Blade the Iron Cross

Oh dear Lord, here it is: the 15th installment of the Puppetmaster franchise...and it is just as terrible as you'd expect, but were still hoping it wouldn't be.

Truthfully, the original wasn't very good-with the exception of William Hickey's sweet cameo-but at least there was some attempt at coherent storytelling, honest scares and the fascinating introduction of weird, killer puppets. But this latest, cheap, balding retread can only afford one puppet-Blade-who spends the majority of the movie inanimate and the rest attacking people from over their shoulders as if (and I'm pretty darn sure this was the case) someone had a Blade puppet on their hand like a Muppet with no arms.

The story doesn't really matter because it's stupid. The acting is second-rate, the script is purile and it has the cheap look of a made for SyFy Channel movie. The only reason I gave it an extra star was because at least the nudity was pleasant.

I, like many horror fans, have a soft spot for Puppetmaster. Just that great theme music alone is a nice memory-and they even butchered that up. And as long as they can keep squeezing a buck out of fans who keep hoping for that original feeling of affection-much like those people who keep thinking if they can only get Doug Bradley to come back then Hellraiser will be awesome again-the movie studios will continue beating a dead horse no matter how inhumane and tragic. Please, put the puppets away and find a new toy.

Its very low budget and has some problems with time period accuracy in regards to props and other things, but if you have a serious aversion to these kinds of issues then I'm not sure how you're even aware this film exists. This has the Full Moon charm without the trying-to-be-funny-bad-cheesiness present in so much of their modern catalogue. The story almost feels like some offshoot of Reanimator with the animation solution being used by a Nazi mad scientist to experiment on dead humans. I was expecting much worse, but this is an enjoyable late night viewing & the short runtime works to the film's advantage.

This marks the 10oth Puppet Master film. Not sure why they would go the name change, it's not like it's going to do them any favors and itll cause this film to fly under the radar more than it would being labeled the billionth PM film.

This time around Elisa returns and has the puppets and is using her psychic dreams as a reporter in the early 1900s to help stop a Nazi scientist in America from reproducing the formula for the puppets and reverse engineering it for his army of zombies... Blade is the only puppet juiced up enough to help due to lack of the syrum.

Overall... it has some pretty bad acting, but it somehow manages to remain entertaining enough to watch. I wasn't bored or rolling my eyes, it is what it is and reminded me of some nostalgic effects not seen for a while.

Tania Fox is about the only decent actor in this, and quite stunning. I hope to see her in more PM films.

Blade: The Iron Cross (2020) is available on Amazon Prime for $6.99. The story focuses around a journalist who has a telekinetic connection with an infamous puppet from Puppet Master, Blade. Together they try to stop the Germans from creating a death ray. This movie officially makes my top 3-4 worst Puppet Master films. The storyline, acting and execution are awful. John Lechago (Killjoy 3-5) directed and really disappointed me with this film. The kill scenes were okay but nothing else was worthwhile. The cast includes Tania Fox (Puppet Master Axis trilogy), Vincent Cusimano (Betrayed), Roy Abrahamson (Betrayed) and Angelica Briones (John Henry) and none of them deliver memorable performances. Overall this is very disappointing and only worth watching for diehard fans of Puppet Master. I'd give this a 3/10.

Please, We've had enough Nazi movies. We get it. Nazi = bad. Move on. This has been done to death. It's hard to fault the cast, as they were fed a script that must have been extremely difficult to derive motivation from, but I'm not sure I would be excited to watch this a second time if a years salary were offered to view its entirety.