Category Archives: Horror Nostalgia

Editorials, Horror Nostalgia

Tales From the Video Store: PUPPET MASTER II

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As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Oh shit, wrong movie. As far back as I can remember, I was completely enthralled with the killer doll genre, long before Chucky took center stage in 1988 and really kicked off a line of killer doll films from competing studios. It all really started for me with Talky Tina and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, then spilled over into Stuart Gordon’s DOLLS– a film I became obsessed with when I was very young, and still has a grip on me today as an adult. Not long after DOLLS hit video store rental shelves, which is where I discovered it, another film that Charles Band, who produced the 1987 horror flick, and his production company FULL MOON PICTURES showed up in the horror section of my local Mom and Pop Video Store entitled PUPPET MASTER. And this little movie did for FULL MOON what Freddy did for NEW LINE- it built a legacy and a ton of quirky B Horror and straight-to-VHS horror films to follow. And we all have Blade and friends to thank for it.

To be totally transparent, I actually saw PUPPET MASTER II before seeing the first movie. I know, wild; I was totally confused, but it didn’t restrict any love that happened upon my first viewing because I was immediately hooked and went to rent the original the following day. So, hence, the sequel is the one that truly sparked my love for the franchise and the one that remains a favorite. Not just for nostalgic reasons, but I firmly believe this is the best film of the franchise without a doubt.

SYNOPSIS:

The living puppets dig up their dead creator, Andre Toulon. Running low on the secret life-giving fluid, Toulon and his killer creations harvest brain fluid from a team of paranormal investigators at the Bodega Bay Inn. At the same time, Toulon targets a researcher he believes is his reincarnated wife.

Puppet Master II ramps up the body count, expands the franchise lore, and introduces some of the most iconic elements of the entire series. The deadly marionettes-Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, and Leech Woman are running out of the mystical green elixir that sustains them. To save themselves, they head to a foggy graveyard, dig up the mummified corpse of their creator Andre Toulon, and bring him back from the dead.

Toulon is now alive, but he is a decomposing mess wrapped in bandages. To brew a fresh batch of his life-giving serum, he needs a very specific ingredient: fresh human brain tissue. YUMMO. Conveniently, a team of unsuspecting paranormal investigators rolls into the creepy Bodega Bay Inn to look into the events of the first film. Toulon, masquerading as a hotel guest and trying to channel his best Claude Rains impression, unleashes his mini-monsters to harvest the team’s grey matter.

Things take a bizarre turn when Toulon realizes the lead investigator, Carolyn, looks exactly like his deceased wife, Elsa. The plot shifts from a simple slasher into a mad-scientist romance. Toulon concocts a plan to murder Carolyn, kill himself, and transfer both of their souls into life-sized human mannequins so they can live happily ever after.

How romantic. Also the most nightmare-inducing images of the entire movie.

Puppet Master II is also the introduction to one of my favorites of the franchise, TORCH. The only puppet with the absolute balls to kill a kid.

As an 80s kid, I’m a stickler for practical effects, and David Allen’s stop-motion animation gives the puppets a distinct, uncanny movement that CGI just can’t replicate. Which is something I’m afraid of happening, as rumors are circulating that BLUMHOUSE will be rebooting the beloved B Horror franchise in the future. I’m all for breathing new life into the puppets of my generation, but let’s be clear- Blumhouse has always been hit or miss, with a lot more misses, unfortunately, when it comes to horror movie reboots. This is why I can’t even fuck with the new Chucky movies or series. There is way too much CGI going on, and it makes the dolls look even more cheesy than intended and completely unrealistic. I mean, it’s about as fake as you can get, and we’re talking puppets and dolls who come alive from spells and potions. Which is a WILD thing to even say. But I just know that Blumhouse would pull that same kind of shit, and Toulon’s creations will just become another mediocre product from Jason Blum.

Yeah. I said it.

That being said, Puppet Master II perfectly balances genuinely creepy imagery with the delightful, low-budget B-movie charm of the early ’90s, and I’ll always remember the first time I saw it thanks to my local video store. Another treasure that gained momentum through word of mouth, an intriguing VHS cover, and inspired young horror fans to come back for more B horror.

All hail the memories of horror movie video rentals.

Games, Horror Nostalgia

The Long Lost Hellraiser NES Game Brought Back to Life By Here Lies!

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No one knows the pleasure (and pain in the right ass) of games better than Pinhead and the Cenobites, and thanks to my buddy Eddie Spughetti over at HERE LIES, he, and with a little bit of consulting from yours truly, have brought the long-lost Hellraiser Nintendo game back to life by opening the Lament Configuration with our love and passion for 80s and early 90s horror hotlines and a mock video featuring the game!

The cancelled HELLRAISER NES game was being developed by a company called Color Dreams in 1990, which had a reputation for creating unlicensed Nintendo games on the NES- all of which were also notorious for their poor quality. So much so, you may not have even heard of titles like “Baby Boomer” and “The Adventures of Captain Comic“.

The game itself was to be an updated version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, played from a first-person viewpoint. You play an (unknown) character stuck inside the Lament Configuration, with the main focus being for you to solve the box and escape with the bonus ability to manipulate the inside of the puzzle box. The catch is, solving the box would not only free you but also the Cenobites inside it. That being said, upon freeing yourself, you’d then have to solve it again in another riddle from Hell fashion to trap the Cenobites back inside and win the game.

Ambitious? Yes. So much so that the developers realised that the NES system could not handle the RAM of the super Wolfenstein 3D engine without having to create some sort of super cartridge, which would cost a fortune, and the main reason, according to game nerd lore, that Hellraiser was just shelved permanently. But not before Color Dreams pre-ejaculated a bunch of ads in Game Pro for the game, giving us fans forever blue balls.

Balls so blue that Pinhead would revel in the pleasure of my pain.

Anyways, we’ve been denied in what could have been one of the coolest horror games for Nintendo, although with Color Dreams rep that might be a stretch, but at least we can use that thing we call an imagination and NOT AI to put together something of what we think might have been in the era of marketing to gamers in the early 90s.

Video editor and VHS Wizard Master Eddie Spuhghetti used the only available image of what was the title screen of the long-lost HELLRASIER game, a created soundtrack for the game available on SoundCloud, some clips from the films, and a little bit of voice magic to make the game come to life in this mock horror hotline sweepstakes commercial that feels as real as it is glorious.

Behold, for we have such sights to show you!

Horror Nostalgia

Listen to the Entire 1-900 Freddy Krueger Hotline Story Collection Here!

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Kids today, with their Snapchats and Discords, could never fathom kids of the 80s and 90s calling a 900 hotline just so they could interact with their favorite horror icon. I’m also willing to bet they would never think that these phone calls caused us a swift ass-kickin’ in most cases when the phone bill came in- but unlike today, we had an entire month to plan our escape if needed until that paper bill came in the mail.

The horror hotline and basic 900 number dared young millennials to dial between your favorite programming, specifically aiming at kids that, as mentioned above, could cost you your left nut. But goddamn was it exhilarating. It sure as hell gave you a sense of living dangerously, and no doubt a few strands of pectoral hair sprouted on your chest when you ate the forbidden fruit if you actually mustered up the courage to call the “$2.99 a minute and $0.99 for each additional minute” numbers.  And with the peak of Freddy Mania in the late 80s, it was only natural for the world’s most notable homicidal insomniac to cash in on some poor kid’s wallet and the excitement of actually talking to Freddy over the phone!

After the release of DREAM WARRIORS, the 1-900-660-FRED was launched, and soon after, alongside DREAM MASTER and the syndicated FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES, the more infamous 1-900-909-FRED, with 1-900-860-4-FRED following after in the early 90s, which included the infamous sweepstakes contest to win a walk-on role for at the time, was just titled as “Nightmare 6“.

If your memory is as shitty as mine, you probably don’t remember much if you were one of those brave souls who called those numbers, but lucky for the blessed internet, YOUTUBE Channel Movie and Video Game TV Spots has uploaded the entire original collection of Springwood stories you heard on the other end of the line. Shoutout to the buddy, HERE LIES for sending me the video!

When you called, Freddy greeted you with a prerecorded message, then we got some fuckwad resident of Springwood talking about some weird tale or another that occurred in Freddy’s hometown. Finishing up with Freddy, urging you to go behind your parents’ backs some more and call again tomorrow. Which was way more terrifying than any story Freddy could come up with.