Seeing as the last Puppet Master came so close to being trashily worthwhile, it’s no great surprise that the franchise decided to remain within the strangely snug confines of the Second World War when it returned for a surprising anniversary. While predictably let down by the sluggish acting, nonexistent budget and agonisingly slow pace that tended to mark out newer Full Moon projects, Puppet Master: Axis Of Evil at least recognised the advantages of taking the series back to the Puppets vs Nazi stylings of Puppet Master III – and so Axis Rising dutifully followed suit.
Actually, it kind of had to, as it audaciously ended with a big-ass cliffhanger that assumed that crowds would come flooding just to find out if the imprisoned Tunneller could possibly hope to escape his Nazi captors. But while an imperiled puppet is hardly the equivalent of Han Solo being frozen in carbonite, in a strange turn of events, Full Moon honcho, Charles Band, was on board to direct the tenth (actually eleventh) installment despite stunningly never having directed a full instalment before. No, don’t be silly – the ten minutes of expository footage from the god awful Puppet Master: The Legacy do not count.
Picking up almost exactly where we left off (although all the surviving characters are confusingly now played by different actors), we find Ozu fleeing the scene of her failed attempt to sabotage the American war effort. On her person, stuffed in a sack, is the stolen Tunneller whose head mounted drill is perfect for boring through Nazi skulls, but seeming ineffectual when faced with mere fabric. Still even if burlap is the puppet’s disappointing Kryptonite, he still manages to kill a random Nazi after Ozu hands him off to the fearsome Nazi general, Kommandant Moebius, before being shot for her troubles. Returning to a secret lab located in Chinatown, he continues to apply pressure on captured Austrian scientist, Doctor Freuhoffer, to continue his experiments to try and resurrect the dead. But between the threats of Moebius and the constant distractions of busty, voracious Nazi sexpot, Uschi, Freuhoffer discovers that the fluid that powers Tunneller could be used to power a whole new generation of killer Nazi puppets.
Meanwhile Danny and Beth find that their rescue mission to get Tunneller back is delayed when they’re whisked away to a military base to be congratulated on their war efforts by an exuberant Major. Told he’s going to get a medal and given the gruff Sergeant Stone to act a bodyguard, Danny is still sore that his bum leg is keeping him from properly enlisting, but soon he and Beth discover that Moebius is planning to assassinate an important general and enlist both Stone and their clutch of murder-puppets to help.
However, Freuhoffer has been busy and standing in their way are a quartet of evil dolls designed to counteract the skills of Blade, Pinhead and the gang. It seems like our heroes could use a helping hand – so how about six of them, each holding a little pistol?
While there was a sense that Axis Of Evil could have been a goofy return to form for the long running series, too many issues (slow pace, not enough puppet action, curious amount of racial stereotyping) stopped it from being all that it could be. But with the news that Band himself was finally taking the helm for the first time since the franchise started in 1989, there was a chance that the Axis trilogy could still reach trash nirvana. After all, Trancers is great, and then there’s… well, Trancers is great, so my fingers were crossed that he could inject some life giving fluid of his own to help the series realise its own, ridiculous potential. Regrettably, not only does Axis Rising miss it’s chance to rectify those earlier issues, but it’s claims of the franchise of hitting such a big anniversary is actually debatable. Yes, Axis Rising is the tenth, official Puppet Master movie, but if you count the Charles Bandless Puppet Master Vs Demonic Toys, it’s technically the eleventh.
Anyway, we can split puppet hairs all day long, but that doesn’t stop the franchise from once again getting within a Pinhead’s reach from shitty greatness, before sadly tumbling back into slow paced banality. The story is chiefly divided into Moebius’ attempts to raise the dead (why such experiments are being carried out on American soil and not in some castle dungeon in Nazi occupied Austria is beyond me) and the insipid plot of Danny getting a medal. If both storylines sound like they don’t require the true stars of the show to actually do much, you’d be damn right and Jester, Leech Woman, Blade and Pinhead spend most of the movie looking on while the humans burn film while being boring as hell.
The villains manage to perk things up a little with an array of fluctuating accents, porn movie acting and the prominent cleavage of actress, Stephanie Sanditz; but the film refuses to go anywhere until the movie delivers a quartet of rival, nazi puppets to finally shake the film into some form of life. For a start, we have Bombshell, a doll recreation of the seductive Uschi who comes with the added bonus of having little machine guns hidden in her tits; then there’s the tank-shaped Blitzkrieg who almost sates my desire for a return of the long-absent Torch; next up is clawed, Nazi/werewolf puppet, Weremacht; and finally is the shockingly offencive Kamikaze who proves to be a literally explosive racial stereotype. However, you’re going to have to be patient if you want to see these opposing, puppet forces face each other down because we’ve oodles of boring human shit to wade through first that’s made all the more difficult to care about since everyone has been inexplicably recast – was there a fatal gas explosion during the last film’s wrap party, or something?
However, once Charles Band finally let’s the puppets take center stage, we once again comes tantalisingly close to the movie being a crappy good time. Yes, the puppets now all moves so stiffly you wonder if wooden joints can develop rheumatoid arthritis, but watching Bombshell and Leech Woman get involved in a catfight complete with bitch slaps and hair pulling is genuinely hilarious. Plus, if you have your Puppet Master scorecard close to hand, you’ll no doubt be happy that Six-Shooter makes a reappearance even if my boy Torch is still languishing in continuity limbo (he wasn’t built until the 90s), but to make up for that, here’s Blade fighting a werewolf….
Still as dopey, dour and mostly doll-less for most of its running time, not even a final act puppet free-for-all or Sanditz’s voluptuous Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS wannabe is enough to free the story from the snaggle of dreary subplots, terminally boring leads, or the fact that the franchise has gotten strangely aggressive toward the Japanese. The Axis Trilogy wouldn’t get wrapped up for another five years with the release of Axis Termination in 2017, but judging what we’ve seen so far, I’m in no particular rush…
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