Before this movie, I'd never seen any of the 10+ Puppet Master movies (or Dollman, or Demonic Toys, etc.), but since this one is labeled a reboot, I figured that my lack of experience with the franchise wouldn't matter much. And it didn't. This is an alternately scary, alternately funny movie about, uh, killer dolls. Killer dolls that were created by a Nazi and are now being controlled from beyond the grave, apparently. The other movies go into this angle quite a bit more, but it's not crucial information for this movie. Tom Lennon plays a comic-book artist (and owner of a comic-book shop, of course) who returns to his hometown after a bitter divorce and moves in with his parents while looking for a new place to stay. He finds one of these devil dolls in his closet; seems his brother found it at a summer camp as a kid and it's always stayed in the house. Well. Edgar (Lennon) finds out there's a convention nearby that celebrates the otherworldly exploits of the evil toymaker, known as Toulon, and he decides to bring his doll with him so that he can sell it. But his is not the only doll at the convention, and soon the bodies pile up as conventioneers and other guests are disposed of in myriad gruesome ways. This is all good if you're particularly a fan of the gory-demise genre. Edgar and pals must find a way to stop the killing. So what's not to like? Tom Lennon, unfortunately. He's just miscast here, as he has more of a deadpan, quiet demeanor about him in really just about everything I've seen him in, and he doesn't quite have the gravitas to pull off the role. And, oddly enough, he seems to deliver his lines in a muted, almost muttered way, even though the other actors' deliveries are clear, crisp, and audible. I had to turn on the subtitles to understand.
Review of Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
