While I’ve already stated elsewhere that the surprisingly sprawling Puppet Master series isn’t exactly my favorite, there are two facts I’ll happily conceade to: 1) that the various little puppets themselves are admittedly pretty fucking cool when it comes to character design, personality and random killing methods (Crushing hands! Drillbit heads! Leeches!), and 2) Dave Allen’s 1990s sequel is probably the best the classic run of movies ever got. Amusingly enough, the reason I feel Puppet Master II is a superior movie is that manages to embrace its core concept far better by being less original and a little bit dumber.
Lest we forgot – or never knew in the first place – the first film saw a rogue psychic lure his former colleagues to a remote hotel with news of his death in order to secure eternal life from the secrets of legendary puppet maker Andre Toulon. From there, he manipulated the killer dolls to wipe out his buddies, but not before the vicious little sods turned on him. However, while the sequel essentially uses the same, basic plot, there’s a sense of streamlining that makes those puppets pop.
We catch up with the ghoulish gang as they infiltrate the Shady Oaks Cemetary located behind the Bodega Bay Inn and dig up the grave of their creator, Andre Toulon, their mission is to pour a mysterious fluid into the open grave and Jester, Blade, Pinhead, Leech Woman and Tunneler all look on as the dessicated corpse begins to stir. A quick leap ahead a few months reveal that a team of parapsychologists have arrived at Bodega Bay in order to investigate the off screen-murder of Megan Gallagher, the damsel of the first film who died thanks to an extract of her brain being removed from her nose and we also discover that previous lead, Alex Whitaker is destined to spend the rest of his years rotting in am asylum for the murder, but team leader, Carolyn Bramwell is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery.
With her is the usual gaggle of useless side characters such as her boozy brother Patrick, horny monitor watchers Lance and Wanda and guest psychic Camille, but after spending a short time at the hotel, Camille suddenly disappears and Patrick gives up drinking the hard way when Tunneller shows up one night and fatally drills into his brain. Not long after, a man extravagantly dressed in bandages arrives and introduces himself as Eriquee Chaneé, the rightful owner of the hotel after inheriting it after Megan’s suspicious death and while he seems rather gracious in allowing the investigators to continue with their work (despite one of them dying at the hands of a killer puppet), he seems to form an unhealthy attachment to Carolyn.
Of course, it’s hardly a shock to find out that Chaneé is actually the resurrected Toulon who has designs on restoring his puppets to their former glory and reclaiming his dead wife. However, all that time in the grave seems to have baked Toulon’s noodle as he soon comes to believe that Carolyn is the reincarnation of his lost wife.
To anyone who considers themselves above such things, picking out the best Puppet Master may sound sound about as fun as trying to rank all the times you’ve ever inadvertently shit your pants, however, even the most disdainful viewer would probably agree that the puppets sophomore outing pretty much ends up playing out as the quintessential Puppet Master experience. The main reason for this certainly isn’t the quality of writing or the acting or even the effects, but director Dave Allen (the man responsible for animating the title Critters in the first film) knows one thing about all others – if you’re going to make a Puppet Master movie, you’d better make the puppets the star.
The first film seemed to want to needlessly complicate matters, adding a whole bunch of weird drama between the psychics and ends with a supervillain plot when it’s revealed that it’s all a play for imortality. However, while the team of five original puppets are very much present as endless POV shots set to the pitter patter of little doll feet will attest, the gang were only henchdolls and only flexed their independence when the real big bad overstepped his bounds. On first inspection, Puppet Master II isn’t that different. It’s still the same dolls chasing a group of people round the same hotel for vaguely similar reasons while an arch villain pulls the strings; but rather than having the overarching antagonist just be some random guy, the movie delves into the still-fresh lore of the infant franchise to pull out a no-brainer. Why not make the puppet master, the actual fucking puppet master and deliver us a resurrected André Toulon which allows Allen to go all in with visual references to classic, universal horror. Having Toulon employ the same facial protection as The Invisible Man while he swans about the place with a creepy German accent is an extremely nice touch and it also makes a nice spot of thematic sense that the quintet of killers would follow their original boss.
Something else that having Toulon back unlocks is that we can now have new additions to the gang, which is fairly important considering that we actually lose two members along the way. In fact, the puppets aren’t actually doing so good when we meet them this time round as they’re seemingly running low on immortality juice – although it seemingly has no bearing on their actually performance other than Jester looks a bit down in the mouth. So while we lose Tunneller and Leech Woman (who doesn’t even get to yak up any leeches this time) annoyingly easy, we get a brand new puppet in the form of the glowing eyed, bullet-toothed Torch who functions as a straight-up flame thrower who truly doesn’t give a fuck who he turns it on.
He’s a cracking new addition and slots in rather well with other team MVPs Blade and Pinhead (Jester’s more middle management if anything) and thanks to the fact that the original dolls have already been introduced in a previous movie, the film is free to place the puppets front and centre and not hide them off screen. Of course, this isn’t to say that Puppet Master II is a classic of the genre, because it most decidedly isn’t, but it’s the Puppet Master I would have made before the series got tied up in World War II prequels, having the puppets turn good to fight demons, or pissing the franchise away in cheap clip show installments.
While my rating may suggest that Puppet Master II is a worthy breakout of the Charles Band produced franchise, I’m more inclined to say that it’s more that it’s a three-star entry compared to most of the other films that featured in this whacko series. Still, you get a doll in a trenchcoat roasting a child alive, a cameo from George “Buck” Flower and the bizarre sight of Toulon transfer his essence into a truly disconcerting, bug-eyed, dummy of himself in a rather ill-conceived attempt to live forever and that’s got to be worth something. Is it a great film – no, but it’s exactly what a Puppet Master should be, and in this case, that’s enough.
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