Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

I've seen at least a little of every movie in Charles Band's incredibly long running franchise. The fact of the matter is that really only the first two movies were any good and everything after that ranged from barely watchable to downright awful.

The Puppet Master brand is basically all that has kept series creator Band's company Full Moon alive since the 80's and he has mercilessly milked it, sometimes openly cheating fans in the process. There were PG-13 sequels (rolls eyes), movies that were clearly shot back-to-back to save money (groan), and even a freaking clip movie (screams in anger)! So, when I heard that the brilliant, uncompromising genre author and filmmaker S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) was writing the next film in the franchise I thought one of two things: either Zahler was a longtime fan that wanted to write the first truly great Puppet Master movie OR Zahler had a car payment due and knocked out a script in a weekend. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be what happened. Puppet Master Littlest Reich is not a great movie but it's still better than any other sequel since the second movie.

This film is a reboot which reimagines the puppet master, anti-hero Andre Tulon, into an outright villain portrayed by horror legend Udo Kier (Blade, Flesh for Frankenstein, Suspiria, Fear Dot Com). Kier is fantastic, playing a hideously scarred, wantonly sadistic Nazi sympathizer that wants to continue the Third Reich's mission of a pure white race and intends to do so, even after his death, with the help of black magic and an army of puppets he mass produced and sold prior to an unfortunate run in with the cops.

Flash forward to find a divorced, broke comic book writer (Thomas Lennon of Reno 911) in possession of one of Tulon's puppets, Blade, which he finds among his dead brother's things. There is a convention being held at Tulon's old house where collectors intend to auction off all the old dolls belonging to the notorious psychopath.

Everyone loads into a hotel, the puppets all come to life, and much, MUCH bloody mayhem ensues. Along the way we are joined by fantastic scream queen Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond, and the original Puppet Master) as the retired cop that took Tulon down and professional b-movie tough guy Michael Pare (The Lincoln Lawyer and basically every Uwe Boll movie) as the cop currently on the case.

Let me just say that the script for this movie was either hacked to pieces or sorely underwritten. Concepts and ideas are introduced and dropped at a moment's notice. Crampton's character has no pay off, supporting characters fall in and out of the story, plot points are introduced only to be dismissed immediately after, the tone is all over the place constantly swapping from dumb fun gore to weirdly preachy anti-nazi talk, and the ending makes no sense and just kind of drops off with a lame bit of sequel baiting.

On top of that, the director makes some serious technical errors. Some scenes are underlit, the editing is at times hard to follow, and dialogue is recorded too low sometimes.

As far as its places in the franchise, the sloppy plotting is nothing new and this movie is a great deal faster paced than most of the other films which, after part 2, started leaning towards cheap time killing devices over actual action. The direction is unusually bad, though. Most of these movies had a generically competent, TV sort of vibe to them but this movie really kind of felt like one of those ultra-violent, straight-to-video horror films of the late 90s.

I'm fine with the revamp on Tulon, especially because Kier is so great in the role but I do really wish he had been in it more. I hate the redesign on the puppets. They look cheap and action figure like, lacking the artistry that made the original puppets so distinct. I also dislike that the puppets no longer have any personality. They're all just mean little killing machines. There's no real sense they are actually ALIVE and instead all feel like instruments used by a primary antagonist that's a little too off screen to really resonate.

Thomas Lennon and most of the rest of the cast are strong (with the exception his annoying, motor mouth boss) and I did have fun watching the movie. However, thinking about it afterward, I couldn't help but feel that this movie was a little too flawed to really say I liked. It was alright and gore hounds and puppet fanatics will probably have at least a little fun, but it could and should have been a lot better.

It's not entirely clear to me whether "The Littlest Reich" is a remake of the cult semi-classic "Puppet Masters", or just another 318th-or-so sequel. Let's just agree it's an addition to the long-running franchise, and the greatest addition since 1991 for that matter! It clearly looks like this film was written (S. Craig Zahler) and directed (Sonny Laguna & Tommy Wirklund) by avid fans of the 1989-original and its first couple of sequels, and they were probably very upset with how the series deteriorate afterwards. Let's bring the essence back, is what they must have thought, so "The Littlest Reich" is a straightforward and unhinged gorefest with nasty killer puppets, very imaginative slaughters, odd characters and a whole lot of bad and politically incorrect humor. The movie doesn't have much of a plot (the original didn't either) or any suspense whatsoever, but it's never boring and once the bloody carnage kicks in; - it never stops. We are talking here about a movie in which a cut off head end up in toilets and gets peed on, and an unborn fetus is being transformed into a crawling mini-Hitler; - what else can I say? Maybe one more thing: Udo Kier briefly appears as André Toulon, and the film stars Barbara Crampton who's sixty years old but still sexy!

Simple review: Those who are fans of old school slashers and the Puppet Master franchise will enjoy this movie, because you already know what you're going to get. It's gory, it's stupid, it's fun... If you do not like old school gory slasher movies, then why would you even consider watching this?

The Puppet Master series started back in the 80's and initially was watchable campy stuff but quickly spiraled out of control. They went from horror to comedy horror to barely even comedy and the Axis Trilogy that rounded it off was just cringe worthy.

Hearing that the franchise was getting rebooted I was skeptical, I hate reboots and after how embarrassing Puppet Master had gotten I figured it should just be another franchise that should be left to die. When I heard that Full Moon weren't making it however, my curiosity peaked. What could a new studio do with a Full Moon franchise?

Well, apparently quite a bit as I'm very impressed. The Littlest Reich is a different creature altogether and though clearly a Puppet Master film has been overhauled and entirely in a good way.

Starring the excellent Thomas "Reno 911" Lennon, horror legend Udo Kier and Michael Pare I'm not sure why it's been labelled a comedy horror as this is played straight and the comedy/campiness seems to have been sent out to pasture.

It tells the story of an Andre Toulon event where people worldwide have traveled to a convention to sell their Toulon puppets for big bucks. But you know the drill, the puppets burst to life and carnage ensues.

Make no mistake the puppets aren't the cutesy good guys here like they've been in a lot of the Puppet Master movies and they're are a lot more of them as well. Despite adding a lot of new puppets and lore it does still stay true, you'll see plenty of familiar faces and though overhauled drastically it does have the Puppet Master charm.

Because this isn't made by Full Moon it's a different SFX team, therefore the naff puppet effects are gone and that's oddly refreshing.

Regarding the content, it's merciless. This is a gory horror film and a really fun one at that. Again there is no comedy/campiness that fans of the series will expect, but that works in its favor.

Sure it's got its flaws and it badly needs a sequel, but The Littlest Reich has breathed new life into a stale franchise and I do hope they continue it.

The Good:

Decent deaths

First fresh feeling Puppet Master in decades

The Bad:

One death was a tad, edgy

Poor sound editing

Couple of really poor cinematography moments

It's not your typical horror movie with puppets. It's got some great writing by S. Craig Zahler which elevated the movie the way Shane Black can do.

I thnink people are giving this bad reviews because it takes a while to get to the action. And frankly, I liked the beginning character development more than the horror part.

It was smart and funny and different.

Make sure you see Zahler's other movies! Especially one of my fav films of 2019 -- Dragged Across Concrete