By the time Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge rolled around in 1991, Full Moon Features had fully embraced its business model: crank out direct-to-video horror flicks with just enough gore, nudity, and stop-motion trickery to distract you from the fact that the budget was roughly the cost of a used Honda Civic. This entry in the franchise is technically a prequel, which means the filmmakers wanted to answer the burning question nobody asked: “What if the puppets fought Nazis?”
On paper, that’s not a terrible idea. Nazis are the universal cinematic punching bags, and tiny, sentient puppets ripping them apart sounds like a grindhouse dream. But instead of vicious catharsis, Toulon’s Revenge delivers the cinematic equivalent of watching your drunk uncle do community theater.
Nazis, Puppets, and a Script That Needed More Whiskey
The movie takes place in Berlin, 1941, because if you’re going to make your villains cardboard, you might as well make them Nazis. Richard Lynch plays Major Kraus, a Gestapo officer who wants puppeteer André Toulon’s life-giving formula for the war effort. Instead of just shooting Toulon in the head and grabbing the recipe, Kraus spends the entire film stomping around like he’s late to a Hogan’s Heroes audition.
Dr. Hess, the resident “scientist with a conscience,” wants to study Toulon’s work scientifically. This means he spends most of the film looking like he wandered in from a much better movie, begging people to treat puppets as a legitimate subject of wartime science.
Meanwhile, Toulon (Guy Rolfe) stages puppet shows that mock Hitler to the delight of German children. Yes, you read that correctly: in Nazi Berlin, a French puppeteer openly ridicules the Führer with a six-shooter marionette. Forget Allied bombers—the real blow to German morale apparently came from puppet satire.
The Wife Must Die (Because Motive)
Elsa, Toulon’s lovely wife, gets maybe ten minutes of screen time before being fridged in spectacularly lazy fashion. She’s gunned down, spits at her killer, and then is executed again just in case the audience missed the point. Her death is supposed to fuel Toulon’s “revenge arc,” but really it just signals to the audience that the writers couldn’t think of a better way to justify the next 80 minutes of puppet mayhem.
Toulon then retrieves her essence and transfers it into a puppet filled with leeches. Because nothing says “I’ll always love you” like turning your wife into a monster who projectile-vomits leeches at Nazis.
Murder Puppets Assemble
The film trots out the usual lineup of killer marionettes: Pinhead, Tunneler, Jester, and Six-Shooter, who all look like Hot Topic action figures designed by an angsty 12-year-old. The new addition is Blade, created in memory of Dr. Hess, because apparently when your friend dies, the respectful thing to do is trap his soul in a puppet with knives for hands.
The kills are as ridiculous as you’d hope but nowhere near as fun as they should be. Six-Shooter snipes Nazis with his tiny pistols. Pinhead strangles people with hands the size of bratwursts. Tunneler bores into foreheads like a demented Black & Decker commercial. It’s all amusing in theory but shot so sluggishly that the terror evaporates. Watching these scenes feels less like horror and more like waiting for your printer to finish spitting out 100 pages—painfully slow, slightly noisy, and you’re not sure why you’re still here.
Toulon: From Puppeteer to Discount Charles Bronson
Guy Rolfe’s Toulon is meant to be sympathetic: a grieving husband turned puppet-wielding vigilante. But instead of grief-stricken gravitas, we get a man who looks perpetually constipated, muttering to dolls like he’s trapped in a fever dream. His grand revenge involves setting elaborate puppet ambushes while looking like he badly needs a nap.
By the climax, Toulon has graduated from puppeteer to master of Rube Goldberg death traps. Major Kraus is strung up by hooks, dangles dramatically, and then gets dropped onto a halberd in one of the film’s few moments of inspired nastiness. It’s absurd, gory, and unintentionally funny—like Home Alone if Kevin McCallister had a puppet army and a vendetta against fascism.
Performances: Acting in Quotes
The acting ranges from “barely awake” to “Saturday morning cartoon villain.” Richard Lynch hams it up as Kraus, scowling so hard you expect his face to implode. Ian Abercrombie as Dr. Hess at least tries to give his lines weight, but let’s be honest—no actor can salvage dialogue like “Your puppets are the key to the Reich’s future!”
The child actor playing Peter Hertz spends most of his screen time staring blankly, which honestly makes sense. If you were a kid surrounded by cackling Nazis and homicidal puppets, you’d probably check out too.
The Real Horror: The Runtime
At 86 minutes, Toulon’s Revenge still feels like it’s dragging its heels through wet cement. Every scene takes twice as long as it should, padded with endless shots of people skulking through bombed-out sets that look like they were borrowed from a high school play.
The puppets, while charming in their creaky stop-motion way, can’t carry the whole movie. There’s only so many times you can watch a puppet drill into someone’s skull before the novelty wears off.
Dark Humor Highlights
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Nazis terrified by six-inch toys—proof that the Third Reich’s real weakness wasn’t the Eastern Front, but their allergy to arts and crafts.
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Toulon revives his dead wife by turning her into a leech-spewing doll. Hallmark really missed a card opportunity: “Sorry for your loss. Here’s eternal parasitic horror.”
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Kraus’s final death trap looks less like vengeance and more like something devised by a bored stagehand with access to a medieval prop closet.
Why This Puppet Show Bombs
The first Puppet Master was dumb fun. The second was slightly less fun but still watchable. By the third, the formula is stale, the budget is stretched, and the franchise is already running on fumes. Nazis should be perfect foils for killer puppets, but the execution is so flat that even swastika-stomping doll mayhem feels like a chore.
The prequel angle adds nothing. Toulon’s tragic backstory? Already implied. His formula? Still unexplained gobbledygook. His vendetta? Cheap melodrama. The whole film is just a retcon nobody asked for, shot on sets nobody cared about.
Final Verdict
Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge is the cinematic equivalent of reheating cold leftovers: you’ll consume it if you’re starving for bad horror, but you’ll regret it immediately afterward. The kills are slow, the acting is hammy, and the puppets—once the stars of the show—are reduced to novelty sideshows.
It’s supposed to be about revenge, but the only thing you’ll feel vengeful about is wasting 90 minutes of your life.
