When it comes to turning over a new leaf, nothing helps you whip up a new, heroic persona faster than targeting Nazis in 1941. Thus as we head into the fourth venture of the gaggle of killer dolls from Puppet Master, we now see that that the population of playthings have retained that good guy streak for reasons I’m not entirely sure of.
For a start, I’m not exactly sure that the makers of Puppet Master 4 know how prequels work – I mean just because they went good in 1941 during part 3, it doesn’t explain why they were still carving up innocent psychics and supernatural investigators during the late 80s throughout parts 1 and 2. Also, while the previous movies flirted with the supernatural and the ability to grant lifeless objects with renewed vitality, we now find that the puppets have now graduated from targeting the Third Reich and instead are throwing down with actual, card carrying monsters from Hell. While this new direction feels more like the pilot to a Saturday morning TV show than the latest installment of a goofy horror franchise (Mighty Mauling Puppet Masters, anyone?), we have to remember that Charlie Band’s Full Moon Pictures would practically try anything for a buck…
Meet Sutekh; he’s a demon from Hell who doesn’t take particularly kindly to puny humans discovering the secrets of animation, so you can best believe that he’s pissed that a bunch of researchers are close to developing a brand new version of artificial intelligence. Quite why a denzien of Hell is so against AI is unclear, but it gets his goat enough for him to have several small, bloodthirsty creatures named Totems sent to the guilty parties in order to fatally maul anyone working for the company called the Phoenix Division.
With his superiors sliced into ribbons, the last target Sutekh wants killed is a talented young researcher named Rick Meyers who just so happens to be carrying out his experiments while he’s working as a caretaker at the Bodega Bay Inn and while his attempts at creating AI are pretty far along, the discovery of Andre Toulon’s cadre of living puppets could provide the missing link he’s been searching for. However, in a stroke of dubious luck, he’s visited by his friends Suzie, Lauren and Cameron. But while Lauren – a confirmed psychic – helps the group discover the deadly dolls, here made up of Blade, Pinhead, Tunneler, Six Shooter and Jester, it seems that jealous Cameron is working for a rival company and has no qualms about swiping the Toulon’s secrets to giving life for himself.
Of course, Sutekh isn’t having any of this and sics his trio of Totems on the inhabitants of Bodega Bay in order to butcher anyone who comes close to his secrets. However, he soon finds that the puppets are something of a formidable force and a pint-sized battle breaks out while the humans try to take cover. However, the dolls have a secret weapon in their fight – the brand new puppet known as Decapitron – and if they can bring their new colleague to life, they’ll turn the tide against evil.
If you needed any more proof that the output of Full Moon rarely made sense at the best of times, just a quick glance at Puppet Master 4 shows that virtually involved was probably on at least one form of mind expanding drugs. I mean, if killer dolls versus demons from Hell doesn’t do it for you, there’s the fact that almost nothing in the film makes any kind of logical sense. For a start, I’m not sure how you quantify yourself as a big wheel in the hierarchy of Hell when your diabolical plan involves getting your underlings to remotely pilot three (yup, only three) Totems and then have them posted to the location of your enemies, but when your demon villain has upsettingly large nipples and the bulbous jawline of Robert Z’Dar, I guess fashioning instruments of destruction that are only 7 inches tall is just par for the course. Still, despite the fact that this shift to monster-busting proves to be something of a continuity nightmare, director Jeff Burr (of Texas Chainsaw 3 and Pumpkinhead 2 fame) seems to far more invested in making this shit as ludicrous as possible rather then filling in any of the gargantuan plot holes. For example, if Andre Toulon was a withered, evil corpse back from the dead only a couple of years ago, why is his spirit suddenly delivering Obi-Wan Kenobi-style advice to his puppet underlings? Also, if Six Shooter is present here after being made in 1941, why wasn’t he present in parts 1 & 2? Why is Tunneler alive after being killed in 2 and where the Hell is Torch if he got created in the same movie? Of course, Puppet Master 4 has no fucking intention of even attempting to answer any of these nerd questions because if nothing else, it understands the assignment totally and gets to the business of having the story smash two sets of warring puppets together.
It should be unwatchable, and yet watching Blade, Pinhead and the gang square up to the legitimately cool looking Totems proves to be quite genuine, daffy fun – it’s just a shame that we have to wade through the human stuff and some grindingly ponderous exposition delivered by the badly composited head of Guy Rolfe’s Toulon. In fact, it’s quite worrying that none of the human cast even manages to come close to matching the charisma of a bunch of gawking puppets and their individual special skills and even though the sight of Blade and Pinhead holding a Totem still in order to allow Tunneler to bore a hole in its midsection works way better than it should any right to. I mean, it’s fucking ridiculous, don’t get me wrong, but it nails a weird, violent-but-childish tone that low budget, Full Moon shite from the 90s was constantly obsessed with.
Of course, if you think that Hell placing its faith in three evil dolls only to be thwarted by a new puppet whose power is to zap things with its interchangeable head is a little anticlimactic, that’s because the story isn’t done yet. Lensed back to back with Puppet Master 5, the assault of Sutekh is due to continue as the fairly irritating Rick continues to take responsibility for the gang as the new puppet master. Unsurprisingly, this leads to the usual kind of narrative issues that a story that’s split between two movies often have, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think we’re going to get much of an improvement when we eventually get to part 5.
Fans of the puppets will no doubt be tickled pink to see the gang work together to fuck up some snarling demons even if Jester goes out of his way to be utterly fucking useless and there is a certain amount of fun to be wrung out of seeing the dolls literally pick on someone their own size. However, beyond the childish, trashy idiocy that Puppet Master 4 brings in spades, it’s not really much more than a bunch of grown adults recoiling in horror as two easily kickable toys grapple in the midst of laughable mortal combat in front of them.
Demon busting: for dummies.
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