Film Review: Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich

If you’re like me and somehow missed the Puppet Master series, which started back in 1989, received a huge cult following once released on video, which resulted in 12 more films (no, I’m not making that number up) as well as one non-cannon crossover with the Demonic Toys, then you can breath a sigh of relief knowing that Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich acts as a reboot for the franchise.

The basic setup is that Edgar (Thomas Lennon), a recently divorced artist, discovers a doll that looks like one of the creations of a homicidal Nazi, André Toulon (Udo Kier). He, his new girlfriend, Ashley (Jenny Pellicer), and his friend/boss Markowitz (Nelson Franklin), go to a convention where they tour the mansion where Toulon was killed, and they, among other convention goers, hope to sell their dolls, which also suspiciously look like the ones that went missing many years ago. Once there, the puppets come to life, and start rampaging.

So, yeah, it’s pretty wild. Admittedly, the only reason I was somewhat interested is the fact that it was written by S. Craig Zahler, the writer and director behind Bone Tomahawk and Brawl In Cell Block 99. He isn’t directing the film, that credit goes to Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund, but it does fall well in line with his particular brand of nasty grindhouse pastiche, except it’s distilled down to the most bare elements – relentless gore, juvenile humor, and…well, actually, that’s about it.

The film is an odd experience. One one hand, it’s really fun. Zahler’s dialogue is razor sharp, performances are rock solid, and the gore is great. The film has an unapologetically no-nonsense approach that makes it the perfect grab-your-friends-and-some-beer, party horror movie. It’s hardly the most well made thing I’ve ever seen, but it doesn’t really matter since it’s so committed to its own silliness that it lets you in on the joke. Once it hits the half-hour point, it’s basically a series of barely stitched together sequences of campy, over-the-top violence, and with a crowd or just in the right mood, it works like aces.

But on the other hand, Zahler, man, he’s a weird one, a “problematic fave” as some would say. His films have had some troubling subtext to them, which often serves to enhance them as more authentically exploitation than any of the other neo-exploitation movies out there, while at the same time feeling unnecessarily reductive. With his script here, it feels a bit out of whack when it comes to how to handle the perspective of the violence. Given that the villainous puppets of the film are Nazis, their victims tend to be members of various marginalized groups, and since the gore is the main appeal for something like this, the entire second act of the film essentially makes you cheer for sequences when Nazis are killing people in absurdly gruesome ways, and it’s a very strange choice, but it’s also the kind of audaciously vile touch I’d expect from him. But hey, you think that’s bad, his next film is a movie about corrupt cops co-starring Mel Gibson, just imagine all the think pieces.

There’s really not a lot to say about a movie like this. I generally don’t like the phrase, but it is what it is, and chances are, you already know whether or not this is going to be your thing, and nothing that I’ve written is going to sway someone from seeing it to not seeing it, or vice versa. I can’t speak to how Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich compares to any of the previous installments of the franchise, but as its own weird little thing, I think it’s fine. The best way to experience it is to see it with a crowd or in a party where you and your friends can easily brush off some of the more troubling aspects, and enjoy it for being a campy gore show. It succeeds in that aspect, and that’s more important than anything else, in terms of what it’s going for. I feel like it was worth it just for seeing the absurd image of Thomas Lennon doing a pretend fight with a little doll.