‘The battle is over. The war has just begun!’
Puppet Master X: Axis Rising is a 2012 American action horror film produced and directed by Charles Band from a screenplay co-written with Shane Bitterling (Reel Evil; Beneath Loch Ness). It was edited by Danny Draven (Patient Seven; Ghost Month; Reel Evil; Dark Walker).
The movie is a direct sequel to Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010) and introduces new puppets named Blitzkrieg, Bombshell, Kamikaze and Weremacht. Special make-up and puppet effects were created by Tom Devlin.
The movie stars Kip Canyon (1313: Bermuda Triangle), Jean Louise O’Sullivan (Sorority Slaughterhouse; The Bates Haunting; The Dead Want Women), Oto Brezina (Beast Beneath; Cry of the Mummy;The Poughkeepsie Tapes), Scott Anthony King, Stephanie Sanditz, Brad Potts, Kurt Sinclair, Paul Thomas Arnold, Terumi Shimazu, Ian Roberts and Nigel McGuinness.
Plot:
After foiling a plan to blow up an American arms plant, Danny Coogan and his girlfriend, Beth, quickly find that their troubles have just begun. One of Toulon’s mysterious puppets has been kidnapped by the Nazis, and under the wicked, watchful eye of the occultist Commandant Moebius, the puppets’ life-giving serum is synthesized to create a master race of unstoppable soldiers. Moebius plots to assassinate the highly-decorated General Porter to deliver a crippling blow to the American war effort, but his experiments are not ready.
A Third Reich scientist uses the serum to create their own superior race of Nazi puppets in the form of Blitzkrieg, Wehrmacht, Bombshell and Kamikaze! Danny and Beth, teamed with craggy Sergeant Stone and Toulon’s puppets, are no match for Moebius and his war machine. It is up to Blade, Pinhead, Leech Woman and Jester to revive their own secret weapon to stop the Axis Rising…
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Reviews:
“As a sequel, it’s a solid watch, if only for the return of Six Shooter! … Axis Rising is a worthy sequel that finally focuses on progressing the mythos of Toulon’s puppets, and it’s a solid horror film I had a good time with.” Cinema Crazed
“The performances are more wooden … the action less enthralling and the setting/locations look abysmally cheap. Anyone reading this probably holds the same modicum of hope that I do for this series. That, one of these days, Band and co. will understand that they need to spend some money to make money.” Dread Central
” …in militantly low-budget affairs like these a concept means everything, and having an enemy team of puppets is such a good idea it’s shocking it wasn’t done in, say, 4 and 5, which were handicapped with aggressively boring antagonists. Also the acting was slightly better, with more professional actors in the pot, and it felt like it actually had much more going on…” Trash Culture
“Most of the films have featured the puppets quite prominently and yet this time around they were more like props to accentuate the main protagonist, in this case Danny. Perhaps if the majority of the film was not so bad, the average viewer would not mind so much…” The Telltale Mind
“Neither the script nor the acting is good enough to carry the film without more action and focus on the puppets. The fight scenes are, perhaps, the worst offense. A puppet fighting a human – not killing, but actually engaging in hand-to-hand combat – is cheesy enough, but the cheap puppet-on-puppet fights are eye roll-inducing.” HNN
Free to watch online:
Choice dialogue:
Kommandant Moebius: “Do with her corpse as you will. And then dispose of it.”
Release:
The movie was released on October 9, 2012, by Full Moon Features.
Cast and characters:
Kip Canyon as Danny
Jean Louise O’Sullivan as Beth
Terumi Shimazu as Ozu
Scott Anthony King as Kommandant Moebius
Paul Thomas Arnold as General Porter
Brad Potts as Sergeant Stone
Stephanie Sanditz as Uschi
Kurt Sinclair as Major Collins
Oto Brezina as Doctor Freuhoffer
Glenn Zhang as Chinese Man
Ian Roberts as SS Soldier #1
Jesse Hlubik as SS Soldier #2
Michael Ulmer as SS Soldier #3
Danielle Stewart as Leech Woman (voice)
Kenichi Iwabuchi as Kamikaze (voice)
