DVD Review: Puppet Master – Axis Of Evil

20th January 2011

After a young man accidentally inherits a collection of creepy puppets from an old man, he stumbles into an allegedly intriguing plot by Nazi and Japanese agents to blow up a munitions plant in America. Luckily for him, the aforementioned puppets can come to life, and so decides to use them to foil the villainous plot. Rather than – you know – alert the authorities…
Axis Of Evil has the dubious honour of being the 10th(!) instalment in the Puppet Master series. If it’s one of the better ones then, well, god help us all.

Kicking off in 1939, with the US Army inexplicably shipping out to Europe and Asia (despite the attack on Pearl Harbour not occurring until 1941), young Danny (Levi Fiehler) is mortified that his gammy leg is stopping him from going to war. However, once an old man called Toulon kills himself to avoid being hunted down by two Nazi spies, Danny finds his case of puppets. Soon enough Danny discovers a formula in the case that causes the puppets to come to life, and embarks on his mission to defeat the same curiously American-sounding Nazis and a Japanese co-conspiritor.

One would imagine that the creepy puppets would be the baddies, but obviously the Nazis are wearing the black hats in this one. The marionettes basically become the good guys, and what at first seems to be a horror film mutates into a boring spy ‘thriller’, that just happens to have sentient puppets running around it.

The puppets themselves are suitably freaky looking, but look like they’re being played with by toddlers. While it’s nice to see practical props being used over any CGI, the puppets in Team America moved more convincingly. Add to this a director who over-cooks tension until it’s burnt to a crisp and there is very little to recommend here. Not even a few good splattery kills for gore-hounds, despite the fact that one of the puppets has a drill bit sticking out of his head.

Maybe fans of the rest of the series will get a kick out of it. But probably not.

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