Review: Puppet Master 2 (1990)

Director: Dave Allen

Starring: Elizabeth Maclellan, Collin Bernsen, Gregory Webb, Charlie Spradling, Steve Welles, Jeff Weston, Ivan R. Jado, Sage Allen, George "Buck" Flower and Nita Talbot

Writing: David Pabian

Night time, a graveyard, an ominous atmosphere is being built. We see one of the graves is being dug up and yet we can't see the would be grave digger. Focusing on the casket, we see the name on it is Andre Toulan, the puppet master. Finally it is revealed that Pinhead the puppet; the strongest of the puppets is the culprit. Opening up the casket the other puppets Blade, Jester, Leech Woman and Tunneler gather round as Pinhead pours a mysterious liquid on the dead body. Andre Toulan has been resurrected, and we the viewers have already been guaranteed a campier ride than the first movie.

It's obvious from the first scene that the minds behind the sequel want to make the puppets more intrinsic to the plot. Here they are truly the henchpuppets of the main villain Andre Toulan their creator. We get plenty of scenes of Toulan (Steve Welles) interacting with the puppets, and again this actually brings a bit of humanity to them. We are also given a new puppet to meet; Torch, who is a walking flamethrower and is also a bit of a hot head; pun no intended.

On the protagonist side we have a group of paranormal researchers led by Carolyn Bramwell (Elizabeth Maclellan) and while they may not be as interesting as the previous movies, they feel more important to the story as they seem more active in trying to figure out the past of hotel they are investigating. Lance (Jeff Celentano) and Wanda (Charlie Spradling) lend the group an easy charm that makes them at least sympathetic enough to be worried about their well being.

With the two sides of the tale feeling better represented, the movie itself allows for much more campier goings on. Considering we start with the dead being resurrected we don't really ever get too serious. Instead we are allowed to enjoy the puppet murders and the sinister villainous plot that involves gathering enough brain matter to create a potion. Steve Welles really hams it up as Toulan and seems to be having a ball.

However there are some problems with the movie, including an expansion on the lore that kind of wrecks the best thing from the original movie. First off our main protagonists are very very stupid. One of their group is killed by a puppet, they actually see the puppet killing this person, they capture the puppet that killed this team member, and decide to not really do anything. What the hell? Call for back up, leave the hotel, burn the place to the ground. Anything other than sitting on your thumbs doing nothing. Its one of those really annoying actions movie characters do that no real person would ever entertain. Personally as the body count rises I couldn't help but mutter, 'that's what you get for being idiots.'

Actually the script is full of people doing really dumb things. But I can forgive this, what really got to me is the character of Andre Toulan. In the sequel he is a full on villain with a master plan and monologues. Oh the monologues children. While fun, it kind of betrays the performance of William Hickey from the first movie. In the first movie, Toulan seemed to be nicer, warmer, almost fatherly to his creations. He also sacrifices himself so the secrets of his creations can't fall into the hands of the Nazi's. This movies Toulan does have moments that seem similar to that fatherly interaction with his puppets, but something seems off and by the end we find out why. If I was honest, most people probably won't care, but it seems like a unique horror plot was squandered.

Overall this movie is far superior to the first one and viewers will probably have a lot more fun watching this. Alas in the pursuit of being a much more enjoyable film, the script suffers a little bit by having most characters doing things no real person would do all to further along the plot. Now if only a movie could bring back a nicer Toulan and explore that a little. *looks shiftily towards Puppet Master 3*