Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

Cast: Thomas Lennon, Barbara Crampton, and Udo Kier

Directors: Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund  

90 minutes (18) 2018

Exploitation 
Blu-ray region B

[Released 8th July]

Rating: 7/10

Review by Christopher Geary

What if a bunch of horror icons from Hellraiser (1987), and various slasher movies, were incarnated as toys? The Puppet Master (1989) offers a likely answer, in eclectic subgenre terms, following the rarely explored trend of tiny terrors, from the flesh-biting dolls seen in Barbarella (1968), and homunculus mannikins created by a mad-house inmate for the final segment of British anthology movie Asylum (1972), to Stuart Gordon’s grisly fairy-tale Dolls (1987), and Tom Holland’s comedic slasher Child’s Play (1988). These figures of malevolence, skulking about and scuttling around, in the original movie’s Bodega Bay setting, continue their wholly creepy or violent activities in Puppet Master II (1990), as paranormal investigators study the old haunted hotel. A prequel movie, Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991) delivers another grimly relentless adventure, this time set in Berlin during the 1940s.

Like the green serum injections of Re-Animator (1985), the Puppet Master movies also deploy the sci-fi notion of a wonder drug for ‘playing god’, but where Re-Animator made zombies from corpses, the miracle of puppet-master Andre Toulon (originally played by veteran William Hickey) brings to life several inanimate objects that were clockwork, yet never alive before. This is a peculiar spin-off trope from a weird quest for an elixir of eternal life that confers an immortality on the carved puppets, when human spirits (vengeful victims of the Nazis) are re-embodied in them. The false life of stringed puppets, as presented in Toulon’s miniature theatre, is a genre metaphor throughout the PM franchise, and there are sinister hints of a Faustian pact for success along with crazily Frankensteinian science based upon ancient Egyptian mythical secrets.

The new picture in this PM franchise is a savagely dark comedy that springs, perhaps, out of the Naziploitation exemplar and cult-worthy popularity of genre spoof Iron Sky (2012), and Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is essentially a reboot of an 11-movie franchise where the genre creativity from several quirky character designs, previously enhanced by David Allen’s quite charming stop-motion effects, is cleverly replaced by camera trickery, and some digital visuals.

Filmed in Dallas, Texas, where a grim tragedy is celebrated during a convention marking the 30th anniversary of the infamous Toulon murders, this Puppet Master re-launch pays homage to most of the earlier movies, but updates the premise to reflect current political concerns. Edgar (Thomas Lennon, Lethal Weapon TV series), his girlfriend Ashley (Jenny Pellicer, The Bridge), and his buddy Markowitz (Nelson Franklin, Veep) hope to sell skull-faced Blade to prize collectors the convention. Detective Brown (Michael Pare, Streets Of Fire) is the calm voice of reason, not amused by the existence of Nazi puppets, and their reign of terror, where even a homicidal baby-Fuhrer isn’t the worst menace on the loose. 

Barbara Crampton (From Beyond) plays a no-nonsense security-officer, Carol, struggling to cope with numerous violent death scenes which are unflinchingly tasteless, extremely gory, and frequently amusing, in a binge of slick and often sick black-comedy aspects, as every hotel room seemingly becomes another slaughterhouse of demented fury. Panic begins as the body-count increases. Shoot ‘em-up action sequences are, largely, ineffective against much smaller targets. Under siege, the wounded and the repeatedly injured are forced to attempt risky escapes. When it really gets going, this comedy-horror delivers a cinematic model of disturbing slasher mania, with many brutal set-pieces all heightened by crunchy sound effects, when the most familiar puppets from previous efforts are joined by several new figures that scamper along or start flying about, scattering victims in bathrooms and hotel corridors.  

The comic-book mayhem is vigorous and uncompromising, despite the movie’s obviously trashy-horror and quite splattery style. Its sense of fun is most certainly of a ghastly and shocking variety.