Rebooting a franchise that has been scampering around since 1989, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich delivers most of the violent little creatures and mildly inventive gore that your mint-in-box heart may desire. If the humans that inhabit this self-aware horror comedy mostly play by-the-bloody-numbers, then that’s just par for the course.
A prelude set around the time of the first movie establishes some backstory for the atrocities to come. Withered puppet maker Andre Toulon (B-scream favorite Udo Kier) pulls up a stool at a Texas dive bar whose haughty waitresses, much to his chagrin, make out in front of him. He soon shows them what he’s made of, or to be clinical, what they’re made of. Flash forward to the present day, when Edgar (Thomas Lennon) moves back in with his parents in Texas after a divorce. In his old room, Edgar finds his once-beloved Blade puppet, a reminder of a more innocent time that nevertheless inflicts minor injuries on the reminiscing man-child. But maybe he can get some money for it.
This set-up, which departs quite a bit from the original concept, shows some healthy skepticism about its own base, and, since genre magazine Fangoria is presenting the film, that call is coming from inside the house. The script by S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk) teases fans as much as it panders to them. It’s clear that Edgar’s marriage failed in part because of his fandom, and the carnage that follows seems to be a meta-payback for rampant commercialization of fear. You see, Edgar, his new girlfriend Ashley (Jenny Pellicer) and his buddy Markowitz (Nelson Franklin) travel to a convention in the Texas town that started it all, where collectors gather hoping to sell their original Toulon puppets; the puppets, as you may expect, have other plans in mind.
While Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, directed by talking animal maestro David DeCoteau, had its diminutive yet lethal charges fight Nazis, the reboot’s subtitle turns the tables; these puppets are Nazis, and at first seem to target the disenfranchised before letting all hell bleed loose. Among these is a Texas bartender named Cuddly Bear (Skeeta Jenkins), who refers to himself in the third person as “colored man,” which plays well off Lennon’s deadpan. But directors Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund don’t have a consistent talent pool to work with, despite the welcome appearance of horror favorite Barbara Crampton (who had a small role in the first film) as a police officer who had faced down the evil Toulon decades ago but may be no match for his surviving creations.
But other than maybe Crampton and Kier, the human talent won’t be the draw—you’re probably here for the puppets. So you get such series favorites as Blade, Tunneler and Pinhead (sorry, Leech Woman fans, she sits this one out) and a new one known as Happy Amphibian, each of whom makes short work out of its victims in its signature fashion. But is that enough? There are far worse horror movies than Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, including its inspiration. But even though it’s marginally better than the 1989 launch, its competence only goes so far.
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