Interview: Charles Band on PUPPET MASTER: THE LITTLEST REICH and The Birth of The Original Franchise
Writer/producer/director Charles Band not only created Full Moon Features in 1988, he is responsible for spawning the wildly successful Puppet Master franchise. His earlier films include eighties horror classics like Ghoulies, Re-Animater, and From Beyond. The original Puppet Master was followed by ten sequels and now Band is responsible for bringing us the twisted as hell reboot Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. The film is shockingly gory and hilarious and features Thomas Lennon, Barbara Crampton, and Udo Kier. Dread Central had the pleasure of talking with Charles Band about bringing Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich to life, the original franchise, video stores, and more! Read on to find out what we talked about.
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich rips its way into theaters and on demand on August 17th.
Dread Central: You’re the creator of Full Moon Features and also gave birth to the Puppet Master franchise back in 1989. How did you come up with the original story and the idea to use puppets?
Charles Band: I’ve been a fan of, not only stop motion animation, but also just any movie that I saw as a kid where small, inanimate objects come to life. I always felt that was kind of magical and creepy. I’ve made almost 300 movies now, but in the eighties I made a movie called Dolls, and I’m really proud of that. I think it’s one of the best movies that has a whole slew of crazy, creepy, weird dolls and I’m proud of it also because it avoids CGI. There was no CGI back then anyway, but I’m not a fan of CGI. To me it’s all about organic effects and real things that you can believe could possibly be real. Anyway, I made this movie called Dolls, which was really cool and then in the eighties I started Full Moon Features and I thought, well we need something really unique and different.
I had a deal with Paramount at the time and I really wanted to deliver a movie that felt like a theatrical release that maybe people miss, because that was sort of the hat trick at the time and probably still is today to some degree. What had happened was that I collect endless amounts of material, imagery, sketches, and random artwork, and I had collected in my sort of labyrinth of ideas for movies, and images for movies, and possible titles for movies; I collected these characters that were not designed to be puppets at the time, but I thought they would be small characters and they were really cool and I had this six-armed ninja guy that I wanted to use somewhere, somehow. And I had a little nasty guy with a blade and a hook. At some point, probably 1988 or 1989, I collected these five or six characters and I realized that it would be kind of neat to have them as a team, an evil team. What I did at the time, and I still do, is I have a number of great artists I work with so I can sketch something out and not well, but I went to the artist and I said, “Look, there are these five characters and my idea for the story is that they are all stringless marionettes and they can do nasty things.”
I had a title at the time, it eventually became Puppet Master and I said, “I need these to all kind of look like they belong and they need to look more like puppets, not just nasty little characters.” So, we worked on some art, which I liked, and then I went to my stop motion animation guy, a guy named David Allen who was just a genius and did a lot of work for me over the years. I said, “Okay, David I’m going to do this movie called Puppet Master. I don’t know what it’s about yet, but I’m thinking that it takes place in Nazi Germany. This puppeteer has been wronged and he’s got these little, evil puppets and he’s going to exact revenge.” He was a real historian, too, of puppets dating back to the turn of the century. I said, “Let’s take these ideas for these characters and turn them into something that would be sort of appropriate for that era, so they need to feel like they all belong. You can’t be too Sci-Fi. The ninja idea doesn’t work. “So, he’s the one who said, “Let’s take the ninja guy and turn him into a cowboy Western six shooter,” which was genius because Westerns were in vogue then. That was a big genre if you went to the movies at that time. Of course, Blade would be this mysterious character with blades and Pinhead would be this brute with a small head. Tunneler would have a little uniform on.
He kind of fleshed out the characters and then we eventually got them into a script in the movie, which was the way almost every project I did always started because I knew that, much like Roger Corman, it wasn’t so different, he was my predecessor; I knew that unless you had a good poster and a good title, which was really the window into the movie, you could make a terrific movie and it could just all fall apart if it doesn’t have a good hook. All these movies I’ve made always start with a title and usually a piece of art. So we did that first and found some good people and found the right director at the time and made the movie. The next thing you know it was a huge success for Paramount. They wanted like a hundred more. They said, “Keep making them!”
DC: It’s been going on for thirty years, so it has been doing very well.
CB: Yeah, and now we have this bizarro, dark separate universe completely, because other than the basic setup, it has little to do with the Puppet Master series that I’ve been making all these years. But, you know, it’s an exploitation movie. Some people are going to hate it and some people are going to love it and find the humor and weirdness in it. It all helps lift all of this out of a morass of similar titles, so it’s kind of exciting to see this happen.
DC: I really enjoyed Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. It’s original, it’s funny, and it has some insane kills. What was the inspiration for this installation in the franchise?
CB: I’m sort of the godfather of the Puppet Master movies, but the way this came about is that I’m a friend of a fellow named Dallas Sonnier. He owns Cinestate and Dallas and I for a few years were trying to figure out what movie would make sense to do a reboot that he could have his company produce so that he could pull his people in, and would be sort of on a separate track; Of course, Puppet Master being the most well- known franchise. When he had finished Bone Tomahawk, and it was a terrific little movie, I said, “Look, let me get the same writer, let’s see if we can put something together and do a real twisted, dark, our own version of Puppet Master.” And the way the thing worked which was interesting was that it really came about in the deal we made. I know it sounds weird to say that, but I had had two offers prior, years ago for Puppet Master remakes. One was from a major studio. Even though we need money and money is important, I did turn those offers down.
The standard studio offer is, “We give you money, we’re going to spend a lot of money making a big mainstream version of your movie, but you no longer can exploit your films because we own the franchise.” You can keep distributing old DVDs, but you can’t go out and make a new, competing little Puppet Master and that to me was, I just didn’t want to do that. I wanted to keep being in the Puppet Master business, but traditionally that’s how these deals work. What was different with Dallas was that he said, “Wait a minute. We’re going to do something very different, very twisted. We’ll even make the characters look different. Let us take our Puppet Master franchise and you can keep making yours.” It was that sort of innovative, okay, both worlds can co-exist. It was that thinking that I said, “Hey, I’m all for it. I’m all for it because you do whatever you want to do and make yours as twisted and weird as you want and I’ll continue making my type of Puppet Master films.”
So, I think it’s really cool and I think it may be the first ever like that because I can’t think of historically another franchise where they started making reboots and the original keeps being made as well (laughs). We’re in that world now. I had my hand in it, I read the script and I said, “Oh my God, you’re going to get in trouble. There’s a lot of crazy stuff in here.” On the other hand, I’m a big fan of exploitation films because that’s what they were and that’s what they needed to be. Back in the old days, in the forties, it was the exploitation movie or the film that William Castle dreamt up some crazy promotion for. Those are the ones that were successful because they either had notoriety or they had some image that no one could forget. This movie, like it or not like it, is going to cause controversy and I think if you watch it in the right spirit you’ll have a good time, but I can also see people being really upset. Then again, he stuck to Nazi puppets being bad because Nazis are bad so that was their thing. To me in a way I get both sides, but I’m excited that this thing is going to go out and have some success and what I’m hoping for is people will go, “Oh, I remember these Puppet Master movies that I watched as a younger man or woman or as a kid. I rented them at our local video store which is now a laundromat.” Maybe that will drive people to finding the Full Moon channel on Amazon because that’s our whole game here to try to find all those people who used to go by the millions and rent these movies in the eighties and nineties at their local video store and who sort of lost their way because they got older or they had a family and they’re not really thinking of horror films. If they’re reminded of these movies and know that as long as they are Amazon Prime members they can go to Amazon and find our channel. I’m also hoping that leads the way to people sort of rediscovering the fun they had when they used to rent these movies.
Then there are new kids. We have a lot of fans who are twelve, thirteen, or fourteen. They don’t know the video store experience, but they hear about these movies. They discover them and they love them. It’s like, “Oh my God, I love Puppet Master!” Well, there’s ten more. It’s also interesting how the price of admission has become almost nothing. When we were all rocking in the direct to video business it was $2.99 or $3.99 to rent a movie, which seemed like a bargain at Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. Today you can sign up for any of these streaming services. You can sign up for Full Moon on Amazon for $6.99, but for $6.99 you can literally binge out and watch movies morning, noon, and night. So, the price of admission is very affordable and that’s our whole thing is finding ways to let people know, “Hey, you can watch all these movies that freaked you out as a kid on Amazon on the Full Moon Channel.”
DC: Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich has a great ensemble cast that includes horror legends Barbara Crampton and Udo Kier and I think Thomas Lennon brings a fantastic comedic element to the film. He made it really funny.
CB: This thing is so out of control, it’s so wrong in so many ways, but if you have fun with it then I think the movie does what it’s intended to do. If you look at it and frown and take it seriously, then you’re going to run out of the theater. That’s not the spirit of the movie. The movie does, in its own straight up way, make fun of itself.
DC: How involved were you in the casting process?
CB: I had my hand in the whole thing, but it really is pretty much Dallas’ baby. I mean, he put the people together. I did help him with Barbara Crampton because Barbara started with me with Re-Animator and From Beyond and Castle Freak. So, we have a long history and I thought it was really cool that it was Dallas’ idea to put her in this movie as a little link. Just like my brother who did the music for all the original Puppet Master films. He didn’t do the music, but he has one of his cues in there and one piece of music in there is very, very cool. There’s that little crossover, but this is very much its own weird, dark, mad movie (laughs). It’s pretty unique for sure. I’m glad you liked it and didn’t hate it (laughs).
DC: I appreciated the humor and I think the fact it makes fun of itself is a great thing. I hope audiences will see it the same way.
CB: We’ll see what happens!
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