Puppet Master (1989)

A few producers have risen to prominence through the realm of the B-Movie or, as most people would consider them, bad movies. The most famous was Roger Corman, whose rose to fame in the 1950s with flicks like A Bucket of Blood and The Little Shop of Horrors. He continued to produce well into his old age and is still doing so. Another name that always got tossed around in the B-movie producer conversation was Charles Band.

Charles Band hit his stride in the mid 1970s when he began his directing career and started a production company called Charles Band Productions. After a dispute over the distribution of the films under that banner, he started a new production company, Empire Pictures. A bunch of successful low-budget fantasy and horror came out of the company. Stuart Gordon found his popularity through making films for Charles Band in this era, including Re-Animator. The Trancers franchise began under Empire Pictures. Ghoulies and Troll were a part of the Empire Pictures days. Those days didn’t last, however, and Empire Pictures went under in 1988.

That wouldn’t stop Charles Band. He quickly got another production company up and running. He started Full Moon Pictures (at the time called Full Moon Productions). That company is still going as of the writing of this post in October 2020. There have been successful films throughout the history of the company, with many franchises following those successes. One of the most successful was actually the first film and franchise to come out of the new company. That was 1989’s Puppet Master.

Alex Whitaker (Paul Le Mat), Dana Hadley (Irene Miracle), Frank Forrester (Matt Roe), and Carissa Stamford (Kathryn O’Reilly) were four psychics who reunited following the death of their colleague Neil Gallagher (Jimmie F. Skaggs). They travelled to Bodega Bay Inn, the former home of puppeteer André Toulon (William Hickey), where Neil had been living with his wife Megan (Robin Frates) to try and figure out what happened to Neil leading up to his death. Their discoveries were filled with death and puppets.

Puppet Master was clearly a part of the 1980s slasher craze. It fit well within that latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s era of trying to introduce new and interesting ideas into the villains, rather than have them be evil people, or the reanimated corpses of evil people. The killers would be monsters, toys, or other typically inanimate objects that were bent on killing people. It was the simple reasoning of having a hook to grab audiences. An audience might want to see puppets killing people because that idea was different than other slashers.

With that said, the only way to deeply get into Puppet Master would be to take a look at the puppets and understand what each of them brought to the movie, as a part of the team. There were five main puppets doing the killing, one puppet that had an important role, and one puppet that didn’t matter at all. Ignoring the one that didn’t matter, it would be best to start off with the non-killer puppet.

Shredder Khan

The best way to describe the look of Shredder Khan was that he looked liked a puppet caricature of a Chinese man from centuries past. His appearance in Puppet Master was so brief that it could almost be forgotten. Back in 1939, André Toulon was being pursued by Nazis because of his work in reanimating souls as puppets. The Nazis were approaching the hotel room he was staying in, so he packed up nearly all his puppets and hid them in the walls. Shredder Khan was the lookout that let Toulon know how much time he had left to complete his work. It was a brief appearance, but one that was immensely important to having the puppets hidden for their own safety.

Tunneler

From this point on, the puppets were able to stand out in memorable ways. Tunneler was memorable because he had a drill on his head. It looked like a birthday hat on a baby, except it was much more dangerous than that. His hat was a deadly piece of machinery that got used on multiple occasions as the psychics tried to figure out what happened to their former colleague.

His first big moment came during a sex scene between Frank and Carissa. See, they did research in sexual psychology. Frank could seemingly read minds and Carissa was able to sense the entire history of an object by touching it. Their work together was helped by the fact that they were a couple. When they got to Bodega Bay Inn, Frank was checking their room for the signs of anything suspicious. Carissa was sitting on the bed. All of a sudden, the urge for sex came over her. She could sense that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had sex in the bed. One thing led to another. Carissa and Frank went at it.

Things got a little kinky (no shame in that) when Carissa tied Frank up and put a blindfold on him. She could surprise him with all the naughty things she wanted to do, and he would, literally, never see them coming. In the throws of passion, she heard something under the bed. She slid off Frank and got on all fours on the floor. She lifted the sheet to see under the bed. Tunneler was under there waiting for her. His drill started up and he charged at her face. That was the end of Carissa.

Tunneler returned later, for the climax, to inflict some pain upon the villain. The villain was trapped in an elevator with no way of escaping. That was redundant. Being trapped and having no way to escape are the same thing. Tunneler revved up his drill head and charged at the villain, digging into the villain’s leg, and bringing the villain to the ground. Then he stood by as the rest of the puppets took their turns at attacking the villain.

Leech Woman

The name kind of took away any question as to what this puppet did. Leech Woman was the only female puppet to get a major role in Puppet Master. She was able to cough up leeches. That was it. That was her one ability. She coughed up leeches like she was a cat coughing up furballs. It was both disgusting to look at and… Well, it was disgusting to look at.

Leech Woman first appeared in the same scene as Tunneler, only a little while later. She waited until after Carissa was dead. Frank was still tied up on the bed. He was still waiting for Carissa to come back and finish the sexual escapade she started. Leech Woman joined in, now that Carissa was dead. She climbed onto the bed and began kissing Frank’s bare chest. He somehow didn’t notice that it wasn’t Carissa, even though the small mouth of a doll and the regular-sized mouth of a woman would feel vastly different. Then she started sucking on his chest. Then she coughed up a leech and placed it on his chest. Eventually, the leeches got to a point where they sucked enough blood out of Frank that he died. It should be noted that Alex Whitaker’s psychic ability was to dream about things that would come, and he dreamt about having leeches all over him. This was what the dream meant.

The climax saw the return of each of the killer puppets, Leech Woman included. She got her turn to attack the villain, coughing a leech into his mouth. That was really all there was too it. She coughed out another leech as her part of the attack. It was a disgusting attack to look at, but it was one that didn’t have a lot of variation. It was always going to be the same, and the person would have to be unable to move away for it to even work.

Pinhead

This was not the character from the Hellraiser franchise. The Pinhead of the Puppet Master franchise was a puppet with a tiny, bullet-like head, broad shoulders, and two human-sized fists that could pack a major punch. He was the second-best puppet besides the one that will get mentioned next, probably because their attacks didn’t rely on something specific. He didn’t rely on a drill head or coughing out leeches to be frightening. He simply punched people, but he punched hard.

Pinhead’s big scene came when he went after Dana Hadley. He previously hit the housekeeper over the head with a fire poker, but it was his attack on Dana that really brought the character to life. He got into her room and began beating her. She grabbed him and threw him, seemingly incapacitating him, and crawled from the room. He chased after her and punched her again and again. She grabbed him and threw him down some stairs before fleeing, beaten and battered, into an elevator. She almost made it, too, but her demise will have to wait a minute.

That elevator would later be the place where the villain was defeated. It began with Pinhead. He waited for the villain to stumble into the elevator. He closed the door and wouldn’t let the villain reopen it. Pinhead tried to beat the villain to a pulp, but the villain kept tossing him around, before removing his head. That wouldn’t stop Pinhead, though. He searched for his head, replaced it, and headed back into the fray with the other puppets as they attacked the villain.

Blade

Maybe the most important of the puppets in the Puppet Master franchise, Blade became the most recognizable. He had a pale, skeletal face. He had hollow eyes. He had long hair and wore all black. His primary weapon was a blade, but he also carried around a hook. Blade was essentially the leader of the puppets when there wasn’t a puppet master to pull the strings.

Blade first appeared in the opening scene as he ran ahead of the Nazis to escape them. He reappeared in the present-day hotel, attempting to kill the psychics. Remember when Dana almost escaped with her life into the elevator? The only reason she didn’t escape was that Blade was waiting for her. He took his blade and slashed Dana’s throat, fulfilling a prophecy of her own death that she experienced at the beginning of the movie.

Blade was present when the villain was killed, as well. He was seemingly the ringleader of the puppets. They weren’t going to follow through without his watchful eyes looking on. He got a few stabs in. Mostly, he made sure that the other puppets did their part. He made sure that Leech Woman spit a leech into the villain’s mouth. He made sure that Pinhead broke the villain’s neck. He supervised the entire takedown of the villain, like a good leader would.

Jester

The final puppet was the one that brought the movie to its conclusion. Jester was a little different than the other puppets. He didn’t really have a way to attack people. At least, that wasn’t apparent in Puppet Master. It might have become more apparent in the sequels. His ability was a tad bit different. Jester’s face was divided into three parts. It was divided into thirds: top third, middle third, bottom third. Those three parts could rotate, allowing Jester to have different facial expressions. It felt as though he was meant to be a way to portray the emotions of the puppets, coming into the movie at a crucial time when the puppets began targeting someone else.

Late in Puppet Master, Alex and Megan discovered that Neil had been brought back to life. He figured out a way to reanimate people and had set the puppets on their killing path so that he could have human bodies to toy around with. The dead man was the villain all along, pulling the strings that made the puppets kill. He had the dead bodies of Dana, Frank, and Carissa at the table, as well as Jester. One thing led to another and he threw Jester across the room, much to the shock of every puppet. They snapped. They decided that Neil had to die, again, and they acted on it. The puppets killed their master. Jester looked on with joy and surprise and joy. His face rotated to each different emotion.

Charles Band managed to hit on something special with Puppet Master. He found a slasher story that fit into what was popular at the time, non-human killers. The story brought a bunch of memorable puppets to the audience. They looked interesting, there were fun ways that they attacked people, and they didn’t take shit from anyone. The puppets were pure killing fun and Puppet Master would become a money-making machine for Full Moon Features.

The success of Puppet Master led to (currently) twelve sequels and/or prequels and a spin-off focused on Blade. One of the sequels was even a crossover with Demonic Toys. The popularity of the franchise helped Full Moon Features spawn other franchises like the continued Trancers franchise, Demonic Toys, Evil Bong, and The Gingerdead Man. After two production companies that had found mild success before burning out, Charles Band had finally found the stability he needed to continuously churn out the movies that made him famous.

Roger Corman made a name for himself by producing low-budget horror films through the 1950s and continues to produce movies of that kind in the present. He left a legacy that would inspire generations of filmmakers to make the movies they wanted to see. In the 1970s, Charles Band took up that mantle and started his journey to become the next Roger Corman. The thing is, he didn’t become the next Roger Corman. He became the first Charles Band, finding his own place in that same low-budget B-movie world. Charles Band is the real deal.

Now it’s time for a few notes before you head off:

• Charles Band’s movies Evil Bong and The Gingerdead Man were mentioned in this post. Evil Bong (week 52), Evil Bong 2: King Bong (week 104), Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong (week 271), Evil Bong 420 (week 388), The Gingerdead Man (week 69), The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (week 252), Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (week 302), and the crossover film Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong (week 347) were all covered in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• Puppet Master featured Barbara Crampton. It was the third time she was in the Sunday “Bad” Movies after Robot Wars (week 37) and Chopping Mall (week 306).
• Have you seen Puppet Master? What did you think about it? Do you like any of the sequels? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• You can also find me in the comments or on Twitter if you want to suggest a movie for me to check out for a future post. I’m always looking for movies I may not have heard of that could make for interesting Sunday “Bad” Movies material. Tell me about them.
• Take some time to head on over to the Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram as well. I’m always trying to feature interesting things over there.
• Finally, I have to let everyone know about next week. Halloween is coming up quick and, for only the second time in the history of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I’ll be visiting a movie from that film franchise. I’ve already written something after checking out Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (week 48). Next week I’ll be watching Halloween: Resurrection. Come on back to this blog and see what I wrote about it. See you then.