Could it be that the glowing elixir that keeps Andre Toulon’s killer puppets ticking has been heartily injected into their film series too? It’s a fair assumption, considering that the franchise boasts a staggering fourteen installments since 1989; but in order to ensure survival, the gore-slinging gang of playthings have had to make some aesthetic changes in order to keep their little, sculpted heads above water.
Starting with 2020’s Blade: The Iron Cross, the Puppet Master series decided to downsize and dedicate entire movies to one puppet at at time starting unsurprisingly with franchise favorite, Blade. However, for their fifteenth installment, Full Moon Productions suddenly went left-field, yanking a puppet out of relative obscurity and putting a spotlight on it for the first time since 1999’s Retro Puppet Master. That’s right, rather than giving a whole movie to series regulars such as Pinhead, Leech Woman, or Six-Shooter, the decision was made to honor Doktor Death with his very own movie – well, I say movie… can something that’s only 59 minutes long technically be called a movie?
Welcome to Shady Oaks Senior Living, a place where the old can finally rest their weary bones and enjoy what remains of their winter years. However, while April Duval starts her first day on the job as a member of the care staff, it proves to be a trying day as we find that one of the elderly residents died of a heart attack the night before. However, we know thanks to some hastily edited nightmare footage that he had some sort of connection to Andre Toulon’s puppet-based legacy, and when April is tasked with sorting out the deceased’s belongings, she discovers an ominous, chained-up trunk.
Token douchebag on the staff, Flynn, decides to break it open and call dibs on whatever’s locked inside, but when he discovers a little wooden, skull-faced, puppet dressed in doctor’s clothing, he thinks he’s about to make a killing on E-Bay. However, the real killing is only about to begin, because this puppet proves to be the long-lost Doktor Death, one of Andre Toulon’s original creations, who may have been locked up inside that trunk since before the Second World War. Finally gifted with freedom, the “Dok” decides to celebrate by picking off the elderly residents of Shady Oaks one by one – not to mention anyone else who gets within slashing distance of his scalpel.
However, most alarming of all is Doktor Death’s ability of slicing his way into a body and being able to puppeteer it about by yanking on the correct tendons in some horrific puppet parody of Ratatouille (Puppetouille?). As the murderous malpracticer gleefully goes about his work, the staff struggle to contain him, but it seems that Alice in particular has an extra special reason for discovering if the Doktor is in.
So, before delving into the final (for now) Puppet Master entry to date, there’s a few glaring matters to puzzle over before we get down to the nitty gritty and first question is obviously: why the Hell would you choose Doktor Death? I only inquire because there are far more seasoned, fan-favorite puppets the filmmakers could have gone with and Doktor Death hardly has that much of a recognisable skill set when compared with giant strangling hands and a drill-bit head. However, the main reason is that Full Moon boss man, Charles Band, probably deemed the little skull-faced bugger far cheaper to feature than one of the more talent-heavy puppets. But while we have to contend with the knowledge that the franchise won’t ever give us the pyrotechnic, filmmaking headache that a Torch spinoff could create, the film actually manages to utilise the B-list doll into something that elevates the Doktor into something quite fun. I am, of course, talking about his ability to somehow control an entire corpse by yanking slightly on only two nerves while snuggly nestled in the ribcage, and while even a rudimentary knowledge of biology would claim that this as utter bollocks, it’s a great visual – which admittedly is way more important. In fact, the sight of a puppeteered old dead lady actually provides something close to a genuine jump scare (a relative rarity in Puppet Master movies) and the sight of a second puppeteered body missing all the skin from it’s face is a witty way for Doktor Death to tailor his victim to look like him (think Pimp My Corpse).
However, while Doktor Death is given his time to shine, unfortunately he only has 59 minutes to do it in, and it’s tough to spread the love when Full Moon can’t even drag a production out to fill even a slim 70 minutes. On the other hand, it does mean that the film moves noticably faster than some other entries in the franchise, and at this point, if we weren’t getting hour long installments of Puppet Master movies, we probably wouldn’t be getting them at all – I’ll leave that up to you if you’d consider that a bad thing. But another surprise is that the film has something of a proven talent in the director’s chair in the form of David Parker, a filmmaker who climbed up the indie ranks with The Dead Hate The Living and The Hills Run Red. This means that despite some very visible corner cutting (CGI rain), the director is actually able to build a little ambience even if the title star is about as mobile and nimble as a member of the Terracotta Army.
Yes, it’s silly and goofy and possibly a last ditch attempt to keep a floundering franchise above water, but while I could hardly call this a “good film”, after watching the previous fourteen installments, I have to say that sicking with the solo movies has been the best decision the series has made in years. However, at time of writing, it seems that even this ploy has stalled, due to the no-show of a proposed Leech Woman film that was supposed to bring her back into modern continuity after her furnace related death in Puppet Master II. Maybe too many jaunts in this universe has given me a case of puppet-related Stockholm syndrome, or maybe I just find it funny when Z-list franchises simply refuse to die, but I genuinely think that there’s a place in the world for yet more Puppet Master solo movies, especially if they focus on the classics – I mean, I guess I’d even tolerate a Jester movie if it manages to keep this wagon train a’moving. But let’s not kid ourselves, we’re not exactly talking about prime cinema here – but that doesn’t mean that this endearingly crappy little franchise hasn’t earned the right to keep on struggling for its malformed, stupid life.
While barely managing to class itself as an actual feature thanks to a runtime that’s shorter than Daisy Dukes’ cutoffs, I have to confess that the reduced length of Doktor Death goes a long way towards balancing out the rudimentary plot, fun gore and some predictably basic acting. However, for trash enthusiasts and the Full Moon faithful, this latest spinoff might just be what the Doktor ordered.
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