Recap of Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010)!
Well, this hasn’t been a great series, but it’s had fun moments, and the last movie was actually good, so I am ready to start this next one, which I think is the beginning of a three-part arc. Milestone: I watched the clip-show movie that’s about three posts in our future, but this is the first Puppet Master movie I haven’t seen since beginning these recaps. And y’all? No one talks about Puppet Master movies. I have no clue what’s in store.
We start back at the Bodega Bay Inn, 1939. Danny is building chairs in the basement and bemoaning the exposition that his limp is keeping him out of World War II. Danny is one of the worse of the Good Actor tier for this franchise, and his uncle Len is one of the better of the Bad Actor tier, and we’re intercutting footage from the beginning of the first movie where the Nazis kill Puppet Master Toulon just after he hides a trunk of magic living puppets in the wall, and this is a safer start than I had prepared for. I mean, is it obnoxious for eight of the first ten minutes to be recycled footage? Yep. But I survived the clip show movie so bring it, low budget legend legend Full Moon.
And it’s a cute little dismount where we cut from the original murder to see handsome Danny limping up the hall and getting knocked over by two studly body doubles of the Nazis running out of Toulon’s room, then finding the trunk and coming home to Chinatown to see his mom (a talented actor loving her old-timey hairdo) and brother Don (a talented actor loving how sexy his dimples are, and he and Danny really look like brothers or maybe that couple at the gay bar who never do this but would like to invite you to their hotel room for a drink). Danny’s doing puppet work and shows up late to take his girl, Beth, out for a date, and she’s again in the better end of the Bad Actor pool, and why do I feel so safe now? This movie is a grilled cheese sandwich.
While Danny is working on puppets, the hot German bad guys meet up with Ozu, a Japanese woman crime boss hiding out in a Chinatown opera house because this movie was filmed in China and we have to cover somehow. I was not expecting this many good looking guys but had forgotten DeCoteau is directing again.
By now, Danny has clocked that the puppets are alive, and he’s surpringly nonplussed by this, just all, hey, cool, moving puppets. He takes Jester to see Beth and recognizes her coworker Ben as one of the trenchcoat jerks who killed Toulon but she can’t believe this guy could be a secret Nazi. He is apparently Tom from Vanderpump Rules but I will have to take the Internet’s word for that. Anyway, Ben sneaks back to update Ozu about how if you just walk around being handsome and talking baseball and saying racist things about the Japanese and Germans, no one asks questions and you can steal their secret blueprints and stuff. That strategy would work today. Danny and the puppets spy on the meeting, and Blade stabs a German in the calf and Pinhead grabs the blueprints, so now Ben and Ozu know to look out for murder dollies.
So they send a henchhunk to get Danny’s family, shooting his fun mom and hot brother and kidnapping Beth. I am genuinely shocked by the violent turn, and Danny sells the grief of finding the bodies and then putting Don’s soul into this new ninja puppet. Is this my favorite Puppet Master movie? No, but if it had Corey Feldman and a shirtless weightlifting scene, it would be.
The puppets sneak around Ozu’s theater hideout, with Leech Woman tricking a henchman into eating a leech that then rips out of his esophagus and that’s not how anything works but I like it for a scary movie. In another backstage area, Drill Sergeant murders another henchman in the skull, and Ninja gets me to make dry-heave sounds when he throws a star into somebody’s eyeball. There haven’t been enough puppet murders in this one, but what we do get is working, like a great grilled chicken sandwich but coming an hour after you placed your order. And yes, the spirit of the dead brother in the ninja dolly murderstabs the main Nazi, Ben, in the spotlight on center stage. Which is a nice climax.
But oh, no! Ozu has kidnapped all the puppets except Ninja, Blade, and Pinhead, and she’s run off to the next movie, Axis Rising. Will I remember this movie when I get around to the next part of the trilogy? Doubt it. But will I need to? My guess is they’ll play another eight minutes of this one, it’s fine.
Overall, this was a lot to sit through for a few charming handsome dudes and ten minutes of action, but it was comfortable and watchable in ways this franchise hasn’t been. I still don’t love Puppet Master movies, but this is in the top two, even more than the two where the cute blonde guy fights the Egyptian god of puppets. And that surprises me.
We start back at the Bodega Bay Inn, 1939. Danny is building chairs in the basement and bemoaning the exposition that his limp is keeping him out of World War II. Danny is one of the worse of the Good Actor tier for this franchise, and his uncle Len is one of the better of the Bad Actor tier, and we’re intercutting footage from the beginning of the first movie where the Nazis kill Puppet Master Toulon just after he hides a trunk of magic living puppets in the wall, and this is a safer start than I had prepared for. I mean, is it obnoxious for eight of the first ten minutes to be recycled footage? Yep. But I survived the clip show movie so bring it, low budget legend legend Full Moon.
And it’s a cute little dismount where we cut from the original murder to see handsome Danny limping up the hall and getting knocked over by two studly body doubles of the Nazis running out of Toulon’s room, then finding the trunk and coming home to Chinatown to see his mom (a talented actor loving her old-timey hairdo) and brother Don (a talented actor loving how sexy his dimples are, and he and Danny really look like brothers or maybe that couple at the gay bar who never do this but would like to invite you to their hotel room for a drink). Danny’s doing puppet work and shows up late to take his girl, Beth, out for a date, and she’s again in the better end of the Bad Actor pool, and why do I feel so safe now? This movie is a grilled cheese sandwich.
While Danny is working on puppets, the hot German bad guys meet up with Ozu, a Japanese woman crime boss hiding out in a Chinatown opera house because this movie was filmed in China and we have to cover somehow. I was not expecting this many good looking guys but had forgotten DeCoteau is directing again.
By now, Danny has clocked that the puppets are alive, and he’s surpringly nonplussed by this, just all, hey, cool, moving puppets. He takes Jester to see Beth and recognizes her coworker Ben as one of the trenchcoat jerks who killed Toulon but she can’t believe this guy could be a secret Nazi. He is apparently Tom from Vanderpump Rules but I will have to take the Internet’s word for that. Anyway, Ben sneaks back to update Ozu about how if you just walk around being handsome and talking baseball and saying racist things about the Japanese and Germans, no one asks questions and you can steal their secret blueprints and stuff. That strategy would work today. Danny and the puppets spy on the meeting, and Blade stabs a German in the calf and Pinhead grabs the blueprints, so now Ben and Ozu know to look out for murder dollies.
So they send a henchhunk to get Danny’s family, shooting his fun mom and hot brother and kidnapping Beth. I am genuinely shocked by the violent turn, and Danny sells the grief of finding the bodies and then putting Don’s soul into this new ninja puppet. Is this my favorite Puppet Master movie? No, but if it had Corey Feldman and a shirtless weightlifting scene, it would be.
The puppets sneak around Ozu’s theater hideout, with Leech Woman tricking a henchman into eating a leech that then rips out of his esophagus and that’s not how anything works but I like it for a scary movie. In another backstage area, Drill Sergeant murders another henchman in the skull, and Ninja gets me to make dry-heave sounds when he throws a star into somebody’s eyeball. There haven’t been enough puppet murders in this one, but what we do get is working, like a great grilled chicken sandwich but coming an hour after you placed your order. And yes, the spirit of the dead brother in the ninja dolly murderstabs the main Nazi, Ben, in the spotlight on center stage. Which is a nice climax.
But oh, no! Ozu has kidnapped all the puppets except Ninja, Blade, and Pinhead, and she’s run off to the next movie, Axis Rising. Will I remember this movie when I get around to the next part of the trilogy? Doubt it. But will I need to? My guess is they’ll play another eight minutes of this one, it’s fine.
Overall, this was a lot to sit through for a few charming handsome dudes and ten minutes of action, but it was comfortable and watchable in ways this franchise hasn’t been. I still don’t love Puppet Master movies, but this is in the top two, even more than the two where the cute blonde guy fights the Egyptian god of puppets. And that surprises me.