“It is far easier to start something than to finish it” -Amelia Earhart
“It always seems impossible until it’s done” -Nelson Mandela
“Hey everybody! We’re all gonna get laid!” -Rodney Dangerfield
We’re finally here. It’s been a tenuous journey filled with more highs and lows than a drug addict with undiagnosed ADD. This is it… the LAST entry in the Puppet Master series. Well, last in terms of release date. Chronologically in the series, it’s 4th, I think. It’s really hard to keep track of this stuff, you guys. If you remember last time, we were once again dealing with the puppets fighting Nazis in World War 2, and we were introduced to a pair of new protagonists, Danny & Beth. Along with the puppets, they managed to thwart a combined effort of the Nazis and Japanese to infiltrate America, and blow up a munitions factory. A couple of puppets were kidnapped by the walking, talking offensive Asian stereotype, and Danny fiercely declared to take the war to them. Puppet Master X: Axis Rising picks up immediately after the events of the previous film, continuing Danny and Beth’s adventures fighting the foreign threat with old timey racism, and slightly effective walking dolls. So, the question is… Does this series go out with a bang, a whimper, or some other third thing? Let’s find out!
Axis rising… patience falling…
We start off with the offensive female Asian stereotype being confronted by a new group of Nazi randos in a dark alley. They threaten her with guns and racism, and ask to see what’s in the satchel she’s carrying. They open it up, and Tunneler kills a dude in the face. The main Nazi guy shoots her in the head, and instructs his remaining men to “Do with her corpse as you wish… then dispose of it.” I guess these Nazis are necrophiliac rapists? I’m actually impressed they found a way to make WW2 era Nazis even more despicable. So anyway, the main antagonist from the last movie is dead in the very first scene of the movie. It’s fine though, because she was pretty much just an accent wearing a kimono anyway.
Elsewhere, Danny and Beth (now played by totally different actors, but they’re so vanilla that you won’t notice), lament their failures in the last movie. They are worried they won’t be able to rescue Tunneler, and wonder if they should call the cops. Danny decides that the story of walking puppets fighting an invasion of Nazi and Japanese forces would be a little hard to swallow. Blade, after witnessing the shenanigans in the alley, returns to Danny and tells him Lassie-style that the Nazis killed the Japanese lady, and took Tunneler. They don’t have time to be worried, because they are immediately kidnapped by federal agents and taken to a secret hideout.
New Danny is Poo Danny. They SERIOUSLY couldn’t get the other guy back?
Across town, there is a German scientist who is working on his own puppets. Along side him is an Aryan set of tits named Uschi. She taunts him with her boobs for a bit before the head Nazi comes in and breaks it up. The scientist has been working on a reanimation machine, and Head Nazi wants to see it in action. He drags in some poor Japanese sap, and kills him. The scientist is able to bring him back to life, but it’s short lived. Head Nazi is furious at the failure, and reminds the scientist that if he can’t make this machine work, they will kill his family. He then gives the scientist Tunneler to study in order to make his machine work.
here we have a still from a particularly warped Rule 34 site…
Danny and Beth are told at the military hideout that they aren’t in trouble, and are in fact getting medals of honor due to their efforts in fighting the foreign threat in the last movie. Danny is all like “screw your medals! I want to fight the Krauts!”, and the general tells him that wearing a uniform doesn’t make you a hero, or some bullshit. The military folk are rightfully curious about how they managed to thwart the bombing, and Danny & Beth contemplate whether or not to tell them about the puppets.
Back at the Nazi hideout, Uschi is lounging around in her underthings, trying to get a rise out of Dr. Freuhauffer, the scientist. The Boss Nazi walks in and is angry that Uschi seems to be a giant tramp. So he shoots her in the face. Freuhauffer, being the dirty old man that he is, tries using his serum to bring Uschi back to life, because as we established earlier, Nazis in this universe seem to have a thing for banging fresh corpses. It doesn’t work, so he uses what he learned from studying Tunneler to put Uschi’s soul into a puppet likeness of her he had lying around for presumably masturbatory purposes. (note: nothing in the movie suggests that Freuhauffer was using the puppet for freaky purposes. I just find it odd that he had whittled a doll based on the woman who was a constant prick tease towards him) Anyway, The new puppet is named Bombshell, and she has guns that come out of her tits. I mean, OF COURSE she has guns that come out of her tits.
This is how tits work, right?
Back with Danny and Beth, we learn that they’ve been assigned some dumb brick-headed GI Joe type dude named Sgt. Stone as a bodyguard. The kids decide to tell Stone about the puppets, and he is understandably confused. They tell him that the Nazis have kidnapped one of them, and they set about coming up with a plan to get him back. They go to the Nazi base in Chinatown, but find Bombshell waiting for them with her boob cannons. Since you just can’t plan on boob cannons, they are forced to retreat. Bombshell goes back to the Nazi lab, where we find out that Freuhauffer has been busy. There are now 3 more evil Nazi puppets in the mix. First, we have Weremacht, who is a cute and fuzzy little werewolf. He’s probably not meant to be cute, but he totally is. I want one. Next, there’s Blitzkreig, which kind of looks like Torch from part 2 had a lovechild with Tank from part 6. Lastly, there’s Kamikaze, who is a tiny bucktoothed Asian stereotype strapped to the gills with dynamite. If you’re keeping score at home, on the good side, we have Blade, Jester, Leech Woman, and Pinhead. On the bad side, we have Weremacht, Kamikaze, Bombshell, and Blitzkrieg. So the odds are even as far as puppet based warfare is concerned.
James Wan is cumming in his pants right now
Back at the military base, Danny and Beth are at a ceremony getting their awards for the nonsense from the last movie. There’s a big dumb puppet battle, and somewhere along the line, Leech Woman and Bombshell partake in a super sexy puppet catfight. The Major in charge of the military operation is killed, and the evil puppets pretty much squash the good puppets, so they just leave, having accomplished their mission. Danny, Beth, and Stone are left to figure out how to get the upper hand on the new Nazi puppets, when Leech Woman pulls the pieces of Six Shooter out of Danny’s trunk. Now, I know the reason Six Shooter isn’t in much of these movies is that he’s a pain in the ass to animate, but it seems kind of dumb in a storytelling sense to leave your most powerful puppet on the bench for so long. This series has committed worse crimes than this as far as plot holes go, so it’s not a huge deal, I guess.
here, we have a still from an even MORE warped Rule 34 site…
So, Danny, Beth, Stone, and the puppets, now having a numbers advantage, go back to show the Nazis what’s what. The puppets fight for a while, and Stone is killed. The head Nazi gets the drop on Danny, and is about to shoot him, when Blade sneaks up behind him and stabs him. The Head Nazi calls out to Freuhauffer to put him in the machine to make him into a puppet, but Freuhauffer, still mad about him killing Uschi and generally being a cock, tells him he’ll die as a man. Danny and Beth escape, and Freuhauffer orders Kamikazi to blow up the lab and all the evil puppets inside. Due to the fact that he helped them, Danny and Beth let Freuhauffer go, but don’t know he’s got a vial of the puppet serum with him, leaving this open for another sequel prequel.
So that’s it… The last Puppet Master movie, at least until Charles Band needs to buy a yacht, or something. My feelings on this one are very much the same as they were for Axis of Evil. The effects and attention to detail are WORLDS better than the rest of the series, and while the story is a little hokey and tough to fit into the canon, it’s reasonably fun and well-made. My only real complaint is that it’s not explained how the puppets made their way back to Bodega Bay for the start of the first movie. I guess they want to leave the possibility open for more movies extending on this timeline? As it stands right now, this is pretty egregious as far as plot holes go. But it just wouldn’t be the Puppet Master series without shitty continuity. I’m actually sort of sad that this is it for these movies. I mean, none of them were great, or anything. But I will say that out of the 10 movies, only two of them I didn’t find enjoyable to watch. It’s definitely a series that has earned its place in low budget lore, however dubious that place might be. Stay tuned for next time when I finally get to talk about something fucking else.