Puppet Master 2 (1991)

After the quite pleasant surprise of the first Puppet Master movie, I sat down to watch its sequel. This was the only one of the films that I recall seeing back when they came out. 18-year old me was disappointed by the relative lack of violence and nudity, as I recall. But then, 18-year old me had pretty limited interests :)

The film starts with the puppets pouring some kind of goo into the freshly opened grave of their creator, Andre Toulon. We then switch to a group of parapsychologists who have been sent by the government to investigate the hotel where the first film took place. It seems the deaths there attracted the attention of the authorities, and this group has been tasked with looking into what happened. They're joined in this by an actual psychic, who pretty quickly decides that she doesn't like the feel of the hotel and announces her intention to leave in the morning. Sure enough, she's gone from her room come dawn - but that's because she's been dragged away by the puppets. The parapyschologists are alert enough to think it odd that the psychic left all her belongings behind, and make contact with her son.

Meanwhile, a stranger, bandaged from head to foot, "arrives" at the hotel and claims to be the owner, though he has no proof of this. His behaviour is all kinds of weird and hinky, and no-one much likes him. The team leader in particular is suspicious of him. This is wise of her, because this is the reanimated corpse of Andre Toulon, and he has most unsavoury plans afoot. Plans that are the source of the puppets' murderous onslaught on the government team and anyone else who happens to be nearby the hotel.

Basically, Puppet Master 2 is a re-tread of the first one, with a few changes made - most of them for the worse. There's no clever twist here, and the acting is generally inferior (the guy playing Andre Toulon is a particular offender in this regard, though that could also be the lines they make him speak). It's not a terrible film, for something of this ilk anyway, and I did like the new puppet it introduced, but it definitely suffers by pretty much wholly recycling the climax of the first film in this one.