THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: BLOODSTONE: SUBSPECIES 2 (1993) ** ½

Bloodstone:  Subspecies 2 picks up immediately where the first one left off with the little Subspecies dudes reviving their vampire master Radu (Anders Hove).  Once resurrected, he quickly goes about getting revenge on his brother by driving a stake through his heart.  His vampire girlfriend Michelle (Denice Duff) steals the coveted bloodstone from the castle and takes off for the hills.  Panicked, she calls her sister Rebecca (Melanie Shatner, Captain Kirk’s daughter) for help.  As Rebecca tries to find her sister (all the while playing catch-up on the rules of vampirism), Radu follows in hot pursuit trying to recover the bloodstone.

As with the original Subspecies, the opening sequence is the best part.  The scene where Radu’s decapitated head reattaches itself is awesome and utilizes some excellent special effects inspired by The Thing.  I also dug the part where Radu stakes his brother’s heart and drinks from the arterial spray as if it was a water fountain.  There’s also a cool crusty mummy that aids Radu in his quest.

Denice Duff is a much better actress than Laura Tate was, and she does a fine job selling her transformation into a vampire.  I especially liked when she woke up in a body bag and caused the coroner’s van to run off the road.  The problem is that the scenes of Shatner going on sightseeing tours, learning about vampire lore, and trying to track down her sister are a bore.  These scenes mostly feel like filler and totally bog down the middle section of the film.  

Returning director Ted Nicolaou does some impressive things with the low budget.  I liked the Nosferatu-inspired scenes of Radu casting a long shadow while stalking Michelle.  Once again, the film suffers from the lack of the cool Subspecies creatures who just about disappear after the opening.  I can’t quite call Bloodstone “good” as it drags like a son of a bitch after the first act, but it’s a remarkable step up in quality from the last one, so all involved should be commended for that.

AKA:  Helldance.  AKA:  Subspecies:  In the Twilight 2.  AKA:  Subspecies 2:  Bloodstone.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: SUBSPECIES (1991) * ½

Radu (Anders Hove) kills his own father, Vladislav (Angus Scrimm), the king of the vampires because he wants to possess the magical “bloodstone”.  (It looks like a half-melted snow cone.)  Meanwhile, a couple of American college students studying folklore wind up in Radu’s castle.  As Radu tries to put the bite on the girls, his half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) becomes smitten with Michele (Laura Tate) and tries to protect her from being turned into a bloodsucker.

The opening scene where Scrimm locks Hove in a cage, holds promise.  Hove cuts off his own fingertips and the severed digits transform into red-colored minions (who resemble a mash-up of the monsters from The Gate and MUSCLE wrestling figures) who help him escape.  Dave Allen’s stop-motion animation is quite good, but unfortunately, we don’t see enough of these “Subspecies” dudes throughout the rest of the movie to make it worthwhile.

Directed by Ted (Terrorvision) Nicolaou, Subspecies is a slow moving, ponderous, and dull vampire flick.  After the decent opening scene, nothing of interest really happens.  Even once the girls start being turned into vampires, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, or particularly want to see again.  The romance stuff is almost as bad as a Twilight movie as you’re forced to suffer through a lot of scenes of pasty-faced people gazing longingly at each other.  It also doesn’t help when Watson and Tate have absolutely no chemistry together.

Another debit is the character of Radu.  As played by Hove, he feels like an interchangeable vampire villain.  At least Greg Cannom’s make-up, which makes Hove sort of look like a cross between Nosferatu and a Lost Boy, is pretty good.  We also get an okay amount of skin and one or two decent gory bits, but it’s nothing especially memorable.  

The frustrating ending leaves things wide open for a sequel (of which there were three).

AKA:  Subspecies:  In the Twilight.  AKA:  Vampiri.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH (2018) ***

Puppet Master:  The Littlest Reich is not part of the original Charles Band films.  It’s not really a remake either.  It’s more of a re-imagining, set in a separate timeline.  Hey, all that doesn’t really matter as long as S. Craig Zahler is on board, am I right?  

Zahler, who wrote and directed the modern classics Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (not to mention being an accomplished author in his own right—seriously, if you haven’t read Wraiths of the Broken Land, go out and grab a copy now), wrote the script for The Littlest Reich and his participation alone was enough to get me excited about a Puppet Master reboot.  Yes, for once in my life, I was actually looking forward to a Puppet Master movie.  Having The State’s Thomas Lennon playing the starring role was just the cherry on top.

Directors Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund give the film more style than certainly any of the Full Moon productions had.  They also wisely showcase Zahler’s flair for peculiar dialogue, as well as his penchant for nasty, unrelenting violence.  If this triumphant trio is pulling the strings for the next Puppet Master movie, I’ll be there with bells on.

Lennon stars as a recently divorced forty-something comic book store owner who moves back home with his folks.  While moping at home, he finds one of his dead brother’s puppets and learns it was one of the original killer puppets created by Andre Toulon (Udo Kier, who also appears in Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99).  With nothing better to do, he decides to sell it at a convention celebrating the “Toulon Murders” at a nearby hotel.  Other likeminded people with similar puppets congregate at the hotel and it doesn’t take long for the puppets to get loose and start killing the conventiongoers.

Zahler has taken great liberties with the established continuity of the Puppet Master lore, and honestly, it’s for the better.  Toulon is no longer a refugee who creates his puppets to fight the Nazis.  Instead, he himself is a Nazi and his puppets are trained to kill (among others) lesbians, African-Americans, and Jewish people.

It’s an interesting change to be sure.  We’re no longer rooting for the puppets, as they’ve become symbols of hate.  In these types of movies, we typically cheer whenever someone is bumped off by a demented puppet.  Zahler’s reimagining of the concept makes us pump the brakes.  Then, he does the unimaginable.  He devises some of the most brilliant ways to off someone in a horror flick in some time.  I mean it’s unconscionable to applaud what essentially comes down to a puppet committing a hate crime, but let’s face it.  You don’t come to a Puppet Master movie to see “good taste” on display.  True horror fans will undoubtedly be amazed at some of the carnage the puppets create in The Littlest Reich.  I mean how can you not be impressed when a guy taking a piss is decapitated, and his head lands in the bowl so that he winds up pissing in his own face?  Sure, some of the effects are a bit uneven, but for every phony looking bit, there’s a truly showstopping, genuinely unsettling moment (like the scene involving a pregnant woman).

I’m sure there will be folks out there who will have a knee-jerk reaction to all this and they’ll probably condemn it on sight.  There’s even a character who comments on the fact that the people who are dying don’t deserve it.  Zahler makes it abundantly clear he’s only reflecting the times we live in.

Lennon is excellent in what is essentially a non-comedic role.  He reacts to the sight of killer puppets with a calm detachment and never once lets you know he’s in on the joke, which, if he did, would’ve been game over.  The supporting cast is equally fine and is full of genre favorites.  Michael Pare does wonders with another thankless detective role, but he still finds ways to tweak his performance and give it a little bit of life.  Then there’s Matthias Hues as a victim who becomes controlled by the puppets, although I sort of wished they made him do a little Kung Fu.  Barbara Crampton does a bang-up job as a cop, especially when you consider most of her duties revolve around unfurling a LOT of exposition.  While I wish Kier had more to do as Toulon, he is still able to make a memorable impression in his short screen time.

It's the puppets who steal the show though.  Fan favorites like Pinhead, Torch, and Blade have been given minor facelifts, but they still retain enough of their classic charm to keep everyone happy.  The new additions are a bit of a mixed bag.  (There’s one that just looks like a stoner version of Kermit the Frog.)  That said, the helicopter puppet causes a devastating amount of mayhem and Junior Fuhrer may be my favorite puppet of the entire series.

Yes, the seams of the budget start showing more and more as the film wears on, but this is far and away the best Puppet Master movie ever made.  My biggest gripe is that it ends in such an abrupt manner.  If we take that to mean that we’ll be seeing the puppets again very soon, I’m all for it.  If in fact, we don’t get a sequel, it’ll just seem like the movie’s half finished.  Even then, it’s a minor miracle to have a Puppet Master flick that’s this damned good.

PRIME EVIL: HOOKER WITH A HACKSAW (2017) * ½

Donald Farmer is one of the reigning kings of no-budget horror. He’s been in the game for over thirty years now.  Judging from Hooker with a Hacksaw, I’m not exactly sure how much he’s learned since the days of Vampire Cop.

Kirsten (Kasper Meltedhair, who also co-wrote the movie with Farmer) is a hooker who is so desperate, she’ll have sex with a psycho john’s dead mother for drugs.  Another john forces her to appear in a snuff movie, but she’s able to get free and turns the tables on her captors, killing them with a hacksaw.  She then goes out on the street, trusty hacksaw in hand, killing abusive assholes and parasitic pushers.

Hooker with a Hacksaw is one of those movies where the budget was so low, you’ll swear the special effects were bought at the Spirt of Halloween clearance rack the day after Halloween.  I mean the dead mother is nothing more than a plastic skeleton.  In fact, there’s a long scene in the movie where Meltedhair is seen wandering endlessly down the aisles of a Spirit of Halloween store, which confirms my suspicion that’s where the plastic skeleton corpse was purchased from.  Not only that, but the shots of her trying on mask after mask also helps to pad out the running time.

I give Meltedhair credit for ripping guys’ guts out and doing sexually suggestive stuff with their intestines and still managing to look sexy while doing so.  This scene is so good that it’s repeated over the end credits to further pad the running time.  At seventy minutes, it’s still way too long though, even when the last ten minutes are nothing more than credits.  Still, the instestine scene, along with Meltedhair’s game performance is enough to keep this from being a One Star deal.

Linnea Quigley has a cameo, briefly appearing on television. 

Hooker with a Hacksaw is available on Amazon Prime for free HERE

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: PUPPET MASTER: AXIS TERMINATION (2017) * ½

Puppet Master:  Axis Termination is the eleventh entry in the long-running franchise and the final installment in the “Axis Trilogy".  Our heroes from Axis Rising show up once again, only to be immediately killed off one minute into the movie.  An American soldier (Paul Logan, a veteran of many Jim Wynorski films) just happens along long enough to take ownership of the puppets.  He later is teamed up with a dwarf scientist (George Appleby) to use the puppets as part of a magic squad to fight the Nazis.  Naturally, the Nazis have their own puppets who are now in the care of a sexy scientist (Tanya Kay) who controls them using mental telepathy.

Axis Termination is once again directed by Charles Band.  Even though it’s pretty much a stinker through and through, I have to give him credit for trying to give this one a unique look.  He does overboard with the multi-colored gels though.  The emphasis on psychics, telekinesis, telepathy, and “sexual magic” gives it a different flavor than the last few entries too.  I’m not saying it’s in any way remotely successful or anything (the magic power battles are goofy), but at least this wasn’t a case of churning out the same old shit.  

There’s also more gore than the previous installments, although some of the CGI blood is painfully phony looking.  We also get a cool character who ripped her gimmick off from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3.  The problem is that the pacing is almost non-existent.  The scenes of people sitting around talking endlessly about making plans instead of you know, following through with them go on and on without mercy.  In fact, any scene without the puppets is extremely slow-going, which is to say, it’s just like any other Puppet Master movie.

The puppets themselves are a bit livelier this time out as they are sometimes portrayed by actors performing in front of a greenscreen.  However, there isn’t nearly enough puppet action in this one to make it worthwhile, and the action we do get is mostly reserved for the last ten minutes of the movie.  I can’t guarantee you’ll stick around that long.

David DeCoteau, who directed the third, sixth, seventh, and ninth installments in the franchise, appears briefly as a “Flamboyant Nazi”.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: PUPPET MASTER X: AXIS RISING (2012) **

Puppet Master X:  Axis Rising features a whole new cast replacing the actors from Puppet Master:  Axis of Evil who take up a lot of the early scenes reiterating the plot of that movie.  It seems that the puppet Tunneller has fallen into the hands of the Nazis.  Danny (now played by Kip Canyon) sets out to get him back.  Meanwhile a Nazi doctor (Oto Brezina) is working on his own batch of puppets at the behest of a sexy Nazi babe named Uschi (Stephanie Sanditz).

This tenth installment in the Puppet Master franchise (if you don’t count Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys that is, and frankly, who would want to?) is only the second directed by series creator Charles Band.  It’s a definite improvement on Axis of Evil, and while I can’t quite call it one of the best films in the series, it’s easily the best entry in the “Axis Trilogy”.  While Axis of Evil was somewhat earnest in its intentions, making pointed observations about race relations during WWII, and boasting some fine period detail, the results were middling to say the least.  Puppet Master X is seriously lacking any of that.  However, there is something to be said for a movie that knows it’s junk and gleefully dives right into out-and-out silliness.  

The addition of Sanditz as the sexy Ilsa-inspired Nazi hottie certainly helps.  She spends almost all her screen time nearly busting out of her Nazi uniform or writhing around in skimpy lingerie.  The movie takes a nose dive in quality after she is killed off, but at least she is brought back late in the game in the form of an evil puppet named “Bombshell” who comes equipped with machine gun titties.

There’s also a werewolf puppet, a German robot tank named “Blitzkrieg”, and a Japanese puppet called “Kamikaze”.  The stuff with these Nazi puppets is fun, mostly because they’re something new and offer the classic puppets like Blade and Leech Woman an opportunity to do something besides kill people.  The puppet battles, it must be said, are a long time coming though.  Still, there’s enough random cheesiness here to keep you watching.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: PUPPET MASTER: AXIS OF EVIL (2010) * ½

Danny (Levi Fiehler) is a young man stricken with polio who yearns to do his part to fight the Germans in WWII.  He finds Andre Toulon’s hidden stash of killer puppets and learns the secret to bring them to life.  When Danny finds out the Germans and Japanese are plotting to blow up an American factory, he enlists the help of the puppets to stop them.

David DeCoteau is back in the director’s chair for this ninth Puppet Master flick and it’s not one of his better efforts.  Like most Puppet Master movies, Axis of Evil really struggles whenever the puppets aren’t front and center doing their thing.  That unfortunately accounts for much of the running time.  The opening sequence (which depends on extensive use of footage from the first movie) is particularly sluggish.  The scenes of Fiehler’s home life are often mawkish, especially when he’s dealing with his affliction or when he’s hanging out with his gung-ho brother.  The pacing in these scenes are rather leaden and DeCoteau does very little to help move them along.  It also doesn’t help that they contain actors who are almost as wooden as the puppets themselves.  

Speaking of the puppets, it takes seemingly forever before they finally are given a chance to shine.  These sequences taken on their own merits, aren’t bad.  The Leech Woman pukes into a guy’s sushi, Tunneller drills into a dude’s skull, and the new Ninja puppet kills people using Ninja stars.  However, there really needed to be more sequences of this caliber for Axis of Evil to have been successful.

The addition of a Japanese “Dragon Lady” villain (who is hiding out in Chinatown because “Americans can’t tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese”) gives this entry a slightly different flavor.  It’s certainly one of the better-looking Puppet Master movies as DeCoteau achieves a decent amount of period detail on a meager budget.  (We also get at least one funny, if inexplicable L.A. Confidential reference.)  Too bad the ending (which leaves the door wide open for yet another sequel) is so abrupt and unsatisfying.