Puppet Master: Axis Rising (2012)

PUPPET MASTER: AXIS RISING

WRITERS: Story by Charles Band
Written by Shane Bitterling

DIRECTOR: Charles Band

STARRING: Kip Canuon as Danny

Jean Louise O'Sullivan as Beth

Oto Brezina as Freuhoffer

Scott Anthony King as Moebius

Stephanie Sanditz as Uschi

QUICK CUT: Danny tries to get his toys back from the people who stole them.

THE MORGUE

Danny - A young man who wants to be a soldier, and comes into the means to do some good despite his inability to serve.

Beth - Danny’s girlfriend, who always has his back, and is very outspoken.

Porter - An older soldier that is sent to keep an eye on Danny and Beth, and the puppets, but they are also charged with keeping an eye on him. He’s gruff, he’s grumpy, he likes doing things his own way.

Moebius - A German soldier who wants to create a means to resurrect the dead to create a more powerful Nazi army.

Uschi - A seductive German soldier who uses her ways on anyone she can, if it will help her get ahead, or aid the Reich.

Freuhoffer - The lead scientist working on Moebius’s resurrection project. He’s doing it under duress, but he’s doing it nonetheless.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! And happy 15th anniversary to this journey of stupidity and bad movies. To kick off this year and celebrate the anniversary, we are getting back to the Puppet Master series with the second in the World War 2 trilogy, Axis Rising. Now, I know we usually do these at the 100 marks, and that was the intent! In fact, for the longest time, I thought this WAS the 500th review as well as the 15th anniversary. But uh, somewhere along the way, my numbering slipped, and the LAST review was the 500th, as I’ve already discussed.

I liked both ideas of doing something off the beaten path for #500, and keeping Puppet Master 10 for the anniversary review, once I had the numbering sorted out, so here we are.

And I just realised I am following up the VERY SERIOUS subject matter of experiments performed by Japanese soldiers in World War 2 with...a freaking PUPPET MASTER MOVIE set in World War 2. And including experimentation.

The movie picks things up more or less right after the last movie, with Ozu sneaking away with Tunneler, and meeting with German soldiers, including Commandant Moebius.

She offers up Tunneler as an offering to go free, and Moebius agrees to set her free for the puppet, as it is most relevant to his interests, as we will see soon enough.

But Moebius is always one to bend the rules, and he "sets her free" by shooting Ozu, and realising her from this mortal coil.

We then catch up with Danny and Beth, and the rest of the puppets. The new Puppet Master promises they'll get Tunneler back, but Beth is not so sure.

She knows they can't go up against tge Germans AND the Japanese by themselves, just to get a puppet, and she urges Danny to get someone else involved.

Beth mentions the 'dragon queen' and Danny corrects her that she was Japanese, and 'dragon lady' is a racist term for Chinese women. Yeah, get your racism correct! ...Oy.

That's when Blade shows up from his recon, and tells everyone about what happened in the prologue.

However, their planning gets interrupted by a pair of men, whom we will shortly see work for the US government, come a-knockin' and drag the couple off for a meeting.

Pardon me, but do you have time to talk about our lord and saviour, Charles Band?

Meanwhile, an old man, Doctor Freunhoffer, whose name I will surely misspell every possible way, shows up to the Nazi's secret base. He enters it by pushing a brick that is a more obvious switch than if it was an animation cell.

He heads to his lab, which has a bunch of dolls cobbled together with bitey metal bits, as he works on his own puppets. Although, he is not aware of the other puppets, so this is a bit odd.

A female Nazi shows up, Uschi, and she uses her feminine wiles to try and get Freunhoffer to get with the work. She also looks like a refugee from a Nazisploitation movie.

She shoves her boobs in his face, calls him a swine when he looks, and bounces back and forth between "you want me don't you?" and "How dare you want me!". And then yells at him for NOT finding her desirable, which he backpedals on. So she then scoffs and says he has no chance with her.

WOMAN WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME??

Moebius shows up to try his own hand at motivation, and since Freunhoffer has been wasting time playing with dolls, surely "the machine" is ready!

But before we can see the machine and learn what Moebius is working on, we jump over to Danny and Beth being delivered to Major Collins.

Collins is aware of the last movie, and congratulates them for a job well done. Danny is still having issues with not being able to enlist, and the major tries to explain that it's what's inside that counts. This is a recurring theme with Danny.

This all leads to Beth and Danny telling the major about what really happened, as the movie fades to black, so we can see what is going on with the Germans.

And that is, they are trying to find a way to revive dead soldiers, because that would both bolster their forces, and make them harder to kill a second time, but they are having issues. Ya think?

They bring in a Japanese man that Moebius kills, because you can't perform a resurrection experiment without a dead man.

The crown of thorns needs to be a bit higher...

So the man gets put in a giant paper towel tube, and shockingly, the process works. Kinda. For five minutes, until he sorta...melts. Which is still more than they've gotten before, but not exactly a good outcome.

Moebius is displeased with Freuhoffer's failure to create an audio compression algorithm, and threatens the scientist and his family some more, then leaves Tunneler in the doctor's hands to tinker with.

We cut back to the Americans, as Danny finishes his tale. Collins takes it about as much stride as one can, and then saddles the couple with Sergeant Stone to protect them. With that done, they get sent home, until an event later to celebrate their good work.

Back in Chinatown, Uschi is trying to seduce Moebius, but he is too focused on some symbols he found in ancient texts that he believes are the key to his device. She dismisses them, and he calls her foolish for being so small minded.

The Germans get word that an important American general named Porter, is coming to town for the earlier mentioned event, and want to push project Overlord forward to debut it at the gala.

Back with the Americans, Stone is making himself at home in Danny's place, as the gruff manly soldier rubs Beth the wrong way. They eventually put stuff aside over dinner, but it's a decent enough sign of the times, and character conflict.

The two men bond over remembering Donny, and decide they want to get revenge. So Danny decides to bring Stone into the circle of trust.

Meanwhile, the doctor is tinkering with Tunneler, and discovers Toulon's serum. Uschi decides to reward him, and Moebius walks in at the worst possible time. He takes offense at her betrayal, and since he can't kill the scientist, he shoots her instead.

As Danny and friends get ready to move out, Freunhoffer prepares the device to try and bring Uschi back, and it's a success!

Or as much a success as the last attempt was, as she melts shortly afterwards too.

The super soldier serum appears to have a few side effects.

The doctor decides the serum isn't strong enough to resurrect a full human, hence the doll theme this entire series has going for it.

So he creates a new doll for Uschi, and she has the ability to drop her bra and fire bullets from her doll boobs, like she's a mini Fembot.

He names the newest creation "Bombshell", and sets about creating a whole series of evil puppet counterparts.

The Americans make their way to Chinatown and get into a fistfight with some Germans. They do well, and are patting themselves on the back when Bombshell shows up to hail them with boob bullets.

Pinhead takes the brunt of the hits, before she disappears, and our heroes head back home to do some repairs.

As everyone gets ready for the party in their own ways, General Porter arrives, and Blitzkrieg, one of the Nazibots, sees him do so.

Freunhoffer reveals another puppet, and oh yikes. It's a Japanese man with a very racist caricature of a face, called Kamikaze. And yes, he is wired to blow.

At the party, Porter gives Danny and Beth medals of honour or whatever, but Danny isn't happy about it, since as we know, he just wants to enlist, and doesn't feel worthy of it. DUDE. You are a hero, heroes don't need uniforms. Unless they're the Legion of Super Heroes or Avengers.

While Porter poses with them for a photo op, is when the Nazidolls choose to strike. Fortunately, our hero puppets are there to intervene, and the Americans make it through with minimal casualties.

On the upside, with the puppets saving the day, the general decides that Danny is indeed worthy of joining the army, and tells him to come by first thing, and sign up.

Despite being mostly victorious, Danny is downtrodden, and doesn't see much chance of fighting back to get Tunneler, given the Nazibots superior firepower.

Fortunately, Leech Woman saved an old friend for last, and presents the puppet master with the head of Six Shooter. Someone called in reinforcements!

Our heroes arrive at the German's base and the puppets do what they do best, get into tight spaces with a maximum of collateral damage.

They sneak into the base, find Tunneler, but they are very quickly found out by a German soldier. Before he can do anything, Danny grabs a gun and shoots him point blank.

Everybody was kung fu fighting, while the doctor gathers his notes to try and make his escape in all the chaos. Beth stops him, however, but after having a chat, she decides to let him live, and he sticks around through the fight.

Long story short, the good guys win, but not without a loss or two. Stone gets knifed in the gut by Moebius, and Six Shooter does him in.

Freuhoffer arrives on the scene, and Moebius demands he be put into the resurrection device. The good doctor is pretty much all, "Let me thi...Nah."

With things looking bleak for the Axis, Kamikaze decides to pull his one time trick and blows everything up. Our remaining heroes and the doctor run off to fight another day.

They're ready to turn Freuhoffer over to the military, but Beth talks Danny and the puppets into letting him go, so he can be with his family, and he walks off into the sunrise, with a vial of serum in his hands.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks good. A movie coming out in 2012 has no excuse to look bad. If anything, it just looks cheap. Everything looks like a set, and not very lived in, and looking so crisp and clean as you get with filming in 2012, it doesn’t do it any favours.

Audio: Sounds find.

Sound Bite: “What are we gonna tell them? That Los Angeles is crawling with Nazis and Japs, and we have to storm their hideout to get back our magic puppet??"

Body Count: I feel like the Puppet Master movies have been light on the body count for awhile, but even if I’m misremembering, this is still a nice showing.

1 - Tunneler drills out a Nazi's face, four minutes into the movie.

2 - Ozu is shot by Moebius

3 - Japanese prisoner gets his throat slit

4 - And then his zombified version melts and dies again

5 - Not!Ilsa is shot by Moebius

6 - A photographer is shot by Blitzkrieg

7 - Bombshell shoots a general

8 - Leech Woman does what she does to a German soldier

9 - A German soldier gets shot by MAIN GUY

10 - Porter gets killed by Moebius

11 - Moebius gets shot up by Six Shooter and then stabbed by Blade

Best Corpse: Double points for the random Japanese man, and Uschi’s deaths, because that melting face effect was pretty sick. I’d love to see a zombie movie that looks like that.

Blood Type - C-: Not a very bloody flick, which has become common place for latter day Full Moon movies. The meltyface is good, and the puppets have some actual motion to them, so that helps. What little blood there is, is CGI.

Sex Appeal: Nothing to speak of, the closest we get is Uschi in her underwear.

Drink Up! every time you cringe when you see some racism.

Movie Review: I’m not about to hail the tenth/eleventh (depending on who is counting) Puppet Master film as a classic of cinema or even the franchise, but it’s definitely better than some of the middle movies. If you’re coming in this late to a Puppet Master movie, you know what you’re getting, and it mostly delivers. It’s decent enough, if not great. The core characters are good, Stone’s performance is charmingly grumpy 1940s man. It is what it is, and I had a good time, if not a great time. Three out of five bullet bras.

Entertainment Value: There’s some comfort in seeing the puppets doing their thing again. I kinda missed them. They’re a bit limited these days in what they can do, compared to how energetic they were in the early days, but again, better than they have been lately. It feels like a step in the right direction, but I really just wanted more. Two out of five resurrection tubes.