Plot
After fleeing Nazi Germany, Andre
Toulon commits suicide before they can track him down and steal his secrets. His
puppets are found by a young man who brings them to life and uses them to stop
an Axis plan to destroy an American bomb factory during World War II.
Review
It's been six years since the last Puppet Master film due
to the continual drop in quality that the sequels suffered after the third film
and genuine lack of interest from fans like myself. What was once a decent
little niche series became victim to some serious cost cutting and penny
pinching from Charles Band. So much so that Puppet Master: The Legacy
more or less killed the franchise off with a terrible story which relied on
stock footage and flashbacks too much in a vain attempt to hide it's pitiful
budget. Trying to revive the series, the puppets are back for one more bash.
The ninth official entry
into the Puppet Master series (the tenth if you include the non-canon
Puppet Master Vs Demonic Toys), Puppet Master: Axis of Evil is going
to be a franchise killer, there's no question. I thought that the series was
dead and buried long before Puppet Master: The
Legacy came along but somehow it's lifeless corpse is being dragged around,
no doubt re-animated by the fabled life-giving formula of Andre Toulon that
brings the puppets to life.
Once more the series goes back in time to try and flesh out the story of Andre
Toulon and the puppets and yet all it does is cover a lot of old ground and write
itself into a hole when you try and link it in with the other films. Stock
footage of the first few minutes of Puppet Master are edited in with new
footage to make it look like it's all freshly filmed (which is easy to tell
because the actor who plays Toulon, William Hickey, died in 1997!). Then we're
introduced to the new character who has the responsibility of looking after the
puppets. If you think it sounds rather familiar it's because this is almost
always what happens in these films! The puppets find a new owner and come to
life, working with their human friend to stop some sinister character for
whatever reason. The human side of the story is hardly gripping material but
you're going to have to make do with it because there's little puppet action.
But more on that later. The austerity measures that this series clearly has had
placed on it are evident to see. The sets look cheap and ramshackle. The
lighting is just awful. The acting is dire. The script is laughable and full of
inconsistencies (did the American writers forget when Pearl Harbor took place?).
Puppet Master: Axis of Evil
tries hard to create a story we'll care about but ultimately it has the opposite
effect and ends up pushing the puppets into the background thus alienating it's
devoted fan base.
The puppets have always been the stars of the show yet apart from the first
three films, they've been cast off to the side and rarely used. If you're going
to make a film about these killer puppets without using them, why bother in the
first place? The tragedy is that when you do get to see new footage, they look
like pale imitations of their prior selves. The rest of the shots of the puppets
are once again culled from previous films where they actually had money to spend
on them. Like the Jaws films, it's so sad to see that the special effects
have got worse since the original when they should be improving every film. The
original five puppets are back: Blade, Tunneler, Ms Leech, Pinhead and Jester
and there's another new face in the gang. Six-Shooter, one of the best puppets
of the series, appears in a cameo but as a broken puppet - conveniently enough
it's also the most complex puppet to operate with six gun-toting arms. Clearly
lacking a budget to do much in the way of animating the puppets, the film relies
on close-up shots of them and feeble rod and string movements which make them
look....well, like silly puppets.
Maybe it's time that they were turned into CGI puppets? At least they'd get
something to do. The stop-motion used in the original has long been cast aside
and now the puppets, although apparently "living" characters in the film, are
about as inanimate as a carbon rod.
And in my opinion, the biggest disgrace of it all is that the puppets are the
good guys once more. They were so much better as the bad ass tiny terrors in the
first two films and yet every film since then has simply had them take revenge
on a villainous character.
Admittedly Puppet Master: Axis of Evil does
pick up in the final fifteen minutes when they actually start getting revenge on
the Japanese and Nazi agents. It's a far cry from the slasher elements of the
original three films where the puppets got pretty nasty at times with their
victims. There's little gore and the violence seems punctuated - yet again, conveniently enough, the most gory moment in the entire film comes courtesy of
the stock footage of Toulon's suicide. The rest of the deaths are very feeble
and blood free. And there's no nudity either. The series hasn't really gone down
that route for a while now but what made the original few films so popular were
the exploitative elements of the blood and boobs, coupled with the notion of
killer puppets! However, in order to end the
review on a positive note, Richard Band's circus-style signature theme makes a
welcome return during the title credits and the end credits roll over drawings
of the various characters which is rather neat.
Verdict
You'll need to be a hardcore
Puppet Master aficionado to get anything out of this dismal sequel and even
those die-hard fans would be best served re-watching the first two films.
It's set itself up for an inevitable sequel but the series really needs a much
needed shot of cash to bring the puppets more into the fray. George W. Bush
famously named his Axis of Evil as threats to the peace of the world. I hereby
name Puppet Master: Axis of Evil a threat to the world of low budget
horror films.
