Puppet Master II

Paranormal investigators, working for the government, are allowed the luxury of monitoring the Bodega Bay Inn, the place where characters from the first film "went missing." They encounter the very same situation, with a different leader commanding the killer puppets to do his bidding...which includes killing them.
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In the sequel to Puppet Master, the Bodega Bay Inn has been closed down (the original film leaves off with Mrs. Gallagher as owner, having mentioned that the inn had undergone severe renovations at the urging of her husband) and a foursome of paranormal investigators are permitted access to “do what they do”. Setting up equipment and anxious to see what they might find, these investigators might just find more than desired.

The killer puppets return and awaken their creator with some raise the dead juice. Mr. Toulon, his rotted corpse under wraps to protect his secret undeadness, now must “get rid of” those pesky nuisances, the paranormal investigators. The previous film left us with the impression that the puppets were free and in control (seemingly) of their own destiny. This film shows that they wanted to bring back the man that gave them life to begin with.

The paranormal investigators have a spiritualist/psychic named Camille (Nita Talbot) along with them. The lead investigator, Carolyn (Elizabeth Maclellan, her final film, surprisingly), believes Camille is the real deal and can provide insight into the “feelings” of the location. Of course, Carolyn’s accompaniment, particularly Patrick (Gregory Webb), isn’t so convinced. Camille’s interest in the place, questioning what happened as of recent, we learn from Carolyn that Mrs. Gallagher was sadistically murdered with her brain extracted through her nose. We also learn from Carolyn that Alex Whitaker was committed and suffered seizures, premonitions, and schizophrenia after his trip home from Bodega Bay. Funny, he seemed alright after leaving in the previous film. Breakdowns and eventual death are the norm in sequels, explaining away the previous film’s characters inability to escape from what happened to them. Through this bit of dialogue, we learn that a colleague of Carolyn’s brought this to her attention, and so here we are…more fodder for the puppets to slay.

Wanda and Lance (Charlie Spradling and Jeff Weston) join Carolyn and Patrick as fellow investigators; Wanda and Lance, of course, get jiggy with it and obviously thereafter die. Good Ole George Buck Flower pops up as a hick who sets up electrical barb wire for his hag wife, played with mouth wide and loud by Sage Allen. The barb wire done so was a means to get rid of whatever it is from slaughtering their hogs. They instead are slaughtered. Well, with Camille eventually joining the body count (well, let’s say temporarily…) Carolyn will have her problems trying to outlast and somehow upend the puppets immortal and their undead creator.

Obviously thinking she’s a kook, the group has a hard time swallowing Camille’s insistence she saw two puppet-sized creatures running about, like little demons. They dismiss her, as is usual with films like these where it is just too easy for the characters to find contempt for a psychic who supposedly “sees”. She does have a flair for the dramatic when talking about “the spirits”. It paints her as a performance artist trying to make any buck her profession will allow.

Because Patrick is the ultimate cynic, he’s dead meat. He likes the wine, but he’s along on this investigation primarily for his sister, Carolyn, and tries to keep a straight face in her honor. He gets the drill to the skull by the puppet, “Tunneler”. That’s it. Game over. Sure, Carolyn weeps for the loss of her brother, especially since Tunneler opened a crater-sized hole in his forehead. This was a solid moment for Maclellan who truly conveys the horror and stunned sadness due to the murder of her brother.

I do not have the strength of the more fully intact.

A love interest shows up in the form of Camille’s kin, Michael (Colin Bernsen), and he’s anxious to find her (we see where the puppets “snatch” her away, taking her to who knows where…), staying on location, as support for Carolyn while conducting his own investigation.

Then Andre Toulon sees that Carolyn is an exact spitting image of his darling Elsa, killed by the Nazis (this would be detailed in the third, and in my opinion best, film), telling her and the others that he is Enrique Charnay, suffering a condition that requires his bandages, gloves, goggles, hat, and cape (and why he cannot touch anyone and can barely walk, needing assistance from a cane), explaining that he is the owner of the Bodega Bay and had been gone to Bucharest looking for a cure for what ails him. Andre has a depraved plan that includes placing his “lifeforce” in a human-sized “puppet” and, completely lost in his belief that Carolyn is Elsa, has a puppet for her as well. The idea is to drink this fluid whose properties include brains from humans (or animals if the puppet killers are desperate), and then use the blood from their slit throats poured into a funnel direct into the mouths of the human puppets made by Toulon specifically to live forever absent flesh. The ending of this movie, I must confess, is just a bit too silly for me to swallow. It looks silly and carries out in silly fashion. Because Toulon decides his Elsa is worth the fluid more than his puppets who had slaved for him throughout the time he’s been reawakened thanks to them, they eventually turn on him. Carolyn is obviously nothing like Elsa except in appearance so for Toulon to be so totally blind to this also left me rather unconvinced. That said, the human-sized puppets are rather creepy, and seeing the puppets shatter apart his hand and slice open a wound, both spitting out the fluid, is pretty cool. So it wasn’t all bad.

The film basically is a slasher film with the puppets taking the place of the usual boogeymen. This sequel does alternate between Toulon and his puppets, with Carolyn and Michael’s romance getting some rub. Surprisingly, her colleagues ultimately factor little after some establishment except to be brain suppliers to the killer puppets. Introduced is Torch, and it lives up to the name by setting a few victims on fire…including a kid from an RV who uses his Indiana Jones whip on it, pissing the puppet with bullet teeth and an armored helmet (and bright red eyes) off something fierce. Puppets die here, so the playing field is actually leveled somewhat. Leech woman and Tunneler are both dispatched, and Torch, although killing a few, is later pummeled by Michael after he had nearly been burned alive by the puppet (the irony of Torch’s beatdown is the use of a fire extinguisher as the weapon of choice to upend it). Jester gets a bit of an upgrade (although when under a weakened state, it looks as it did in the first film) when at full vigor; its face is devious unless its lifeforce has diminished due to lack of the “life juice”. The star puppet will always be Blade, though, while other puppets have “scene-stealing moments” due to their unique look and design. Blade has always been the more intimidating puppet due to its Jack the Ripper look; its hook and shiny, sharp knife certainly do some damage as well. My favorite would show up in the third film, but that’s a topic for a different review.

Because David Allen, special effects maestro, was director, he gave the puppets plenty of time to shine in their murdering ways. Because of the obviously tight budget, we don’t typically get onscreen bloodshed but aftermath shots of victims after they’ve been butchered. I would say that Patrick’s forehead drill death was the most memorably graphic of the bunch as the other deaths are a bit more distanced and less emphasized; Allen doesn’t hold his camera on the crime scenes but for seconds, more establishing the puppets who committed the ghoulish murders than the victims (they are mostly covered in blood; one of the victims briefly gets her face tic-tac-toed by Blade which is rather potent in its limited time).

Looking at the film overall, there are some cool moments that stick out: the resurrection of Toulon as his rotted skeletal arms stretch forth to the lightning-filled sky as the puppets look down at him from around the dug-open grave at the beginning, I though, kicked this sucker off righteously. Also, that grisly bit of business involving Torch setting Sage Allen on fire after she tosses Leech Woman into her furnace, with Blade sticking his knife in her fried head certainly stands out. I loved the “Invisible Man” look of Toulon, under wraps, with his costume reminding me of some mad count, hidden away in his lab, working on all things diabolical. I think the actor, Steven Welles, plays him as the character should be, a bit of theatricality and a touch of a European accent, adding a bit of melodramatic flair to a lot of his dialogue when talking over his plans with his puppet slaves. I think sometimes a character is so over the top, you need to embellish a bit. Welles is seen as he was when performing in front of bored children (when he created his puppet marionettes, using strings and performing stories), introduced to the Egyptian magic by a warlock who sees Toulon’s genius and wants to see him benefit further than the stringed marionettes allow. I love this bit of backstory because it further explores the character only slightly detailed in the first film. I think Toulon’s importance to the story is what really sets this sequel apart from the first film; it allows us to see that once he was simply a man who wanted to entertain children. Somewhere along the way—perhaps the death of Elsa—caused the poor devil to snap. The inclusion of the Nazis into the Toulon story is vital to franchise as evident in just the design of Tunneler and Torch, both of whom look like frightening soldiers that worked in death camps. It’s those little touches that can provide an insight into Toulon’s mania. Along the way, the Nazis took so much away until nothing much humane and sane was left from the traumatic wreckage that is his psyche. Certainly a decades-long burial and the juice used to revive him caused some mental damage, too.

The cast doesn’t necessarily leave as much an impression as Toulon. Charlie Spradling shows off her eyeful of breasts and superb figure, while Jeff Weston is your basic tall hunk she always converses with about sexual matters when they aren’t merely stuck at monitors, watching for any sort of activity (the monitors play an important part in capturing Tunneler as he’s about to drill a hole in the Patrick character). Maclellan is clearly the lead of importance besides Toulon, and she seems on the cusp of being a Full Moon Productions star, which leaves me quite surprised when I look at her small resume. She never worked after this film which seems puzzling considering this sequel appears like a step up from the rather underwritten part she was stuck with in Crash & Burn (1990) for Full Moon. Maclellan has that character that researches and has that inquisitive drive to find answers. While the dull Michael (he’s your calm-voiced, soft-hearted bo-hunk that Maclellan ogles and harbors a lust for…) pleads with her not to pursue the mystery of Toulon (under the alias of Charnay), she’s not the kind to just sit idly by without seeing what’s what. Of course, eventually, Michael and Carolyn have a passionate sexual encounter and we see the stunning body of Maclellan—absent the baggy clothes so memorably tacky in the 80s/early 90s—in her skimpy bed clothes, with a gown, taking a look in Toulon’s workshop and learning of his true identity to her horror. When Toulon unveils his corpse body to her in preparation for their supposed transference into the human-sized puppet bodies, it’s another cool spot, adding a nice touch of macabre so well utilized in the old fashioned Gothic horror I so know and love.

 

Like in the first film, we see that if you cross the puppets, no matter who you are, doom is often certain. Toulon betrays them in order to give him and “his Elsa” life, forsaking them, and paying dearly. When Torch turns him into a flaming inferno, after he endures destruction to parts of his human-puppet body, it tells us that it is not wise to fuck with the puppets. They will kill your ass.