Editorials
Crushed Skulls and Slashed Faces: The 7 Best Kill Scenes in the ‘Puppet Master’ Franchise
With Full Moon’s Puppet Master series getting a reboot this summer courtesy of Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, it seemed like a great idea to revisit the original series of films and create a running tally of all the best death scenes.
Like I said, it seemed like a great idea.
Don’t get me wrong: I grew up on Full Moon movies and the original Puppet Master was a staple of my youth. I’m a fan. But the reality is that the deaths in the Puppet Master movies aren’t especially interesting. Unlike major mainstay franchises like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, these aren’t movies defined by their inventive kills scenes. The fans return for movie after movie (11 and counting as of this writing) for the weird little puppets, as each one only has one way to kill someone – and a few barely even have that. I’m looking at you, Jester.
That makes coming up with a list like this pretty challenging, though it hopefully won’t be the case forever: based on the little bit of early word I’ve heard, any one of the deaths in The Littlest Reich will outdo every kill in the first 11 movies combined. This gives us a lot to look forward to when the movie is released later this summer.
Without further ado, here are seven of the best kills from the Puppet Master franchise…
Neil Gallagher (Jimmy Skaggs), PUPPET MASTER
Here’s the thing about the Puppet Master movies: almost every really good death in the series comes at the end of each film, when the puppets inevitably team up and combine their powers to kill someone more evil than them. It’s how at least half of the entries end. I’m giving the advantage to the original because a) it was the first to use this conceit and b) it’s pretty gnarly.
Neil Gallagher, thought dead by suicide at the start of the movie, reveals himself to be reanimated thanks to the secrets of Andre Toulon, the O.G. Puppet Master. He resents the little bastards, though, and makes the fatal mistake of insulting them and tossing one (Pinhead) across a room and even popping off its tiny head. Well, that’s all it takes for the puppets to turn on his undead ass, joining forces and each taking a turn using their unique ability to tear him apart: Tunneler drills directly into his calf muscle, then Blade cuts his fingers off as he tries to escape. Pinhead, having put himself back together, begins crushing Gallagher’s head. Blade stabs his other hand and then hooks his mouth open so Leech Woman can begin puking up leeches right into his mouth (a weirdly inefficient way to kill someone) while Tunneler continues to drill into his neck. They mess him up so bad that his widow, who just learned that her husband is an evil genius who brought himself back from the dead and has ordered the deaths of all the other characters, begs them to stop.
What really earns this particular kill a spot on the list, though, is that it takes a really, really long time, which makes it all the more satisfying.
Billy the Annoying Kid (Sean Ryan), PUPPET MASTER II
The first sequel in the franchise introduced a new puppet, Torch, who has a German Stahlhelm for a head and a flamethrower for a hand. Torch won my heart when he loses his patience with an obnoxious 10-year old and sets him on fire. It’s the most transgressive moment in the entire Puppet Master series. For that, I love it.
Joey Carp (Michael Guerin), CURSE OF THE PUPPET MASTER
As the biggest douche across all 11 Puppet Master films, Joey Carp really, really deserves what he gets in the sixth movie in the franchise. After repeatedly bullying town simpleton Tank Winsley (Josh Green) and threatening/attempting to rape Tank’s girlfriend Jane (Emily Harrison), Joey is finally killed off during an intense weightlifting session. He’s mid-bench press when Blade hops on top of him and slashes his face over and over, while at the same time Tunneler drills into his crotch. Good riddance, Joey. Anyone as rapey as you deserves to have his dick drilled.
Dr. Gerde Ernst (Tonya Kay), PUPPET MASTER: AXIS TERMINATION
The most recent of the Full Moon Puppet Master movies (and the third and final entry in the “Axis” cycle of sequels) suffers from the same budgetary restrictions that have neutered much of the company’s current output. That means that despite Charles Band’s promise that this would be the goriest entry in the franchise, the kills in Axis Termination are just okay, lacking the resources to make them spectacular in any way. The best death in the film again comes at the end when the puppets turn on psychic Nazi Dr. Gerde Ernsti for betraying them. She’s basically gunned down by Bombshell and Blitzkrieg, which is fairly uninspired but at least executed with maximum splattery squibbage. What elevates her death is that immediately after she’s shot, Dr. Ivan Ivanov (a fixture within the Full Moon universe, here played by George Appleby) removes her soul from her body and permanently destroys it. That’s some cold shit.
Nazi Driver (Neil Parrow), PUPPET MASTER III
Widely considered to be the best film in the series, Puppet Master III jumps back 40 years to WWII and acts as a prequel in which we get to see how Andre Toulon (now played by Guy Rolfe) gave life to his puppet creations. The bloodiest, most memorable death in the movie comes once again at the drill of Tunneler, who drills into a car seat and through the chest of the German soldier driving like some kind of puppet Xenomorph. I suspect Tunneler is involved in most of the memorable deaths in the franchise because he’s the only puppet equipped with a weapon that does the kind of bodily damage we often want to see in horror movies.
Klaus (Aaron Riber), PUPPET MASTER: AXIS OF EVIL
I mean, at this point I’m really just trying to mix it up. Maybe Klaus’s death isn’t that impressive, but at least it departs from the others in that it doesn’t involve Tunneler’s drill or Blade’s knife. Klaus, the Nazi soldier we first meet at the opening of the original Puppet Master when he arrives at Toulon’s hotel moments after he commits suicide, returns for the ninth film (played by a different actor) in a larger role. He’s killed with a throwing star to the eye from new puppet Ninja, who thankfully only lasted this one film. Klaus then gets his skull crushed when Pinhead drops a big statue on it. I don’t know. At least it’s a little different.
Leech Woman (Leech Woman), PUPPET MASTER II
The most inexplicably strange of the evil puppets meets her end in just the second entry in the franchise when she’s thrown into a furnace and burned alive halfway through the movie. The exact reason for killing off Leech Woman – and again, it should be pointed out that this is a puppet that pukes up leeches – is the subject of some controversy. The sequel’s screenwriter has claimed he was told to kill her off by Charles Band, who didn’t like the character; Band has said that it came at the request of Paramount, who found the character too bizarrely grotesque for even their DTV killer puppet franchise. She didn’t stay sidelined too long, of course; she returned in flashback form just one movie later (where it’s revealed that the leech-puking puppet contains the soul of Toulon’s dead wife, making the puppet that much weirder) and in every Puppet Master after part 5. She makes this list because she was the first puppet to be killed off and because the story behind her demise is kind of funny. She was just too gross to live.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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