ramsey), arrives searching for her birth mother, about whom she knows nothing except that she was a member of the child-cult that murdered all of the adults in Gatlin. She finds that Gatlin is still half-abandoned, populated mainly by grown-up cultists and their children, who are at oldest teenagers. Her welcome into town is, naturally, a bizarre one. First she picks up a hitchhiking preacher who mysteriously disappears, shocking Hannah into nearly crashing the car. Next she’s confronted and grilled by Sheriff Cora (Alix Koromzay), who is just old enough to have been a former cult member and who assumes that Hannah is one of apparently many tourists who have read about the “Gatlin Massacre” online and have come to gawk. However, when Cora gets Hannah’s full name off her driver’s license, her attitude suddenly changes and she graciously takes Hannah to the nearby hospital.

In an all but deserted hospital filled with equipment that hadn’t been touched in many years and institutionalized ex-cult members, the only above-35 adult—indeed, the only actual medical professional—Hannah encounters is ”Doc” (Stacy Keach!). (I think the film is subtly laying out that ”Doc” is Burt from the first film. There’s one flaw with that theory that I’ll get into later, but having a somewhat mysterious doctor character who is the right age, who is very invested in what happens in Gatlin, and who Isaac recognizes be Burt just makes too much sense). After being checked out by Doc, Hannah is accosted by a mental patient in the hospital, Cora’s brother Jake (William Prael), who tries to warn her about Isaac but unfortunately he takes the ”ranting would-be killer” approach. In fact, Jake’s earnest if deranged attempt to warn Hannah backfires so badly she ends up in Isaac’s hospital room, where he’s waking up as if in response to Hannah’s presence.

And…well, he is! According to a prophecy from the cult’s god, He Who Walks Behind The Rows, Hannah, as the first female child born to any cult members, is meant to have sex with the first male child, which will…hm, result in something unspecified but really bad! Fresh and rosy from his coma, Isaac quickly takes control of the town, with apparently little resistance. Hannah at least realizes her quest has become much more complicated. Can she trust her biological mother, Rachel (Nancy Allen!) or the cute guy who has happily come to her aid Gabriel (Paul Popowich)? Who exactly is supposed to ”help” Hannah fulfill the prophecy? And is it too late to stop the return of not only Isaac, but He Who Walks Behind The Rows? (Spoiler: it totally is!)

Anyway, Children of the Corn 666 is not a particularly good film, but it’s a pretty good sequel, if that makes sense. Granted I might be biased since I’m coming right off the Puppet Master series, and really as a connoisseur of bad horror movie franchises in general, but I was impressed just how faithful to the original film this sequel is and how it genuinely tries to—shock—build on the first film’s story. First there’s the vague presentation of Doc as Burt. I mean, it is possible I’m off-the-mark because Isaac accuses Burt of taking Rachel away from Gatlin when in the first film the girl he rescues is actually named Sarah, but even if it’s a mistake by the screenwriter it doesn’t dispel the theory. Then there’s   Isaac being shaken and disgusted when he feels he has to personally kill a ”heretic”, a nice bit of characterization referring back to Isaac’s squeamishness being the reason for his original downfall. However, even that’s ruined by the decision to turn it into a goofy gore moment where the human body can apparently get cut apart as easily as paper mache.

Plus, in a confrontation between Isaac and Hannah, there is this fantastic exchange:

“Did you kill my father?
He sacrificed his life to a power greater than himself.
He Who Walks Behind The Rows?
No.  Me.”

And, generally, I want to give this movie kudos for having a genuinely good premise for a sequel to a movie that’s closer to the Highlander end of the scale for films that could spawn natural concepts for sequels. Exploring the aftermath one generation later is a really strong idea, and I like some of the implications the film hints at, particularly that most of the surviving cult members of the Children of the Corn either stayed in town or ended up so damaged they were institutionalized, albeit in a hospital that should really look into novel ways of restraining their patients…like putting them in rooms with the doors locked.

So, yeah, there’s a surplus of the goofy quirks you expect from movies like this. Like how the hell Cora managed to grab Hannah’s keys from her own ignition without her noticing. Or what the hell is going on with the preacher’s ghost (was it even a ghost, or was he alive and inexplicably teleported from Hannah’s car and got killed in Gatlin later for no reason?). Or how Jake stole Jason Vorhees’ convenient teleportation powers? Or why Hannah seems to know who He Who Walks Behind The Rows is at least halfway through the film but demands to know what He Who Walks Behind The Rows is in the film’s climax? Or…well, you get the idea.

Overall the movie doesn’t delve into ”ooh, it’s all a mystery” territory like seemingly almost every contemporary low-budget horror movie on Netflix; there’s a few vague things like Doc’s identity (but he’s totally Burt, you guys!) or what exactly He Who Walks Behind The Rows is trying to achieve by masquerading as Gabriel (beyond the obvious pulling-a-Omen), but nothing that gets in the way of understanding the plot. What does muddle the proceedings, though, is such lazy horror movie scares like the ghost-maybe-or-not hitchhiking preacher or the scars from one or two slashed scenes, if not whole subplots.

But there are bigger issues that get in the way too. Once he’s revealed, the mysterious, seemingly all but omnipotent big bad of the entire franchise, He Who Walks Behind The Rows, comes across as just another ’90s wisecracking horror villain—although his treatment of Isaac, especially his succinct command, “Get on your knees, bitch”, does seem like a poignant allegory for the Old Testament God’s relationship with his most loyal followers. Still, making He Who Walks Behind The Rows a second-rate Freddy Krueger does take the potential epicness completely out of the long-waited confrontation between a tragic fanatical yet somehow reluctant disciple and his insane, bloodsoaked god. It’s all enough to make you wish Stephen King would do a ”reverse adaptation” and make the premise of this film into a novel.

All that said, as far as low-budget, straight-to-video, late-stage sequels to franchises that have been milked to bone, it’s honestly better than it should be. In fact, it makes me reluctant to go back to Puppet Master. Damn my obsessive completionist-ism!

 

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys (2004)

Honestly, when I read that Charles Band himself declared that Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys isn’t canon I assumed he was just being peevish. After all, this installment was just licensed out from Full Moon and produced and released by the Sci-Fi Channel (yes, pre-Syfy, although even then they were making movies, well, like this one!). Charles Band does have an “executive producer” credit, but as most people with even a passing familiarity of showbiz might tell you, executive producers often have even more of a purely symbolic role than the Queen of England (see also Clive Barker with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Tim Burton with Batman Forever).

Anyway, a good reason why Charles Band exiled this film from canon is that it manages to irreconcilably contradict Puppet Master and Demonic Toys continuity. I know I talk a lot about continuity when discussing Puppet Master, but the series’ lack of fidelity to its own overarching story really is fascinating in some deep, profound way. Seeing this movie, which manages to make itself completely incompatible with what little consistent background this series has kept up, is like seeing someone insist on paying for free samples in a grocery store. What makes it even weirder is that this movie was written by C. Courtney Joyner, who does come from Full Moon’s stable of writers and directors and previously wrote for Puppet Master III and the framing story for Puppet Master: The Legacy. I actually tried to dig around to see a reason for why the film’s script is so out of sync, but, apart from finding out that the film had been in Development Purgatory for something like a decade or so, no dice. It’s a mystery for the ages! Or at least until someone not as lazy as me or with actual contacts asks Joyner or Charles Band about it.Adding to the weirdness is that the puppets just don’t look the way they’re supposed to look. The rest aren’t quite as off as Jester here, but, well, it’s just enough that it feels like you’re watching a knockoff of the franchise, like Marionette Lord or something. It gets even more off when the puppets get turned into cyborgs. Seriously.

Enough about this being faux-Puppet Master; how does this movie set up the clash of the ages? Andre Toulon has a nephew, Robert, who is played by Corey Feldman sporting gloriously unconvincing grayed hair and a bizarre, unnecessary gravely voice that tops Christian Bale’s Batman voice in every possible way. Whether this was the director’s idea or Feldman’s adds to the enigma that is this film. Robert once worked for the toy-selling mega-corporation Sharpe Toys, but now runs a humble doll-repair shop with his daughter Alexandra (Danielle Keaton). Unfortunately, the CEO of Sharpe Toys, Erica Sharpe (Vanessa Angel, of Weird Science: The TV Series…fame?), hasn’t completely washed her hands of her ex-employee. As she spies on him via a ladybug toy, he and Alexandra use their special “Toulon blood” and information from Andre Toulon’s notes to create a formula that revives Blade, Six-Shooter, Pinhead, and Jester, who were found in a Paris auction and weren’t already in the Toulons’ possession, even though Robert describes the puppets as beings who “protected the Toulon family for generations, like guardian angels” (tell that to Andre Toulon!). If they were so important, why did they get separated from the Toulon clan? Or why does it sound like the Toulons got the puppets back by chance? Who the hell knows?

Erica wants the secret to the Toulon puppets, naturally, but she has a supernatural secret of her own. Her father had sold his soul to the arch-demon Bael to create toys that actually live, resulting in the three Demonic Toys (needless to say, this too has nothing to do with the plot of any of the three Demonic Toys movies). Like any good businessperson, Erica wants to build on the terms of the original deal. She’ll enact a ritual, fueled by the blood of countless virgin receptionists and topped off with Toulon blood, on the dawn of Christmas day that will demonically empower millions of toys modeled after the Demonic Toys sold across the world and bring about the deaths of millions of very disappointed children, all in exchange for her being granted world domination. (It’s also implied that Erica wants to create her own puppet praetorian guard from Andre Toulon’s formula because she’s afraid Bael or the Demonic Toys will try to double-cross her, but the whole thing gets dropped in the film’s third act).

Took notes? No? That’s okay. This movie’s strangely convoluted set-up gets the broad stroke treatment anyway. You’ll just be left wondering why they completely ignored the backstories of both series for the sake of stuffing in brand new details, like that the Toulons got their puppets and the magic blood from a sixteenth century ancestor, Jean-Paul, who also made a deal with Bael but cheated him, which is why Bael wants revenge by wiping out the Toulon bloodline!  *phew*

Oh my God, in that screenshot Robert Toulon looks at least a little like Mama from Mama’s Family, doesn’t he?

Anyway, the Toulons get an ally, Sgt. Russell (Silvia Suvadová), who investigates a fire caused in an early attempt by Erica’s thugs to steal the puppets and Toulon’s formula. Naturally she’s skeptical when she has to bust Robert Toulon, who while covertly investigating Sharpe’s warehouse interrupts a public relations event while fleeting from the Demonic Toys’ leader (or at least the only one who can talk), Baby Oopsie Daisy, setting up my favorite exchange of the movie:

Have you ever been committed to a mental health facility?
Yes. No. Once, but they released me immediately.

However, Sgt. Russell changes her mind when she has a run-in with the Demonic Toys at Robert Toulon’s repair shop, brought about by the God of Plot Convenience. Unfortunately, while she’s knocked out by Baby Oopsie Daisy, Erica’s goons storm the (unseen) Toulon grandmother’s spacious mansion where Robert and Alexandra are hiding out and were getting ready themselves to assault Sharpe headquarters with the repaired and cyborg-ized puppets. (“They’re cooler than ever!”, Alexandra Toulon declares unconvincingly). Hilariously, Robert is taking a pre-adventure pee break when Alexandra is captured. Thankfully, Robert has his pants up when he’s soon taken.

It seems like everything’s in place for Erica Sharpe to pull a total Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but she doesn’t take into account three things. 1) Erica being alive and fully recovered from her run-in with the Demonic Toys (this sets up another of my favorite moments; when Sgt. Russell barges in, Erica glares at Baby Oopsie Daisy, who just exclaims, “She looked dead to me!”). 2) The fact that the puppets managed to escape from the steel box they were locked into because Robert Toulon outfitted Six-Shooter with lasers, but, to be fair, I wouldn’t have expected that either. Maybe the mysterious and invisible Grandma Toulon is a higher-up at SPECTRE. 3) Her right-hand man, Julian (Nikolai Sotirov), who had been uncomfortable with the whole “child genocide” scheme, goes to set Robert free…while bringing with him Jack Attack as if he wants to kill Robert…but either way Jack kills Julian with his banshee scream. Alright, Robert and the puppets just escape and Julian gets killed, okay?

In the secret Satanic altar that rests in the hidden basements of the central headquarters of all huge international corporations, the puppets dispatch the Demonic Toys with disappointing ease, although not before Baby Oopsie Daisy gets to let loose a couple of one-liners, and Blade spoils Erica’s machine-assisted sacrifice of Alexandra. For “reneging” on their deal, Bael takes Erica with him to Hell. Thus ends one of the greatest Christmas movies ever.

So as you might expect from a Sci-Fi Original that tries to adapt a b-movie franchise, this movie’s got issues. The script shows signs, like so many films with a years-long development history, of being messily pieced together from earlier drafts and concepts, which might explain, among other things, why it’s so oddly disconnected from its own parent franchises and why Corey Feldman plays Robert Toulon like he can be anywhere from his late thirties to his sixties. The puppet action actually isn’t quite as bad as we’ve seen from the last couple of Puppet Master installments, but it’s still far, far from being a highlight of the movie, and veterans of low-budget b-movies will probably not be surprised that the puppets versus Demonic Toys portion of Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys is pretty brief.

But to be honest…I rather like it. Corey Feldman’s portrayal of Robert Toulon is as endearing as it is inexplicable. While the subject of some pretty lame fart jokes, Baby Oopsie Daisy is…well, I shouldn’t need to explain the appeal of a serial killer baby doll that talks and cusses like a gangland thug. All things considered, though, it’s Vanessa Angel who steals the show as Erica Sharpe. The scene where she leads a teenage receptionist to her violent death with sociopathic yet childlike glee is almost worth the price of admission alone, and throughout she brings life into a character who is otherwise your standard sexy b-movie villainess.

All that said, it’s still no Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. 

Alright, next time it’s back to the canonical series with two more to go!  Sutek protect me.

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies – Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003)

So you know how sitcoms from the ’80s and ’90s would sometimes have one or two clipshow episodes, and no one ever liked those episodes even when they bothered to have a few scenes of new material? Well, movie franchises that have gone straight-to-video have the movie equivalent of those too! That’s exactly what Puppet Master: The Legacy is, with a whopping eight minutes of original footage.

At least those eight minutes end with a cliffhanger. But this also happens to be the last film in the series, chronologically, so there you go. I did my homework and couldn’t find out if, like the similarly flashback-heavy Phantasm IV: Oblivion, the film was made to raise money and get investor interest in a “real” sequel. If so, it clearly didn’t work, or at least not in helping get the sequel that was originally intended.

Plus if you thought the filmmakers would take this opportunity to patch the many, many holes in the franchise’s continuity, well…forget it, Jake, it’s Full Moon.

The quickie plot involves a hitwoman named Maclain, who has been sent to piece together Toulon’s secret formula. She confronts and threatens a man, Peter, at the Badoga Bay Inn, the very same Peter who befriended Toulon in Germany as a boy. Peter claims that he knows nothing about Toulon’s formula, even though he is surrounded by the puppets and has apparently set up a fully functioning lab in the hotel’s basement. Apparently noting these little discrepancies, she shoots Peter in the knee, although it seems you can recover from that because he’s standing on both legs without any difficulty just a couple of scenes later.  Nonetheless cowed, Peter plays a tape recording.  Of Toulon.  Who has been dead for at least several years. And who narrates everything including the events of 5 and 6, except it seems that part of it is also narrated by Rick. So did Rick and Decapitron get together and just relay everything? And the recording even goes all the way back to Toulon talking to the puppets in Retro Puppet Master, but when did that happen?!

Oh God, it’s only eight minutes of story and already there’s at least twenty different ways it doesn’t make any sense!

Anyway, Toulon’s recording begins by narrating the events of Retro Puppet Master. Maclain channels my own feelings about that particular installment by blurting out, “I don’t care about this drivel!” Then we move on to III, which I think contributes the longest flashback in what might be an acknowledgment that it’s still the best film of the franchise.

When Maclain disses Toulon, Peter claims that Toulon only ever unleashed his puppets against people who deserved to die. Maclain naturally responds by narrating some of the events of I and II (although Toulon, still being pretty dead, wasn’t behind the events of I – in fact, Neil Gallagher isn’t even brought up, much less why the puppets were following his whims – but there I go, expecting a movie that’s all about Puppet Master continuity to be…well, about Puppet Master continuity).

We do find out that Maclain unceremoniously pumped Rick from 5 and 6 full of lead just before this movie’s events. I would feel bad, but since he apparently sold the puppets off (how else did they end up in Curse?) after they saved his life and apparently saved the world from Sutekh, he had it coming. Oh, right, and for some reason Toulon knows about and narrates everything that went down in Curse too.   

Maybe Blade wrote – well, carved – it all down after the puppets found their way back to the Badoga Bay Inn – somehow.

Okay, we already got a question about continuity (or lack thereof) every second this goes on, so let’s wrap things up. The puppets finally get around to attacking Maclain, allowing Peter to get the drop on her and shoot her. While dying (or dozing off into a nap, it’s hard to tell), Maclain tells Peter her employers’ real motive for wanting Toulon’s formula wasn’t for creating new puppets or achieving immortality, but for learning how to stop their own immortality. Her bosses themselves are “immortals” who are in “agony” because they were trapped in wooden bodies using Toulon’s formula. Of course, given how easily Toulon went down in II, you’d think ending their own lives would be as easy as falling out a third story window; it’s not like wooden puppet bodies regenerate after all.

But there I go again. Instead let me say one nice thing. This actually is an interesting twist and instead raises the good kind of questions. Are her bosses some people made unwillingly immortal by Toulon’s formula that we haven’t seen yet, perhaps as a result of Nazi experiments based on the information gotten from Toulon’s research during III? Or is it Neil, Camille, or Robert? Or all of them as kind of a Puppet Master Injustice Society? Or could it even be the Retro Puppets, whose final fate was significantly never revealed? Whoever it is, she, he, or they surprise Peter in the basement, and the closing shot is Peter firing Maclain’s gun at them. Who could be the mastermind, ruthless enough to send a hardened assassin after anyone between them and Toulon’s secrets, and so filled with hatred and despair they’re willing to do anything just to achieve death? Find out…in the sequel that never happened! (I do dimly recall reading years back that the person who ambushes Peter at the end was intended to be Neil Gallagher, but even with the power of the Google oracle I couldn’t verify that one way or the other).

What more can be said about what is, essentially, a movie that’s technically less than ten minutes long? Nothing, really. It’s a shame they passed up the opportunity to try to add some depth to the series’ happenings, beyond just saying that, by the way, the protagonist of two of the series’ films was brutally murdered off-screen. Still, to be fair, kind of, it’s hard to get upset when the filmmakers have never shown much if any consideration for the series being a coherent whole, so…there you go, Puppet Master: The Legacy, I guess you did good after all.

Next time, it’s the officially non-canon black sheep installment of the franchise!

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Retro Puppet Master (1999)

After my write-up about Curse of the Puppet Master, which was supposed to be the beginning of the series’ descent into awfulness but instead I found it to be perfectly okay, I thought the series had drilled into my head much like the aptly-named Tunneler and filled me with sympathy for Charles Band’s most beloved creations. Luckily, Retro Puppet Master came along and showed me that, no, it’s still possible not to like a Puppet Master movie.  Oh, Sutekh as my witness, is it possible.

Now the idea is actually rather brilliant, and manages to work from both a storytelling and marketing viewpoint. Aside from a brief flashback in II, which was part of more scenes that didn’t make it to the final cut, we don’t really know much about what Andre Toulon was doing before World War II or how he learned the ability to bring puppets to sentient life. Do a movie about that! But the puppets we know and adore weren’t created until the events of III. So let’s have an earlier set of killer, intelligent but more primitive looking puppets we can sell to our fans!

The execution…well, let me put it this way for those of you who have been following along. Retro Puppet Master makes Puppet Master 4 look like Puppet Master III.  

Our “lost episode” begins with Andre Toulon stopping for the night at an abandoned inn on the German-Swiss border…in 1944.  That’s five years after he committed suicide in California according to the original film (and, putting aside the sliding timescale of Andre Toulon’s escape from Nazi Germany and death which has been sliding since II, you’d think by 1944 the Nazis would have much bigger concerns than just learning the secret recipe for making a living puppet). While Toulon scrounges for food and talks to the puppets, Blade somehow discovers the damaged head of another puppet that Toulon identifies as Cyclops – and by “somehow” I mean his discovery is conveyed by Blade waving his hookhand at the camera and Cyclops’s head rolling on the floor from nowhere. Toulon admits that Cyclops was one of several puppets he had before he created them, and goes on to tell the tale of what happened in 1904. Hopefully Toulon’s recounting includes a description of this frilly ensemble we see his younger self wearing…

Seriously, I think that’s too many frills even for someone from 1704, much less 1904.

And, yes, that’s Greg Sestero pre-The Room wearing that costume that would provoke homophobic slurs from Richard Simmons. If I remember his account of working on the movie from “The Disaster Artist” correctly, he got cast largely because his mother was French, meaning he could sound convincingly French. That makes sense, since “sounding French” is 95 percent of Andre Toulon’s character here.

Anyway, after a performance at a high-class theater in Paris, Toulon meets an audience member, Ilsa, whose overprotective father is the Swiss ambassador to France. In a twist of fate, he also encounters and saves an old man who appears to just be a victim of a random mugging. In reality, he’s a 3,000-year old sorcerer from Egypt who stole the secret of creating life from the Elder God Sutekh, who has marked him for death. This was a vital move because apparently the only thing standing between Earth and conquest by the Elder Gods are weaponized puppets (although Puppet Master 5 does see Sutekh being destroyed with the help of puppets, so…well played, Charles Band, well played).

Before killing himself as a grand gesture to “protect” himself from being a victim of Sutekh’s, the sorcerer teaches a skeptical Toulon how to bring one of his puppets to life, which he does using the consciousness of a deceased beggar Toulon had befriended. Unfortunately, Toulon doesn’t have much time enjoying his quasi-godhood before he becomes the target of Sutekh’s undead minions, whose powers include killing people with bad special effects and pointlessly repeating each other’s statements and wearing snazzy sunglasses.

Unfortunately, Toulon’s life goes très mal after becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice. Ilsa has one more awkward and supposedly romantic encounter with Toulon before her father’s henchman whisks her away and practically imprisons her at the embassy. Then Sutekh’s goons murder all of Toulon’s assistants, who conveniently give him the final ingredient needed to bring all of his puppets to life: Blade (not to be confused with non-retro Blade), Pinhead (not to be confused with…you get the idea), Six Shooter, Drill Sergeant, and Dr. Death.

The goons attack Toulon, but luckily they don’t see the puppets get out of Toulon’s suitcase, or approach them from the sides. Perhaps vision among the undead is usually poor. After that skirmish, Toulon decides, rather than risk being blamed for the deaths of his assistants, to leave Paris. However, he’s forced to backtrack when the goons kidnap Ilsa, which turns out to be an effective tactic even though Toulon and Ilsa spent about five minutes of screentime together, and none of them showed Ilsa and Toulon sharing a tender, erotic moment amidst candles and silky sheets. (Honestly, not taking advantage of Greg’s…assets is one way in which this is actually a worse movie than The Room).

The final battle unfolds on the train back to Paris. Toulon finally saves Ilsa and kills Sutekh’s goons by…having the puppets flank them again while Toulon confronts them head-on. But the fact that the goons fall for the exact same tactic again is somewhat more believable than Ilsa only being slightly discomforted by being kidnapped by supernatural beings and rescued by a man she had a brief, mildly flirtatious relationship who happens to have a small brigade of killer puppets. It’s tru wuv. 

Of course, the happy ending here is somewhat diminished knowing that Ilsa will end up shot to death by a Nazi officer, her consciousness or soul or whatever transferred into the wooden body of a leech-vomiting puppet, and then slowly burned to a second death by a redneck matron. And that Toulon will bite a bullet, get resurrected, and end up an insane stalker mummy killed by his own beloved creations.

As for the retro puppets…Toulon tells the current puppets that their final fate is a tale for another time.  In other words, they joined Camille, Torch, and Rick in the giant black hole that rests in the center of Puppet Master continuity.

I will admit that Retro Puppet Master may not be the worst movie on Greg Sestero’s resume. I mean, it is from Full Moon Video’s infamous Romanian years with stilted lines delivered from Romanian actors and bad dubbing being abundant, but on a technical level it’s…a film, a statement that can’t be made with 100% confidence about The Room, enjoyable as it is. Nonetheless, the puppetry is a stepdown from even the lows of Curse of the Puppet Master, with the puppets not even appearing to be on the same dimension as their human costars. Plus all the show’s characters are so flat that you would be hard-pressed to think of adjectives to describe Ilsa beyond, say, “female”, or “human.”

Even though Charles Band seems to have wanted the puppets to be very small superheroes from the start, the films that have the puppets as heroes tend to be a wash. Retro Puppet Master is definitely no exception. There’s a hint that the puppets aren’t too happy about being people transferred into small artificial bodies, but it’s barely even suggested. The darkness lurking behind Toulon is nowhere in evidence like it was in the more memorable Puppet Master III. It’s almost as if the series has lost its horror roots, despite the clearly menacing nature of its stars.

But, hey…at least this movie wasn’t 95% footage from previous installments!  Oh, God, what have I gotten myself into?

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Curse of the Puppet Master (1998)

I will at least admit that this film has the best cover of the series. It’s creepy, it’s unexpected, and it’s actually relevant to what happens in the movie!

The film itself…well, it has a rep for being the “beginning of the end” for the series. And it did come out in the late ’90s, when Charles Band’s media empire was beginning to slip off of its mom-and-pop rental store throne. The very fact that Curse of the Puppet Master itself wasn’t supposed to be – originally the plan was for a trilogy of films where the Puppets face off against the classic Universal monsters, but presumably that proved too ambitious for Full Moon’s dwindling resources – is a testimony to Full Moon starting to be, well, eclipsed in this era.

It’s also true that the puppetry in this film, no longer handled by David Allen Productions, just isn’t nearly as good as it had been. The puppets’ movements no longer look fluid, with one scene where Tunneler and Blade are supposed to be walking looking like they’re levitating across the room. Also when Blade kills shots of him unconvincingly slashing at the air are just interspersed with shots of his victim struggling and showing facial wounds. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if they didn’t play the same trick twice in the movie.

And yet, it’s really not that bad…

I mean, okay, the movie’s plot is best described as a cliche casserole, combining the Instant Love Interest/Sex Partner, Inexplicable 20-Something Bullies, and even thunderstorms taking place during the movie’s first kill and the climax. But honestly the way it uses the core concept of little killer puppets and its antagonist is pretty interesting, more so than their purely heroic (and baffling) turn in 4 and 5.

The puppets end up in the care of Professor Magrew and his daughter Jane, who operate a puppet museum/show. In true Puppet Master tradition, there’s no explanation as to how the Puppets got there, except that Magrew found them at an auction. Prof. Magrew’s last assistant Matt mysteriously vanished – or so he tells the obviously corrupt local sheriff, but in reality he was the victim of Magrew’s so far failed experiments to transfer a human’s consciousness fully into a new puppet. Poor oblivious Robert, a gas station attendant who is for some reason constantly tormented by said 20-Something Bullies, is enlisted by Magrew as his new assistant when Magrew discovers that he has a knack for woodcarving. Robert, who moves in with the Magrews (and promptly has sex with Jane; how rude!), is not really taken aback when Magrew introduces him to the Puppets. A bit more worrying to him than sentient puppets with obvious means to kill are the dreams Robert starts having of turning into a puppet himself.

(Wait, you ask yourself, did Prof. Magrew learn how to create new puppets using human minds from Toulon’s research? Were Toulon’s notes auctioned off too? If so, does that mean the existence of living, sentient puppets is kind of public knowledge, which is why Robert isn’t really freaking out over this? But anyway the transference of a human mind or soul or whatever to a new puppet isn’t anything like what happens in III. So how did Prof. Magrew figure it out? Was his doctorate in occult puppetry? Did he also find Sutek, or at least communicated Sutek before he got killed in 5?  But what happened to Rick anyway? Did he just auction off the puppets? What an asshole! Or maybe this movie takes place after II, in which case, whatever happened to Camille? And speaking of that, Leech Woman is back, even though she was thoroughly destroyed in II! But whatever happened to Torch? And plus..)

[For consideration of these questions and more, please refer to my upcoming book, “Hand Inside the Puppet Head: The (Dis)Continuities of the Puppet Master Series,” from Oxford University Press.] 

Because the main plot doesn’t allow for many warm bodies to slice up and drill into, Robert and Jane have a violent run-in with the 20-Something Bullies, whose leader retaliates by breaking into the Magrew house and attempting to rape Jane, until Pinhead drives him off. Magrew manages to follow the bully leader in his truck (even though the leader had too much of a lead in his car, but that’s the least of this movie’s logic holes) and sics Blade and Tunneler on him.

Jane later admits to her father that she’s fallen in love with Robert. This leads into one of my favorite moments, as Magrew tries to explain why she shouldn’t delve into her new relationship without coming clean. He says, in perhaps one of the most awkward conversations a father can have with a daughter, “If he were to leave…I’m just trying to say…I’m trying to say I don’t want you to get attached to him. Like if I were to…murder him for some occult purpose…or some similar scenario.” (Okay, I made that last part up, but the rest is real!).

The sheriff, already suspicious of Magrew, finds out that the bully leader wanted to attack Jane and goes to confront the professor. Unfortunately, that goes about as well as expected, especially because Magrew has sent Jane off on a pretext and is going about his plans to put Robert’s consciousness into the puppet Robert has been working on.

The puppet that’s…metallic and electronic…even though Robert’s talents have been clearly established to be woodworking…

Wait, I’m going to defend this movie! Honest!

So the film is admirably downbeat. Professor Magrew turns out to be pretty much insane, believing that he can engineer a new species that will be free from humanity’s more animalistic impulses, and convinced that he’s doing Robert quite a favor. Magrew even succeeds in transferring Robert’s essence into the new puppet body, but the Puppets immediately turn on a disbelieving Magrew (disbelieving probably because he too is wondering why they waited until after it was too late to save Robert to mutiny or, hell, why they didn’t betray him after what he did to his last assistant), and Jane arrives just in time…to see her father hacked up by Blade and then ruthlessly finished off by Robert, the man she fell in love with, despite her pleas.

This might sound like watching this franchise has finally broken me and turned me mad like poor Professor Magrew, or that my expectations have gotten even lower, but honestly the film’s villain and conflict are pretty well thought-out elements. Predictable as the plot is, there are hints dropped in the dialogue, particularly when Magrew and Robert have a heart-to-heart about the 20-Something Bullies and Magrew remarks that people always seem to be more animal than angel, about Magrew’s deranged philosophy. There’s also a good but easy to miss moment that speaks well of the acting chops of George Peck, who played Professor Magrew. As Blade hacks away at the sheriff, Magrew is laughing with delight – but then, slowly, he closes his eyes and bows his head, as if praying for forgiveness. That one scene suggested as much about Magrew’s motives as any of his dialogue, and was a small part that was genuinely…dare I say it?…really smart.

Also, intentional or not, it’s interesting how much Magrew fails in this movie, even when he wins. Sure, he essentially “killed” Robert and reduced him to a puppet, like he planned. However, it is puppet-Robert, the supposed culmination of his idealistic theory, who kills him without hesitation and remorse and refuses to extend to him the same mercy he showed even to the bully leader earlier. In trying to distill human nature down to its best elements, he only, through his own cruelty, took a decent person and turned him into a monster.

So I do want to give the movie props for having small but much appreciated moments like that, although it’s spoiled by things like how Puppet-Robert looks…

You know, this movie might actually have a message about the futility of utopian schemes for improving human nature, especially when those schemes rely on violence and depriving individuals of their free will and…oh my God is that a rejected monster from 1960s’ Doctor Who?!?!

Next time, we get a prequel, which will at least spare me from bitching about the many, many, many continuity problems…or will it?!

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies: Puppet Master 4 (1993)

According to the (brief) research I’ve done on the series, 4 and 5, where the series breaks free from the tyranny of Roman numerals, are considered by some to be the pinnacle of the series. It’s a little premature for me to agree or disagree, since 4 and 5 could just be considered two halves of the same movie. For now, though, I have to say that 4 isn’t really as much fun as seeing puppets kill Nazis.

If the first two Puppet Master films were slasher movies and the third was sort of a revenge-fueled action movie, this one is a bit like a superhero origin story. The puppets definitely turn into good guys here, after their discovery by a young (and implausible) scientist, Rick, whose lab happens to be the Bodega Bay Inn of the first two movies. He’s researching artificial intelligence for something called the Omega Project and is aware of Blade, but is oblivious to Blade being alive, much less his significance to his research. Rick is joined by his friends Suzie (a love interest for him), Lauren (a psychic…yes, another psychic), and Cameron (an asshole, albeit one with great early 90s’ hair). Lauren’s psychic abilities lead them to find Toulon’s diary and the other puppets, along with vials of the chemicals needed to revive the puppets (the fact that the chemicals come from human brains doesn’t come up).

With no hesitation, Rick revives the puppets, realizing that their intelligence is the key to finishing his research. Unfortunately, in Egypt, the demon Sutek and his minions are determined to suppress the secret of artificial life. Two other scientists working on the Omega Project receive shipments of gremlin-like dolls, who, under the control of Sutek’s minions, come alive and kill them. When it’s Rick’s turn and the Bodega Bay Inn is invaded by the gremlins, the puppets come to Rick’s defense. As might be expected, Cameron is killed trying to drive off, depriving the world of his ‘do.

It also happens right after he tries to make his girlfriend Lauren push his car in the pouring rain while they know a killer gremlin is running around. So at least you can’t accuse this movie of not giving its audience what it wants.

However, the puppets aren’t enough by themselves to destroy all the gremlins, and by destroying them killing Sutek’s minions. Contacting Toulon’s spirit through Lauren, Rick is urged to revive Toulon’s final puppet, Decapitron (which is based on a tragically unfinished film from Charles Band’s Empire Pictures days). I just take it as yet another indication of how freaking awesome the kindly, old puppet master’s shows must have been, at least not when he was portraying the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Anyway, in true Charles Band fashion, Decapitron is brought to life à la lightning in a lab and becomes animated by Toulon’s spirit (and/or his mind juice, like what happened to his wife and pals in III).. This pleases the puppets, who have forgiven Toulon for that whole “refusing to keep them alive just so he can make his stalker crush immortal” thing.

I know none of the Puppet Master movies thus far deserve awards for tight plotting or solid continuity, but if you can reasonably explain how the above fits in with the first two movies, you deserve to be the lord of all b-movie nerds. Honestly the plot holes are large enough for the German army to attack France through. Why are all the puppets incapacitated except for Blade when it’s implied that they got their fix at the end of II and it was supposed to last them at least a few decades? What happened to Camille anyway, and for that matter how did all the puppets get back to the Bodega Bay Inn? So it’s just a coincidence that Rick is researching artificial intelligence in the hotel that’s home to a bunch of animated puppets? If not, did the Omega Project know about Toulon and his discoveries? I guess not because Rick is taken aback when Toulon’s notes and other belongings are discovered, so it does seem like his bosses set him up randomly in a massive abandoned hotel where a series of brutal, unexplained murders took place over the years. But if the Omega Project had nothing to do with Toulon in the first place, why does Sutek, who says that Toulon “stole” his secrets, see their research as so threatening that he has to go through all the trouble of killing them? And why is it called the Omega Project anyway?  It sounds like they’re working on a doomsday weapon, not artificial intelligence, unless they’re deliberately trying to build Skynet.

Maybe the plot made sense at some point in the writing process, before six different writers all got involved.

I guess I can see why people like it. It’s the first time you see the puppets as heroic, which I would guess is what Charles Band wanted to do from the beginning. And more so than its predecessors the movie captures the comic book universe feel of Full Moon, which is what made quite a few people fall in love with the company’s works in the first place. Yes, Sutek is goofy, looking a bit like a beefed up Sid and Marty Krofft monster. However, as odd as it is to say about Full Moon’s banner franchise, he does help make the movie the most Full Moon-y installment in the franchise thus far. But he’s still no Richard Lynch.

For all that, it’s a pretty hollow film, lacking the odd atmosphere of the first movie or the character-driven story of the third or the…hm, something of the second. There are plenty of things that happen, like Cameron and Lauren accidentally contacting Sutek psychically, yet the whole movie feels like it could have unfolded in the first thirty minutes. It doesn’t help that the only character who feels like he has anything close to a defined personality is Cameron, the stock horror movie asshole. As always, the puppetry stands out, and there’s some nice effects like Rick playing laser tag with the puppets, or the puppets reacting to Toulon’s “resurrection” as Decapitron. But it’s still a letdown when the movie ends on not even a cliffhanger, but what feels like mid-act.

No, so far I didn’t like it as much as III, but I’ll have to withhold final judgment until I see the story conclude in 5!

Trash Culture Goes to the Movies – Puppet Master II (1991)

So here’s the plot of Puppet Master II in a nutshell:  a group converges upon the Bodega Bay Inn and are picked off one by one by killer puppets at the behest of a human villain, but the puppets eventually turn on their master.  Sound familiar?  Well, okay, they do hammer in a love triangle involving reincarnation and a sort-of immortal being halfway through, but we’ll get to that. The puppets go to a cemetery, conveniently located just outside the hotel, and dig up their creator Andre Toulon (who was now killed in 1941 instead of 1939, but this isn’t a continuity error; apparently Charles Band decided that this movie must take exactly 50 years after Toulon’s death).  They pour a green liquid (not that green liquid…I think) onto the corpse, and it begins to stir. Since I already heavily spoiled this movie that’s so old it probably just graduated from college, let me just say that, yep, Andre Toulon is the villain.  Given that I know a little bit about what happens in the sequels, this might end up being a case of retconuenza. But, of course, if I shot myself in the head and was brought back to life after five decades of decay, I’d probably be a little off too.

This time around, the Bodega Bay Inn is being visited by a team of paranormal investigators sent from the government who apparently, by their own admission, operate on a shoestring budget and exist just to amuse the public. Alas, no Agent Mulder or Scully are on the team.  Instead we have Carolyn, the scientist; Lance, the tech guy; Wanda, who…uh, well, she walks around topless during a scene later; and Patrick, Carolyn’s brother, who just seems to be tagging along. Like with Dana in the last movie, the movie likes to drop hints that there’s more of a backstory between the lines. Wanda and Lance are sleeping together and doing little to disguise the fact, even though it’s very briefly suggested that Lance might be married and has a newborn child. Patrick is an ex-con who can easily pick locks, but we don’t know his crime or if because of his release he doesn’t have much of a choice but to work with his sister. I don’t mean all this as a criticism; movies that leave blanks to be filled by the audience’s imagination are usually doing a good thing, and it’s still more fleshing out than what slasher movie cattle usually get. But, just so ya’ll don’t forget this is a Full Moon production, the interior of the Inn looks nothing like it did in the last movie, with a couple of exterior shots to assure the viewer, “Hey, this is totally the same place!” But that’s not the only thing out of place. See, the investigators are there to figure out why Alex Whitaker went insane after he experienced whatever caused his psychic colleagues to disappear – you know, the same Alex Whitaker who was calmly leaving for a cab at the end of the last movie. As for Megan Gallagher, her corpse was found with its brain missing and evidence that it was extracted through her nose. Poor Megan, but I really am concerned for Dana’s resurrected dog, whose ultimate fate goes unmentioned.  (Now there’s an idea for a fan fic!) The team is later joined by Camille, a genuine psychic who is nonetheless reduced to writing a transparently phony column for tabloids. Already unnerved by a run-in with a redneck couple who both serve as this movie’s Crazy Ralph, Camille gets bad vibes and vows to leave as quickly as she came – but not before she’s dispatched by Pinhead. Carolyn’s assumption that Camille just left without telling them gets rudely overturned when Patrick falls victim to Tunneler (who, oops, I called Driller last time!) in a rather gruesome sequence.

However, the team does score a small victory when they nab Tunneler and dissect him, but are shocked to find that he has no organic components whatsoever.  This leads Carolyn, who is pretty much your archetypal “Scientist who can only science because she sees the world through a sciencey lens” character, gets exasperated, exclaiming, “It has to be subject to physical laws!”  Ha, tell that to Pinhead and his physics-busting strength! Anyway, as Crazy Ralph himself found out the hard way, even rednecks who try to warn the future victims aren’t safe from the malevolent forces they ineffectively warn outsiders about. As the couple lie in bed, Leech Woman, who dispenses with her usual impractical modus operandi and goes for the beautiful simplicity of a dagger, cuts into the brain of the husband. Tragically, the wife proves much more adept at dealing with killer puppets, and Leech Woman gets burned alive. Alas, poor Leech Woman, we hardly knew ye. Luckily, she’s swiftly avenged in the old-school “eye for an eye” fashion by an (inexplicable) newcomer to the gang, Torch, who…you don’t really need me to explain, do you? I have to say, while the design on all the puppets is classic, Torch is probably my favorite. He’s like what would happen if you put all of World War II in a tangible form. Back at Bodega Bay Inn, Carolyn and the rest meet a couple of unexpected guests. The first introduces himself as Erique Chaneé (Get it?  Chaney?) and dresses up like the classic Universal monster-style Invisible Man. Of course, it’s actually Andre Toulon pretending to be suffering from a crippling medical condition that isn’t undeath. Now, I know that when we saw him in the first movie he definitely didn’t have a French accent, but here he not only has a French-sounding name but gives himself an even more French-sounding alias. Yet for some reason his accent here is best described as “Transromangarian.” The second interloper is Camille’s son Michael, a motorcycle-riding novelist who came searching for his mother and who promptly discovers, through the autopsied Tunneler, what’s really going on. The two hit it off – and I mean really hit it off – despite…well, who knows, maybe a man and a woman dealing with a likely dead mother and a brutally murdered brother respectively would be inclined to hump away their grief?

In any case, it’s around here where Puppet Master II shifts a bit and turns into basically a love letter to the old-school monster movies of Universal Studios, especially The Mummy. Like in that movie, Toulon becomes convinced that Carolyn is the reincarnation of his dead wife Elsa, who was with him when he first discovered the secrets of bringing life to inanimate objects in Cairo in 1912. Also, just like a villain from that era, Toulon loves to monologue – at the puppets, at Carolyn, at empty air…It doesn’t help, at least for me, that between the fact that Toulon’s actor makes Toulon softspoken and the phony accent I understood maybe half of what Toulon was saying. But the gist is that Toulon has crossed oceans of time yadda yadda. But it is left ambiguous whether or not Carolyn really is the reincarnation of Elsa or if Toulon has gone insane, or at least the script just doesn’t leave any clues that reincarnation is part of the mix other than the same actress playing Carolyn portraying Elsa in a flashback. I would call the movie’s driving plot in its second half a love triangle – but Carolyn is never anything but suspicious of and disgusted with Toulon, treating him like a stalker and unsympathetic to his claimed medical condition, and Michael is conventionally handsome but more wooden than the puppets. But luckily for the audience the puppets are still out killing, with Torch taking on a little boy who…strips his action figure shirtless and begins to whip his back? Okay, this is already my favorite Puppet Master movie, just for not only having the guts to count a kid among its victims, but to also depict said kid as a blossoming sadomasochist. We learn from one of Toulon’s barely audible yet very lengthy monologues that the puppets, particularly Jester, are running low on the liquid that gives them life. To survive another 50 years, they’ll need more of the liquid, which can only be made from a particular part of the human brain. Again, it’s going to be really interesting seeing Toulon as the hero later on in the series. Also stacking the deck against a sympathetic view of Toulon is that he’s modified the plan to include Carolyn. He schemes to use the liquid to transfer his and Carolyn’s consciousnesses into human-size puppet bodies, which really are the scariest things in this film. Yet Carolyn is not sent running when she finds them as she snoops around Toulon’s room, which allows him to capture her when he returns. Oh, like the screenwriter I almost forgot about Wanda and Lance and their tragic and adulterous love affair!  They die. (But during their final sequence can you folks at home catch the scene that was in desperate need of a reshoot? I may spoil the plot, but I won’t spoil that). Rather impressively, Michael becomes the first person in the series able to take on most of the puppets (although it helps that they follow martial arts movie rules and only fight him one at a time). Still, it looks like Carolyn is about to be condemned to at least 50 years in a dead-eyed, wooden body…until Toulon makes the amazing blunder of telling the puppets that they’re going to die while he uses up the last of the liquid on Carolyn. Needless to say, the puppets rebel against their own creator, and luckily for them it doesn’t seem like Toulon managed to make his new body all that durable. After the puppets rectify their mistake in bringing their creator back to life, Jester takes a goblet of liquid and heads over to Camille’s corpse… In an epilogue, we see Carolyn and Michael are still a couple, and will hopefully not suddenly go mad and have to be institutionalized between movies.

Meanwhile the puppets are on the road and performing again with a revived Camille in the body Toulon made for “Elsa.”  They’re headed to the “Balderston Institute for Troubled Tots and Teens” where hopefully, Camille muses, if any of the audience notices anything strange in their performance nobody would believe them because of their mental illness. If nothing else, it’s a handy allegory for fans of Full Moon! (And naturally I don’t exclude myself…). So how does the first sequel hold up to the original? I’m of two minds. Technically speaking, it is a better movie with a tighter story, apart from the abrupt introduction of Michael and the whole “lost reincarnated love” cliche. On the other hand, it’s not as delightfully chaotic as the original, with your Nazis, psychics, and killer puppets all running loose. Plus here we don’t get to see Leech Woman in action before her tragic death, although the movie does almost make up for it by giving us Sado-Boy…who also tragically perishes. Overall, I’m still optimistic!  We’ll soon see what Charles Band has in store for me next time.