Tales From the Video Store | Nightmare Nostalgia

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.

It was a sunny Spring Saturday in April 1993. I was eleven years old and had my weekend routine of riding my bike a mile up to my local shopping center near my home, where my friends and I would peruse Osco Drugs for some snacks and the latest in MAD and FANGORIA magazines along with the ever essential stop next door to our mom and pop video shop, ACTION VIDEO to grab our weekend flicks and video games for rental. After purchasing some leftover Easter candy on sale, we headed to the video store, and as soon as we walked in the door, there was a giant standee VHS cutout of a new release that immediately intrigued us: LEPRECHAUN FROM VIDMARK NOW ON HOME VIDEO.

Fantastical horror was and still is my jam, so of course I right away grabbed a copy knowing full well this was going to be glorious cheese- and it did not disappoint.

SYNOPSIS:

Dan O’Grady (Shay Duffin) steals 100 gold coins from a leprechaun (Warwick Davis) while on vacation in Ireland. The leprechaun follows him home, but Dan locks the murderous midget in a crate, held at bay by a four-leaf clover. Ten years later, J.D. Redding (John Sanderford) and his daughter, Tory (Jennifer Aniston), rent O’Grady’s property for the summer. When their new neighbors accidentally release the leprechaun, he goes on a murderous rampage to reclaim his gold.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, and what the hell if you haven’t, everyone going into this should know it’s a B-grade cheese show. They didn’t even attempt to make it sound like serious horror back when they were producing it. There are zero reasons anyone should not know the Leprechaun franchise is basically one long-running joke. I’m pretty convinced that as the series went on with sequels, they were just trying to figure out how Looney Tunes they could get with the concept.

But it’s a classic. It was the beginning of a broader movement among writers and directors to have more fun with the concept of horror. The industry was finally beginning to come around to the idea that bad could mean good. All the major franchises jumped on the concept, and that brought us some of the best horror movies I can think of. And let’s face facts: Warwick Davis, a serious theatrical actor, gave an A-grade performance as a homicidal mythological maniac. Props to that guy.

That’s what makes the magic, though. It’s video store gold that you found at the end of the Rainbow Room, behind the Family titles and before you hit the black curtain point of the shop that is about a three-foot-tall, shoe-shining, homicidal sprite, in a green tuxedo. That should have tipped you off to what you were about to get.

It’s one of those movies we rented to watch and riff on with your friends. Which gives it a really special memory in my old nostalgic bank there. The movie is silly, not even remotely scary, hammier than an Italian smokehouse, and carries the plot of something you might expect out of a Full Moon picture. Which I personally love, so that is in no way a complaint here, and the movie can be summed up in the big one-liner delivered by the child actor at the end:

Yet another beautiful video store discovery that has become an annual tradition for St. Patrick’s Day, and then sometimes Leprechaun 3 when I feel a little saucy.