Very well executed

Thanks for the memories!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

What to do when you have a band of misfits that people love even though they do evil things? You add another one and play with fire ... literally. Logic aside (because again Puppets killing people and all that), this sort of sets off where the first one ended. And actually all the movies seem to be connected. Haven't seen them all yet, I'm in the process of catching up to watch the latest which will play at a Festival (near you).For a sequel it's pretty nice, I've seen a lot worse. Even though it may seem like a rehash to some, I'd argue it still works. Again very good puppetry and good effects all things considered (time it was made/budget). If you love B-movies that are out there and way crazy, you may find something here

Part 2 is the classic Charles Band movie: cool premise wasted by cheap production and flat filmmaking. This sequel improves the villains from Part 1 (bringing us into a more Slasher setup) but everything else suffers. The setting is cheaper, the script is dumber and the actors are more comatose. The film has bright spots but they are wedged between painfully long filler scenes and bad soap opera acting. You see the beginning of the Full Moon formula for padding out movies with a handful of awesome moments with lots of nothingness. To its credit, PM2 is better shot and more entertaining than all of the sequels that followed. To many fans, PM2 is regarded as superior to the original because the standard DVD boxset release features a version that is sped up for cable. Watch the original and you will see its a drag-ass imitation of a much better film.

I think this is an improvement over the first movie, I find the characters to be moderately more likable and the plot to be much more coherent and it just flows better. It takes what was established in the original movie and builds on it, and I find it an all-round more entertaining and scarier picture. Man I love the score! That is such a beautiful piece of music by Richard Band that never fails to get my inner cogs turning! I find that it greatly enriches the movie's tone and gives it an added depth, as does the tremendously effective setting. To me the desolate inn by the sea is itself very much a character in the first two films of the series at least. From its gaudiness, to the marble floors and the angles on all of the empty dark corridors, it's like your really traditional haunted house. In my own unflattering way I'm trying to say that for the time it was made, this movie was scary! Never scarred me for life or anything, but there's some very freaky stuff in it, once it starts with the creepy stuff it doesn't let up. You don't have to wait for the last act for everything to really pay off, there's effort done to keep folks entertained and unnerved. There's a lot more focus on the puppets this time around, there way more out in the open right from the beginning. I love the fantastic style of the opening scene with them all engaging in a little necromancy, the macabre image of the zombie arms reaching out of the grave is such a classic image it's like it's taken straight from the cover of an old E.C. horror comic! Also the violence is more graphic and chilling, with the diminutive terrors ambushing people in the dark and in their sleep, as a kid I almost wet my pants when the Driller gets that Patrick guy! And the scene where the puppets assault the hillbillies is a blast! The hefty woman might just be crazy enough to take them on if only they didn't have a freshly-constructed little walking furnace friend to help them out who promptly torches the bitch in the first of two impressively done full body burns! A puppet of iron, Torch is a great addition, I like the design of the Kaiser helmet head and bullet teeth. He's always so mad and ready to scorch at the slightest provocation! It's probably mean, but I love when he charbroils that kid who somehow manages to make himself so completely unsympathetic in his few minutes of screen time that you frankly can't wait! By far my favourite thing about this flick and what I personally feel holds it all together is the performance of Steve Welles as the reanimated Andrei Toulon who, while the spiteful and demented version of the character is a world apart from the kindly old man in other entries, is one that I enjoy tons more. He's way more interesting this way, he's an insane Toulon! Maybe half a century of being dead will do that to a guy.. I think the Puppet Master should be as frightening as the puppets themselves. I love all the scenes where it's just him and puppets. They can't talk back, but he does a great job of working with them and conveying all the back and fourths of it. I like the moment where he looks around his eerie chamber and settles on the old "Faust" poster and remembers the past. It captures the bizarre hell that this 'man' has wrought upon himself and is trapped in forever. He's so spooky just to look at. He's like a mummy, but also the Invisible Man, and he's looks like a zombie underneath his wrappings to boot - and he uses the fake name "Chainey"! I still find it downright mortifying when he puts his spirit into the horrifying dummy man! Jesus, those frozen blue eyes and that waxy skin, and when he makes that horrible noise still sends a chill down my spine to this day! I enjoy the plot of how he believes the woman to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife and how at the end it turns out that he hasn't been quite entirely honest with his 'beloved' creations and betrays them. He's certainly making the alchemy that keeps them alive, but it won't be for them. To hell with the puppets, he wants his Ilsa again! And of course when they realise this the puppets rightly turn on their master in another scene of violent madness that sees him set on fire and sent plummeting to his third and hopefully final death! You look back on these kinds of horror movies and yeah they're 'cheesy' and 80s and all of that, but also with the ones that I like at least, they're still fun and they work, and I think this is because back then it was just about trying to make the best movie that you could with what you had, and this will always be a little classic to me, this and the first one are two of my favourite horror movies of all time. Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience!

The second in Charles Band's incredibly long-running PUPPET MASTER series, following on from the distinctly average horror B-movie thrills of the original. PUPPET MASTER II features less of a story than the first; the story sees the evil toymaker Toulon brought back from the grave by his creepy puppets to hassle and harass a group of paranormal researchers from a US university.What this all boils down to is another series of gory murders perpetrated by the inimitable living puppets from the first film. Characters are drilled, slashed, and burned alive, and it's all handled with low rent aplomb by director David Allen. It's all complete nonsense of course, but fans of this sort of stuff will lap it up.PUPPET MASTER II does at least TRY to offer material of interest. There are some fun flashback scenes thrown into the mix, and given that the actor playing Toulon didn't come back for the sequel, the villain is dressed up as Claude Rains in THE INVISIBLE MAN and looks good. Inevitably the characters are all one-dimensional and the dialogue is poor enough that this would have been better as a silent film, but the plethora of low budget effects work is actually pretty decent, particularly the inventive climax with those ultra-creepy life-size dolls.