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PUPPET MASTER II
Rating: 
USA. 1990.
Director – David Allen, Screenplay – David Pabian, Story – Charles Band, Producers – David DeCouteau & John Schouweiler, Photography – Thomas F. Denove, Music – Richard Band, Stop Motion Animation – Randy Cook & Justin Kohn, Puppet Effects – David Allen Productions, Additional Creature Effects – Steve Neill, Makeup Effects – David Barton’s Modus EFX (Supervisor – David Barton), Production Design – Kathleen Coates. Production Company – Full Moon Entertainment.
Cast:
Elizabeth MacLellan (Carolyn Bramwell/Elsa), Steven Welles (Andre Toulon/Enrique Chenee), Collin Bernsen (Michael Kenney), Nita Talbot (Camille Kenney), Gregory Webb (Patrick Bramwell), Charlie Spradling (Wanda), Sage Allen (Martha), Jeff Weston (Lance)
Plot: A group of parapsychologists led by Carolyn Bramwell move into the hotel at Bodega Bay to investigate the reports of the living dolls there. The puppets soon emerge and begin killing the members of the group. The elderly Enrique Chenee, who claims to be the owner of the hotel, turns up, his face hidden behind bandages and dark glasses. But Chenee is really the puppetmaster Andre Toulon, whose body has been dug up and revived by the puppets. Toulon believes Carolyn to be the reincarnation of his late wife Elsa and prepares to conduct a ceremony that will transfer their souls into life-size mannequins so that they can be together again.
This is the first of eight sequels that father and son producing team Albert and Charles Band and their Full Moon production company managed to squeeze out of Puppetmaster (1989). The principal novelty of Puppetmaster was in seeing the unusual puppets skulking around and killing people in novel ways. The film had no real plot beyond that. And certainly the slimness of the initial idea becomes steadily more apparent in the attempt to spin the initial premise out into a series – this has to add new puppets, as well as pad out the rather slender clues given in the film as to their creator and his origins (something that became a substantial part of the subsequent sequels). This is a fairly routine sequel as sequels go. The plot is a basic rehash of the first film – another group of paranormal investigators, including among their number a flaky psychic, investigate goings on at the Bodega Bay hotel and become fodder for the puppets who are being used by someone wanting to magically restore themselves to life.
The sequel is directed by long-time Band special effects contributor David Allen, who created the puppet effects for the first Puppetmaster and had been involved on other Band-produced films since 1977, including having created the fabulous Transformer effects in Robot Jox (1990). Allen had earlier directed a segment of the Bands’ The Dungeonmaster (1984), but this was his only full-length outing as a director. (Although Allen had directed the legendary Band-produced stop-motion project The Primevals, something he began in 1968 and spent an incredible thirty years in production and still remained uncompleted with Allen’s death in 1999).
But here Allen seems to lack what it takes as a director – the puppet scenes lack the outré weirdness they had in the first film and are routine. The latter half of the film is more interesting. Here the script attempts to pump something into the Toulon story. The image of Steven Welles wandering about the hotel in bandages, black fedora and dark goggles is a resonant one that echoes classic films like The Invisible Man (1933) and Mad Love (1935). And the film becomes slightly more interesting at its ending – with the image of Welles slashing his own throat into a funnel that runs down into the mouth of his life-size puppet in order to incarnate himself in the puppet’s body; and the fadeout on Nita Talbot driving off with the puppets to a children’s asylum where they will be able to slot in without being noticed. The cast aren’t up to much – Elizabeth McLellan fails to convince that she is the leader of a team of parapsychologists. Collin Bernsen, brother of better-known Corbin (L.A. Law, The Dentist) Bernsen, doesn’t convey much in the way of expression. The best player is actually Charlie Spradling, a regular player in the changing Band troupe, mostly known for taking her clothes off in films, who gives a lively and sparkling performance.
The subsequent Puppetmaster films are:– Puppetmaster (1989), Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991), Puppet Master IV (1993), Puppet Master V: The Final Chapter (1995), Curse of the Puppet Master (1998), Retro Puppetmaster (1999), Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003) and Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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