Puppet Master

It was 4 in the afternoon and we were still hungover. We‘d found a crate of fermented orange juice two days ago and it was yet to leave our system. Words vomited out of Chutterbug ‘ I'm getting us a movie.’ He rose groggily, fell into the dog we‘d brought back, climbed up the door frame and was vertical once more. ‘Tidy up while I'm gone’ we’d started saying that weeks ago and it hadn't gotten stale. The air paused waiting for the door to slam but it never did.

I felt like I’d forgotten to tell him something important. ‘Important things between friends aren't said.’ No brain, this wasn't philosophical importance it was a real important. I checked the remote, the batteries were fine. What was it? I looked around, the room span, I shut one eye and tried again. Everything was in it’s regular state of cunning disarray, broken and filthy. I heard a truck pull up. Harris was back.

‘I got the Re-Animator!’

‘Shit!’

‘You seen it?’

‘I just remembered we bust the player in the last round of hammer tennis.’

‘No problem for this cat.’
He sung a Tarantella and made for the record player. We very carefully picked up Quasimoto's Unseen dusted it off and placed it back in its sleeve. He ripped open the DVD case, slammed the disc onto the record player and pressed play, it begun to spin, so good so far. Then the needle scraped across the top of the DVD making a terrible noise for our heads. ‘Wrong way round, idiot.’ Chutterbug said blaming me. He flipped it over and started again. I knocked the light off and pointed the record player at the whitest wall we had. The wall flickered and to my surprise it worked. ‘These DVD players, Blu-Rays and ifads are just conspiracies, they do nuttin' something invented in the 60’s couldn't do.’ A sentence that makes me glad he doesn't have Twitter.

‘I got the wrong movie.’ This was Puppet Master. Confused, Chutterbug decided to Google it. With no internet this involved leaning out of the window and demanding that Lou ‘Jivin’ Mistletoe (who lived three doors down) did it for us. Chutterbug slammed the window shut, staggered back, tripped over the dog again and miraculously landed in his chair. He wasn't in. 

‘That puppet is just looking out the window, chilling to some records. It’s not scary but hey man we do that all the time.’

‘Is the Puppet guy the voice of Dr. Finklestien?’

‘Dunno, Google it. HEY LOU! Oh right he ent in.’

It might just be our stained walls but this movies lighting is really flat, the type you’d see on an ITV book adaptation. ‘I like this psychic bullshitting her way through a reading with her southern drawl.’ We meet a couple doing some psychic sex science but I'm distracted by the pain in my retinas and Chutterbug insisting the dog looks like Forest Whittaker. He is a fool, it looks like Martin Lawrence.

All the characters get a psychic message telling them to meet at an old hotel ‘We’ll need all our collective powers.’ The sex scientist guy says. ‘This seems like a set up to a survival horror game.’ Chutterbug nods and we lament our Snes, a molten pile of plastic in the corner of the room. Thankfully our Ouija rituals hadn't required the games.

‘What the Jazz-Rock is up with these guys? They’re getting off on flashbacks of slo-mo elevator rape!’ He’s right. The characters in this film are weird. I'm unable keep my eyes open, but they certainly sound weird. Ancient Egyptians, alchemists, memories of objects by touch, things to come. That bit of exposition should be the film. ’Hey look breasts!’ I pull an eyelid up and find they’re attached to a woman. She looks like she belongs in a magazine. Not the glossy stuff you see on the top shelf of a Spa but the kind you find on faded paper scattered throughout the woods. ‘I can see the proverbial strings you lazy cameramen.’ Harris nursed his head, breasts can only distract a man for so long before reality kicks back in. ‘That chick puppet is vomiting leeches. Leeches Carl, look up.’ The fleeting moments of stop motion are where this film peaks. The case credits David Allen of Batteries Not Included and Willow fame as the effects guy but I'm not sure if that’s correct chronologically. ‘The Director of Meet the Feebles isn't the director of Lord of the Rings. Because when Peter Jackson made Feebles, he hadn't made LOTR.’ Did that make sense? I wasn't sure if I‘d spoken it aloud, my friend doesn't answer.

‘I bet the plate that this film goes down like Freaks.’ He’s a smart betting man, pitching that just as the film starts to go down like Freaks. Let him have it. I still have the bowl. The movie has more set ups and payoffs than I think people would give it credit for. But the only consistency my mind allows is a strong urge to play Clock Tower. Sadly, I remember what we did. The hangover peaks, my body has found out I’d been cheating on it and promptly kicks me out. Harris wakes me up.

‘So the bullshitting southern psychic chick, was actually right all along! I bet if you’re a fan of exploitation or wack horror movies ya might dig this. The ending was kinda cool, they should remake it. Why remake King Kong? The Warriors? Or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the thousandth time? When this flick has a neat idea, tight finish but lacks the execution?

‘Now who asks too many questions?’ I say grinning in his general direction. Chutterbug lets out a sandpaper laugh that Tom Waits would envy. 

‘Can we watch the special features?’ 

‘It’s a record player Holmes. Hair of the dog?’

‘That’s a point, we should probably walk it.’

‘I left the door open. Where’s the orange juice?’