bad/awesome flixxx review: Puppet Master (1989)

Ok. Let's begin. I wanted to reiterate to the people that I've been bagging on some movies lately, like House, and Darkman. Usually I don't get so rough on them. But, that's the whole point. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows that I love shitty movies, that's the whole deal here. Some are just so excruciatingly painful to get through. But after they are over, I feel a sense of accomplishment... like I've actually done some kind of work to get through them. Believe me though, I can tell the difference in a bad-good movie, and a good-bad movie. A lot of the time, Ill stray down the path of more good than bad. Lately I've been watching a lot of more bad than good. As with our feature today. One of the most popular series that Full Moon Entertainment has, adding their 9th sequel in the series (bringing the grand total to 10 movies about these guys) this year, last week I revisited the very first PUPPET MASTER.




ok, set the scene, it's like the late 30's, and we're in a creepy old hotel on the Cali coast. You may remember William Hickey as the crochety uncle from Christmas Vacation that smokes the cigar and sets the Griswold's tree on fire. "Je-sus Christ Grace, did the room clear out? Hell no! Tha BLE-SSING!!" He "stars" for a brief moment in the beginning of the flick as Andrew Toulon, a man who has somehow figured out some Egyptian secret, (that they never explain) that brings life to inanimate objects. In this case, Toulon was a Puppeteer in the late 30's. Or a PUPPET MASTER! Get it??!? But obviously he's done something bad, and so in the beginning he's got like a Chinese puppet watching out the window as two Nazi spies come to kill him. Also, this puppet named Blade is running around in a funny POV camera angle trying to get back to Toulon, before the Nazis show up. So he makes it back, and Toulon stuffs all the puppets into a case and shuts them up in the paneling of the hotel, and then just before the Nazi's break down the door, he blows his own fucking head off. BOOM!!! Blood all over what looked as briefly as i saw it like a abstract expressionist print. I was thinking Barnett Newman, but really instead of a block color shape, I'm thinking more of a jazz squiggly kind of deal.... But i digress.



Fast forward to the future (1989) and a bunch of psychics are called together by their friend Neil Gallagher to the hotel through dreams and however else all those powers worked. Two are married and they're like sex weirdos (translated as "really cool") and then theres a southern woman they call the white witch, and some random tool. Okay, so they get there, and it turns out none of them like him, but whatever, he's dead anyway, and then the puppets show up and start killing everybody. I don't wanna ruin everything... I kind of like how Joe Bob Briggs used to do this, "a couple nice sets of boobs, a domination scene where the lady gets drilled in the face (with a drill you perverts), dude has a chick puppet bite his nips, then puke up leeches on his chest, um, what else, resurrection by black magic, and all kinds of shit. check it out, and come on back here when yer done." That's my Joe Bob Briggs impression. Anyway, in the end...

****Semi Spoiler Alert****

i have a question, when Gallagher's wife grabs the white witch's dead stuffed dog, and then it comes to life, are we to gather that she now delves into the black magic? Does she want to be the puppet master??? Who knows... I guess I'll have to watch some of the sequels. more bad than awesome... but watch it anyway. word.

bad/awesome flixxx review: House (1986)

Alahoyus everyone. Here's another childhood flick that just falls to pieces when watched years later. I remember thinking this was great when I was young, but its just fucking godawful. Directed by Steve Miner, the man who brought you FRIDAY THE 13TH parts 2 & 3, WARLOCK, and SOUL MAN, you have 3 dudes from 80s television trying to pull off this horror flick. William Katt from GREAT AMERICAN HERO, Bull from NIGHT COURT, and Norm from CHEERS star in HOUSE (1986)!!!



So, it starts off awesome enough... A grocery boy delivers a bag of stuff to some old lady. She doesn't seem to be home, and the boy calls for her, over and over again. He hears something when he's at the door up the steps, so being the curious delivery boy he is, he creeps up the steps trying to see what's become of old mrs. Hooper. What to his surprise does he find but old Mrs Hooper swinging from a rope in her bedroom. He fucking splits on his little scooter accordingly.

Cut to a scene where you have the dude from GREAT AMERICAN HERO. He plays a horror writer. You find out Mrs Hooper was his aunt. She raised him, and last time he was there, something happened where his son disappeared and his fucking wife left him, and he sort of got writer's block from all that. So he's telling everyone he's gonna write this story about being in Vietnam. Everyone is like, "boring!", and he's like, well, I have to do it. It's been bugging him, see. So he goes to the old house for some solitude, but finds out he has a super nosy neighbor in Norm from CHEERS.

All of a sudden shit starts getting weird. He hears noises. Then he sees his dead aunt RE-hang herself in her bedroom... You'd think this would be enough for him to be like, FUCK THIS... IM OUT. but he sticks around. His dead uncle's fish comes alive on the wall, tools start flying around, he accidentally shoots his wife in the chest with a shotgun. Cops come in to check him out. This fucking weird thing comes outta his aunts closet and tries to get him...



He's having all these flashbacks from Nam, and he can't tell whether they're dreams or what. Apparently he left his buddy Bull from NIGHT COURT behind in Nam, and the Vietnamese took him and tortured the shit out of him. So Bull is pissed. Then he kills this fucking gross chick & tries to bury her in the backyard, and this hot ass (literally) neighbor lady seems like she wants to party with him, but she just wants him to babysit (BOGUS)... and then while he's doing that these 2 weird ugly monsters try to drag the baby up the chimney. GAH is still looking for his kid Jimmy too by the way. Anyway, he gets Norm in on the action, and harpoons the closet monster one night at like midnight. But the Great American Hero gets sucked into the closet anyway, which is NAM, for him. I guess. I think you're supposed to get that the House wants you to fight your inner demons or some shit. He escapes after he figures out that its Bull Shannon that he has to fight. Norm is drunk on 3/4ths a handle of Jack, and passed out. GAH goes to the garage and sees his aunts painting and uncovers a pic of his son screaming in the bathroom mirror. So he goes to the bathroom, busts the mirror out and a bunch of monsters try to get him. He whacks them with a razor. Then he somehow ties off, and belays himself down into the blackness inside the mirror.



Then he runs into the flying skull with wings thing that "Revenge Sevendust" use for their symbol, and it steals his shotgun and shoots his rope causing him to fall in the water back in Nam. He quickly finds his son locked up, and Bull is like firing on him. BAPBAPBAPBAP BAPBAPBAPBAP. He escapes thru the swamp back to into his aunties swimming pool, but Bull Shannon escapes NAM-hell or whatever too, and he's coming for him. Then there's like a 20 minute chase, but ultimately GAH is like, "im not scared of you anymore"... like a fucking 10 year old wrote this. And he takes his son, and then sticks a grenade in Bull's chest. BOOOOOOM!!! And then the house is on fire, and then his ex wife drives up in a taxi???? I thought he blew her away an hour ago! And how the hell did she know to get there right on time? and then the stinger: William Katt standing there on his steps, smirking at the camera- freeze frame. FUCKING GARBAGE. but hey, don't get me wrong. I loved it.