[FANTASIA 2018] ‘PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH’ Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kakn5LqGQU0

In Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (the 13th entry in the series) Comic creator Edgar (Thomas Lennon) has just been through a divorce, and moves back in with his parents during the transition. He stays in his little brother’s room, who passed away about a year after discovering a doll at summer camp. Not just any doll, of course…a puppet. Edgar discovers that the puppet may be worth quite a bit at a convention for the 50th anniversary of The Toulon Murders.  Edgar works with his boss Markowitz (Nelson Franklin) at a comic shop, and starts a relationship with a girl he grew up with, Ashley (Jenny Pellicer), and the three of them hit the road to check out the convention and the puppet auction. All these Toulon puppets in one place can’t possibly be a good idea. After Nazi scientist Andre Toulon himself (Udo Kier) re-animates them, the convention hotel patrons and staff, including standouts Skeeta Jenkins and Charlyne Yi, are in a whole lot of trouble. With the assistance of Detective Brown (Michael Pare) and Officer Carol Doreski (Barbara Crampton), they’ll have to band together in order to survive the night.

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I’ll be completely honest here: I’m not the right guy to review this movie. I’ve seen the first Puppet Master recently, and possibly more when I was younger, but I just can’t recall them. Initially I believed this to be some sort of unconnected reboot, and with the great S. Craig Zahler co-writing my interest was piqued. The good news is that there’s enough exposition to have the movie make sense standing on its own. I definitely knew there were things I was missing, inside bits for the fans of the series, but I totally got what was going on. Even without the story there’s enough humor and low-budget schlock effects to make this an entertaining watch, no matter what.

The relationship between the three main characters were what I enjoyed the most, oddly. Lennon is, surprisingly, really subdued here, and I’ve always loved Nelson Franklin. Their chemistry is great, and Pellicer is lovable and charismatic. While there are a few eccentric patrons, mostly this isn’t as wacky and zany as I was fearing. That’s not to say that directors Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wirklund don’t know how to wrench some laughs from horror. One of the first deaths involves a man somehow pissing on his own head, and there’s a puppet who’s puppeteering a person at one point. This is crazy bloody, crazy violent, and crazy cheap. Some effects work better than others, but the puppets generally look lo-fi and superb. Creepy cute instruments of destruction! I enjoyed this enough to want to dig back into the series. Recommended.

Good news! In addition to playing Fantasia 2018, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich will be on VOD and in limited theaters on August 17th via RLJE Entertainment!