PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH is released on DVD & Blu-Ray 8th July 2019.
PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH is written by S Craig Zahler. Based on characters created by Charles Band and Kenneth J Hall
Directed by Sonny Laguna & Tommy Wiklund
The 13th installment of the Puppet Master series is an attempt to retell the story of Andre Toulon’s miniature killers. It’s the first in an all-new alternate movie universe envisioned by producer, and owner of the Fangoria brand, Dallas Sonnier.
BONE TOMAHAWK scribe Craig Zahler is the sick mind who got to re-imagine the 1980s born schlock horror for the 21st century. It’s not subtle and it’s not pretty. He’s essentially devolved the puppets to what appears to be mindless killers until you realise who they’re murdering. It’s a strict non-Aryan, non-heterosexual death toll. Despite the litany of innocent people being brutally murdered in imaginative ways, the laughs are squarely at the dumb Nazis. The notorious swastika and death skull iconography is reduced to dusty museum pieces to be gawped at with disdain.
For the loyal fans, four, iconic touchstones of the series are very much present: Blade, Pinhead, Tunneler and Torch. For eighties nostalgia buffs it stars Udo Kier, Barbara Crampton and Michael Pare.
PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH, SFX artist TATE STEINSIEK talks with Stuart Wright of the Britflicks Podcast.
PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH uses toe curling, on the nose humour...
PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH uses toe curling, on the nose humour at the best of times and it’d be a stretch to mistaken any of the shock tactics for glorification of Nazi ideals. That said, some poor taste jokes or societal observations are just going to land better than others.
Perhaps the most outrageous sequence features a pregnant black woman. It’d be unfair to spoil it or unnecessarily upset readers by going into the bloody details.
This film will divide opinions. For beer swilling horror hounds looking for gory slapstick kicks and painful kill gags that hark back to splatter-fests of VHS yore it’s got the lot. For some the entire film is going to feel like an insult to your intelligence. Neither view is wrong. No middle ground exists for a movie like PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH. Stuart Wright
PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH is released on DVD & Blu-Ray 8th July 2019.
