Blade: The Iron Cross – Poché Pictures

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a Hot Topic clearance rack gained sentience, picked up a tiny trench coat, and decided to fight Nazis with the narrative coherence of a fever dream, congratulations: Blade: The Iron Cross exists.

Technically, it’s the thirteenth entry in the Puppet Master franchise, which at this point is less a series and more a hostage situation. This one is a spinoff focused on Blade, the iconic skull-faced puppet with the knife and hook hands. In theory, that sounds fun. In practice, it’s like watching someone stretch 15 minutes of “cool idea” into 80 minutes of “oh no, they actually filmed this.”

Plot? Yes. Sense? Absolutely Not.

We’re in 1944–45, which the movie signals the way all low-budget Nazi horror does: with uniforms that look like they were purchased from “Third Reich Halloween Superstore” and dialogue that sounds like it was machine-translated from English… into worse English.

Ivan has gone off to Russia to do brain research (sure), leaving the puppets with Elisa Ivanov, a psychic reporter with the world’s loosest job description. While he’s away, she:

Has sexy psychic nightmares about:
- Elsa’s death
- Major Kraus
- And Blade being sad and on fire somewhere, emotionally or literally, it’s unclear
Realizes these visions are psychic memories projected from Blade
Accepts this with the same energy you’d bring to realizing you left your stove on

Blade is the only puppet still twitching because he’s all but out of elixir. So he’s mostly:

Lurking behind trunks like a tiny, judgmental gargoyle
Watching Elisa bathe like a pervy coat rack
Feasting on her “psychic energy,” which in this movie is shorthand for “we didn’t want to explain anything”

Elisa sharpens his dull knife, cuts herself, and boom: they’re blood-bonded. You know, as one does with antique murder dolls.

Meanwhile, in Discount Hydra Headquarters

Our villain is Dr. Hauser, a Nazi doctor continuing the Deathcorp Project in a secret California hideout. He:

Experiments on random victims
Is funded by District Attorney James D. Madison, an American traitor who:
- Has access to top secret files
- Somehow also has scans of the Scroll of Osiris
- And puppet intel from Toulon like this is evil Etsy

Hauser’s master plan?

Build a giant rooftop Death Ray that will:

Zap half of California

Kill them

Then resurrect them as mindless Nazi zombies

It’s like someone watched one reel of a 1940s serial, chugged three energy drinks, and said, “I can write this, no problem.”

Blade’s Big Solo Murder Tour

Eventually Blade gets enough juice from Elisa’s psychic battery pack to sneak out for a night of light Nazi-hunting.

He hides in a factory under a sheet (stealth mode: Bed Linen Edition) and encounters Officer Bruce, a corrupt cop stealing supplies for the Nazis. Bruce:

Hears Blade’s tiny footsteps
Calls him “Pinocchio”
Proceeds to beat the crap out of a living puppet like this is just… Tuesday

Unfortunately for Bruce, Blade is done being disrespected décor. He:

Impales Bruce’s hand with his eye spikes
Hooks his ankle
Drags a full-grown man across the floor
Sawing his head off with a knife the size of a butter spreader

All the while, Elisa is at home dreaming the murders in real-time and getting little power jolts every time Blade cuts someone, like a murderous FitBit sync.

This blood-linked kill-sharing is never fully explained, but don’t worry, the film isn’t interested either.

Spies, Scrolls, and Gravity-Defying Puppetry

Next, we get Gloria Vasquez, a Spanish nationalist spy who breaks into Elisa’s apartment, rips the place apart, and:

Steals the Scroll of Osiris from behind a painting
Abducts press photographer Barney Barnes with a special knockout chemical

Blade, who has been creeping in the closet like a homicidal hanger, follows them. He:

Hooks himself on the windowsill
Drops several stories
Lands fine because physics saw this movie and walked out

He tracks them to Hauser’s hideout, where everything finally comes together in a glorious parade of nonsense.

Torture, Telepathy, and the Dumbest Superweapon Ever

Hauser and Madison smoke-bomb the Daily Herald, knocking out Elisa and Detective Joe Gray and hauling them into the villain lair.

There:

Joe is chained from the ceiling and gets his leg broken with a wrench
Elisa is strapped to a torture device and repeatedly electrocuted until she gives up the Scroll translation
Hauser admits he:
- Can’t read Russian, Greek, or Egyptian
- Wants to trigger the Death Ray to nuke California into zombie obedience

Elisa refuses because:

She has principles
And also psychic bio-energy, which she uses to shut the torture device down through sheer “absolutely not” energy

Blade cuts Joe down and then goes on what can only be described as a puppet rampage:

Hooks into a henchman’s mouth and slits his throat
Dodges gunfire (somehow) and stabs people in the neck
Watches Hauser turn Barney into a zombie, who immediately bites Gloria
Mercy-kills zombie Barney by:
- Cutting his leg
- Then driving the knife through the back of his head and out his mouth

At this point the movie is just a series of inventive kills stapled to a script yelling, “Trust me, it’s about Nazis and souls or something.”

The Most Ridiculous “He’s Back” You’ll See All Year

Then we get what might be the wildest puppet death scene in the franchise:

Hauser grabs Blade with his mechanical hand
Shoves him into a furnace
Beats him with a sledgehammer until:
- His head shatters
- His body explodes into ash

Elisa feels every blow thanks to their psychic link, writhing on the floor like she’s in a low-budget shared Wi-Fi pain network.

Hauser gloats, breathing in the bio-energy from Blade’s remains like it’s vape smoke.

Unfortunately for him, that’s how Blade decides to respawn.

Because Blade:

Reconstitutes himself inside Hauser’s torso
Bursts out like a tiny, vengeful C-section from hell
Kills Hauser by literally chopping his way out of his stomach

For a moment, Blade’s face shifts into an evil frown, then he:

Puts his hat back on
Face snaps back to normal
All the blood magically disappears

It’s so shamelessly stupid that it loops back around to kind of amazing.

Death Ray? More Like Dumb Ray.

Hauser’s mechanical hand is wired with a “dead-man switch,” so his death triggers the Death Ray countdown anyway.

Joe hands Blade a wrench (because sure, why not), and:

Blade climbs into the Death Ray
Breaks it from the inside like a tiny contractor with a grudge
The whole hideout explodes
Joe, Elisa, and Blade stroll away unscathed, like the world’s strangest action trio

Elisa prints an article about a killer puppet foiling a Nazi death plot, but:

The Daily Herald is a tabloid
Nobody believes it
Which may be the only realistic plot beat in the entire movie

Epilogue: Buddy Cop, But One of Them is Six Inches Tall

In the grand finale, Joe uses Blade for one last mission:

Blade crawls through a vent into Madison’s office
Unlocks the door
Ambushes the traitorous DA
Slits his throat and makes it look like suicide

Then Joe and Blade set off on a mission to track down more Nazi collaborators, like a very cursed Lethal Weapon reboot where Riggs is a puppet.

Final Diagnosis: Needs More Elixir, Less Everything Else

Blade: The Iron Cross is:

Cheap
Clunky
Weirdly earnest
And paced like someone kept adding scenes every time they found a new Nazi costume piece in a box

The good:

Some kills are genuinely creative in a “did a 14-year-old metal fan storyboard this?” way
The practical puppet work, while janky, has a scrappy charm
The idea of a psychic blood-bond between a woman and a murderous puppet is… deranged, but at least it’s not boring

The bad:

Plot holes you could drive a Death Ray through
Performances that oscillate between “community theatre” and “reading cue cards at gunpoint”
Third-act logic that’s basically “because magic, shut up”

If you’re a diehard Puppet Master fan with a tolerance for nonsense and a soft spot for tiny murder puppets butchering Nazis, you might find this hilariously watchable.

If not, you’ll probably feel like Elisa: strapped to a chair, getting shocked repeatedly, wondering at what point your psychic energy was drained enough to say “I chose this.”

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