Well, here we are. The eleventh (or tenth, if you go by official canon) Puppet Master film is...another prequel...dealing with Nazis. Goddamn, Hitler loved puppets. Who knew that he had his finger on the pulse of the puppet show circuit? Of course, Axis Rising is a direct sequel to Axis of Evil. Our teenaged couple - as portrayed by different actors - is recognized for their heroic deeds in the previous entry. They are paired up with Sgt. Stone, an irascible general who is ordered to babysit them, more or less. The intrepid triumvirate eventually clashes with Nazi scientists hiding out in Chinatown. Oh, and living puppets. This movie contains living puppets, a fact that Charles Band sidesteps with chilling detachment.
Did I not mention that Axis Rising is directed by Band himself? Because why not? In his mind, he has directed each installment of this franchise anyway. The script could easily exist without Blade, Tunneler, Leech Woman and Pinhead. This may be intentional. After all, the puppet "effects" are profoundly sad. I think Band just shot two kids playing with action figures for the fight sequences. If you close your eyes, you can almost hear little fucknut Billy vociferating, "Grrr, I'm gonna stab you!" The shocking thing about this flick is that it's halfway decent. I liked it! Now remember, Axis Rising is rated on the same scale as Retro Puppet Master and Puppet Master: The Legacy.
How else can I break it down? If The Legacy is being castrated, then Axis Rising is receiving a blowjob by a girl who assumes that biting is the speediest way to a climax. Hey, it's still a blowjob. I didn't hate the characters, I was able to follow the admittedly blinkerfritz* storyline and I dug the evil (pronounced "eeeeevil") puppets. That's right, whore children; we get four untrodden Nazi puppets! Bombshell is a stacked blonde with machine gun boobs; Blitzkrieg is a toy robot that bops; Kamikazi is a racist Asian caricature that detonates an explosive; Wehrmacht is a goddamn werewolf. Did I use semi-colons correctly, you ask? No. I most certainly did not.
But back to Wehrmacht. He's easily the coolest fucking creation in the series, and yet, he proves to be largely useless. He randomly claws at Blade during the low-scale capstone of a finale, but that's it. God, the missed opportunities. I mean, Wehrmacht isn't as useless as Jester, but my legs aren't as useless as Jester. Gore? Not really. Nudity? Cleavage will have to suffice. Mediocre acting? Check! You can't expect the second coming of Jack Deth, though. Generally speaking, Puppet Master X: Axis Rising is one of the tolerable bantlings in the nursery. I've run out of metaphors to describe this heap of increasingly arthritic marionettes. Goodnight and good riddance.
*I made that word up.
I might check this out for two reasons, first, the hot nazi chick on the cover. Second, the fact that Band directed it. Believe it or not the only one of Band's directorial efforts I've seen is 1997's Hideous! which is actually pretty good within the context of a late 90's Full Moon flick that isn't Subspecies 4.
ReplyDeleteThe blonde Nazi is definitely hot. She's the second hottest Nazi character in a recent film I've seen, behind only the hot Nazi chick in Iron Sky.
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