#Puppet Master II

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - George 'Buck' Flower

[doubtfultaste]

Puppet Master II (1990)

[horrororman]

Puppet Master II was released on February 7, 1991(US).

#fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #thriller #horror

[brundleflyforawhiteguy]

Puppet Master II (1991)

[nihillist-blog]

Puppet Master II (1990)

[italovision]

My October

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: The malicious marionettes are back to resurrect their dead master and evict parapsychologists from the family estate.

[daily-oj]

Day 24

Wednesday, may 8 2024

[i-me-mine]

🎵💿 discography tag 💿🎵

Rules: pick an artist or a band and share your favorite song from each of their albums, then tag some mutuals!

Tagged by: @hiscrimsonangel (thanks for the tag, Scarlet ❤️)

My chosen artist: Metallica

Tagging: (no pressure, as always 😊) @musicmoviestv @live-love-be-unique @big-ope-vibes @jamdoughnutmagician @eddiemunsonwillbethedeathofme @princess-josephina @enchante-em @aftermidnightwriting

P.S.: It's really simple as that, pick an artist, and list the favorite song of each of their albums. It's just that. Please don't mind me here, I chose a band with many albums, and I was having so much fun doing this that I basically converted it to a personal journal post and have added a small comment, my favorite lines of each song, and the link to spotify, making it a way longer and complex post than it needed to be 😂

---

Album: Kill 'Em All - Song: Seek & Destroy

I love its mini-solos, and the feeling when you are in one of their concerts and James sings "Searching..." and you and everyone there shout in unison, "SEEK AND DESTROY!" is awesome!

🎶"Searching | Seek and Destroy"

Album: Ride the Lightning - Song: For Whom The Bell Tolls

Probably my favorite song intro, and one of the few songs of them that my mom listened to (and liked). The anti-war vibes of it are great too.

🎶"For a hill, men would kill — Why? They do not know"

Album: Master of Puppets - Song: Master of Puppets

A classic! Another great song in their concerts, the "MASTER! MASTER!" echoing always pumps me up! And Eddie Munson, my beloved, gave me more reasons to love this song ❤️

🎶"Come crawling faster | Obey your master | Your life burns faster | Obey your master, master"

Album: ...And Justice for All - Song: One

I love the different tunes/styles that you have during the song. I remember how impacted I was when I first heard/understood the lyrics. (And the pyrotechnics used when they are playing this live are so cool!) (It was also a hell of a song to beat when playing Guitar Hero)

🎶"Darkness imprisoning me | All that I see, absolute horror | I cannot live, I cannot die | Trapped in myself, body my holding cell"

Album: Metallica (The Black Album) - Song: The Unforgiven

I got this LP record as a gift when I was younger, it was the first one of their albums that I owned and I listened to it sooo many times - so most of its songs have a special place in my heart. But "The unforgiven" is special to me (the whole 'trilogy'), I have a connection with it that I cannot put in words.

🎶"This fight he cannot win | A tired man they see no longer cares | The old man then prepares to die regretfully | That old man here is me"

Album: Load - Song: King Nothing

Every time I was in a "satisfaction post-revenge" mode, this was the song of choice😂

🎶"But the castle crumbled and you're left with just a name | Where's your crown, King Nothing?"

Album: Reload - Song: The Unforgiven II

This was my go-to music when I was having trust issues or during a heartbreak when I was a teenager.

🎶"What I've felt, what I've known | Turn the pages, turn the stone | Behind the door, should I open it for you?"

Album: St. Anger - Song: Frantic

While this is my favorite song of this album, I don't listen to it much nowadays cuz it's too linked to some memories of times when I was struggling and didn't handle it too well.

🎶"Could I have my wasted days back | Would I use them to get back on track? | You live it or lie it! | My lifestyle determines my deathstyle"

Album: Death Magnetic - Song: The Unforgiven III

I love how this song 'concludes' the unforgiven storyline, I think it has a great melody and I love the lyrics touching the matter of self-forgiving

🎶"How can I be lost if I've got nowhere to go? | (…) And how can I blame you when it's me I can't forgive?"

Album: Hardwired... to Self-Destruct - Song: Spit Out the Bone

Not only do I like the vibes of the melody, but the whole theme of wondering how much we are depending/putting ourselves into technology, if it's (or not) helping, and how far it will go always attract me, no matter the media type 😂

🎶"Plug into me I guarantee devotion | Plug into me and dedicate | Plug into me and I'll save you from emotion | Plug into me and terminate"

[horrorvillaintourney]

WE NEED TEN MORE SUBMISSIONS PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!

villains currently included in the tournament are:

Norman Bates

Bughuul

Chucky

Blade

Willy Wonka

Shorty

The Thing

Benny

Willy the Weasel

Geunhu Ji

Carousel Entity

Black Philip

Herbert West

Daniel Robitaille/The Candyman

Jean Jacket

Khan Noonien Singh

Samara Morgan

Audrey II

Mick Taylor

The Beldam

Jennifer Check

Angela Baker

Kurt Kunkle

Jigsaw

Skinamarink

Leprechaun

Josef

Pennywise

Howard Stramble

The Hunter

Pinhead

Tiffany Valentine

Billy

Michael Myers

The Le Domas Family

The Mantle Twins

Howard Howe

Jack Griffin

Adrian Griffin

Chef Slowik

Tall Man

Blissfield Butcher

Bruce

Belial Bradley

Dracula

Mrs. Loomis

Stu Macher

Death

The Society

Sully

The Babadook

Hill House (my singular mod submission)

if you want to submit someone else, the form is still open!

[fanofspooky]

365 horror movies day 178:

Puppet Master II

“Was he burned?”

“He hasn't said... but I think it's much worse than that.”

[doubtfultaste]

Puppet Master II (1990)

[randomdeinonychus]

Because I'm a pedant, I am going to point out that the images used here are actually from Ghoulies II and Slumber Party Massacre II.

Which is OK because I would recommend those two over the original films, anyway.

horror sub-genres: campy

[horrororman]

#PuppetMasterII #Torch #Unboxing #FullMoon #CharlesBand #horror

[visenyaism]

Okay I simply must ask, what are Cersei and Rhaegar’s kids Aegon and Rhaenys(? - I assume that’s what they called the other daughter) like? Do they get along with their sister?

hmmm i think Rhaenys inherits her father’s melancholy and solemn sense of purpose, but very practical. not a big believer in magic or prophecy. why would she be. that’s all reserved for her brother who is going to save the world that’s what everyone says. has a genuine passion for statecraft that no one in her life humors or encourages aside from the occasional books sent by her uncle tyrion or her grandmother rhaella on a quiet day who might listen to her and nod quietly. her mother loved her when she was a little porcelain dress up doll toddler but has little regard for her any older. shunted between being betrothed to her uncle viserys and her brother aegon depending on if her father or grandfather has more power at court but really she’d be happiest as like. master of laws in her own right. neutral towards her brother, has a healthy amount of disdain for visenya ii because rhaenys recognizes the same thing in her that exists in viserys and aerys and maybe also her father as in there’s something living within you that makes you destroy everything you touch. she doesn’t understand it and doesn’t want to.

Aegon is pretty messed up given that Cersei is trying to groom him into the perfect extension of herself prince-king she was never allowed to be and Rhaegar is trying to groom him into being the messiah. Don’t think he ever gets the chance to be his own person or develop a personality outside of crushing pressure that externalizes as arrogance. when his parents’ marriage falls apart and both of them are trying to win Aegon over to have him be like their puppet heir he crashes out, is not seen at court for six months, comes back wrong. Not close with either of his sisters, not even the one he’s engaged to, because he’s not really close with anyone. readily apparent that he cannot take off the mask or turn off the messiah prince persona because there is simply nothing underneath. if Dany brings back the dragons in this at all it’s definitely his death that does it.

[catboxcoffin]

Battler/Kinzo/Projection

Battler’s narrative assault & sexualization is pretty interesting to me as an inversion of sexed roles, so I’ve decided to refine and paste some of my thoughts on it, beginning with Yasu-trice. Battler repeatedly has Kinzo’s (amatory) role projected onto him, both by Piece-Beatrice directly and Yasu’s authorial insinuations. (I won’t incorporate Meta-Beatrice into this analysis for a few reasons, the main being that I don’t think she is Yasu in the same sense as the others; secondarily that she is so gratuitous in her assaults and references that it would be nonsensical to lend any nuance to it. Plus, her indiscriminate performance in the earlier episodes is what sets up such a divergence later on)

I. Episode 4

Gameboard events are a requisite to understanding the skeleton of the stories that we’re actually being shown. Given the nebulous nature of the Meta and what it represents, a tale created and decorated in-universe in an attempt to communicate is generally more useful in viewing its subjects. On that note, the end of Episode 4 is a scarce instance where we are given a physical interaction between Piece-Beatrice and Battler. As Battler stands before the balcony denying her riddles and threatening her, Beatrice doubles down on her stern insistence regarding ‘testing’ him as the Successor, yet engages in innuendo the second he attempts to physically approach her. This presents a noticeable incongruence between Beatrice’s projected mythos and Piece-Beatrice as played by Yasu. She is physically distant, reading as almost shy. She’s stepped down from being an active harasser, instead functioning passively and reactively, ungracefully shifting between goals for the conversation. She is clearly very alienated from an autonomous sense of eroticism, which is why she instead endeavors to lure it out of him (despite her performative disdain). Her drunken sexuality is framed in relation to what she thinks hides ‘within’ Battler; her musings are based on the assumptions regarding <The Head>. She arrogantly asserts that her superficial form is his type, making sure to paint it as a shallow preference she’s pinpointed. (However even this is something she already knows as a fact, erasing any chance of the ‘unpredictable roulette’ she seems to exalt. She has little real confidence in her desirability, and even less in her ability to make him remember his sin)

She continues her attempt at testing his resolve, presenting herself for her ‘new master’ to own her flesh and soul as furniture, victimize her into surrender, and, crucially, remind her of Kinzo. Because that’s what Battler is to her: a reincarnation of Kinzo, carrying his spirit and blood most strongly. And how could he be anything else? Yasu is ‘Beatrice’ incarnate, her predecessors being both swept away and brutally betrayed by Kinzo, and by virtue of Battler’s failed promise, he has done the same. Her conflict arises here: her love for Battler meshing with her repulsion towards Kinzo, and her inability to reconcile them as full people. The same assumptions about Kinzo’s relationship to preceding Beatrices that traumatize her into hatred are simultaneously twisted into a romanticized ideal, and she is continually unable to conceive of her relationships without paralleling these identities and dynamics she’s latched onto. She is an ancestral fatalist, resigning not only autonomy within her own life but puppeting her relatives’ souls as her own. They cannot sleep peacefully as themselves, and neither can an unadulterated Battler. Beatrice indirectly castigates Battler (or her idea of him blurred into Kinzo) through her earlier ramblings on the nature of love-as-lust and the cage of flesh, but later turns around and flirts with the ideas, even going as far as writing her piece to romance Kinzo directly, despite knowing she’s caricaturing her own mother’s harrowing circumstances.

II. Message-Bottle Furniture

Lovelessly—or, perhaps, in a twisted abundance of love—Yasu’s message bottles distort Battler’s entire character into something alien in his six-year absence. This is what it means for new truths to triumph over old truths. Battler, the boy who left his own family due to his indignation over infidelity and who sought the heart in every story, is suddenly a perverted beast. He is a vapid womanizer like his father and an exploiter of status and naïveté like his grandfather. Beyond his will, parodied projections of his profanity are exposed within the message bottles, existing to cement his sin as irredeemable. I believe this is both a semi-conscious self-justification on Yasu’s part (cutting out the moral ambiguity of him simply forgetting) and a way to cope with her own undesirability (by manufacturing a more ‘active’ sin, one that would require Battler to care in the first place).

(…Side Note: I like how the attempted grope of Shannon in EP1 encompasses both this hostile projection and a dance around the desire to be discovered… [Fake breasts]. It adds another layer of selfish assumption to her narrative: he was always a piece. He doesn’t solve the epitaph and he doesn’t remember her because he never had the chance.)

To reiterate, his character is degraded and he is manipulated as a plot device within the message bottles. The narrative hinges on his existence, yet he has little room to move—In fact, his actual presence is hardly necessary. He committed a sin that permanently scarred someone, and he cannot apologize. The victim no longer exists. Battler, as a concept, constitutes a motive for murder. In his absence, he is a myth.

Remind you of anyone else?

III. Kuwatrice-Kinzo / Chick Beatrice-BATTLER

This parallel creates an interesting issue. The line of descendant/reincarnation is blurred and there’s an explicitly incestuous tone, but it quickly becomes more of a foil than a mirror. Kinzo’s idea of reincarnation is pure delusion, Battler rejects it despite it being true; Kinzo is affectionately dominating, Battler is cold; Kinzo rejects his status as a father, Battler grows to accept it.

So, Kinzo’s role is subverted. This should be a good thing, right?

It isn’t. At least, not to the judge of sin.

Chick-Beatrice is not a new creation; this is a glimpse of the Beatrice that first adopted Shannon’s bud of love for Battler six years prior. At this point, ‘Beatrice’ was still individuated. She wasn’t yet mutated by the legend of the witch, the solving of the epitaph, or, arguably, her Battler-desirability complex. This, I assert, is the closest we see to a pure ‘Yasu’ in later years, as the remainder of her true self that resided in Shannon had already been compartmentalized by that point. This is why Dawn is so tragic. Battler has allegedly solved her heart, yet even in his ‘enlightenment’ he is dismissive of her. To the first-time viewer, this rejection is bittersweet: he is waiting for the ‘real’ her to return. Issue is, that is the real her. This is the ‘Shannon’ he knew, before she was twisted into a sadistic amalgam of escapist fantasies dressed up with his desires. By all rights, Chick should align much more with the ‘Shannon’ that loved Battler. The dutiful “blindness of a girl in love,” willing to wait a century to be noticed. But he doesn’t understand that, bemoaning being too late while literally being thrusted another chance to do it right. Of course this chance doesn’t apply to reality, but it never did. He was already facing a postmortem trial for his failure in life, and the end of Meta-Beatrice marks his failure in death.

Battler is fated to only ever have a paternalistic, sympathetic affection towards Chick. Even after learning the truth, it will always be Beatrice that he loves. As much is clear in his Twilight gameboard. He recognizes Yasu as a vessel, but she’s virtually indistinguishable from Piece-Beato, an actor serving as the means for the illusion and providing a sympathetic backstory. Ange was right—there’s no point in having someone love in your place.

Regardless, Battler is himself. If he’d only inherited enough of Kinzo’s blood, maybe he could have loved all ‘iterations’ passionately and indiscriminately. Kinzo fabricated connections out of nothing, he ‘understood’ the reincarnated soul, and he was willing to die before he let her escape. His overbearing, cloying affection had a certainty that I believe Yasu envied, in a way. To be kidnapped and caged forever would be morbidly romantic, to her at least. How tragically ironic that the fatalist who desired to be carried away ended up having to orchestrate the game of love&communication herself…

IV. The Head

Aside from what I’ve mentioned, Yasu has a final, strikingly obvious reason to project Kinzo onto Battler: deflection.

Yasu is a disastrous parallel to Kinzo. They share the disturbing quality of willpower exceeding their body, a flippancy regarding life and death, living in spite of frailty. They are born with and die with nothing. She too dances with the magic of the roulette, staking fate on a miracle. She too ‘met’ Beatrice as an attempt at severing her regrets in life; she too summoned the Golden Witch and received a fortune at the cost of her soul; she too felt blessed and mocked by the myth of Beatrice, after wandering half-dead in a life that was not her own. A life in which she had been suddenly given power as a prank of fate, with the included (mis)fortune of polydactyly. They were each forced to endure Endlessness, awaiting the revival of love that may never come, desperately discarding their dignity for the sake of resurrection. The epitaph chooses both Kinzo’s and Beatrice’s successor. To ‘see’ is to answer the riddle. Just as Kinzo did to ‘Beatrice,’ Yasu has sewn the Ushiromiyas’ souls onto the island with magic, allowing them neither power nor form. Both are vulnerable kings protected by their own castles, refusing to speak the truth. Their massive wealth will be distributed, but the secret tales die with them.

Yasu was afforded unbelievable power by solving the epitaph, but it ended up destroying her with knowledge she did not want. She was given the reasoning that kills love. Upon the horrific discovery that her romantic feelings not only couldn’t be consummated but were incestuous as well, it is almost certain that she would feel the same repulsion towards herself as Kinzo. From that moment, she too was lying about the true nature of her relationships with the ones she loved. She too could not curb her affection or fear in time to tell the truth. There is no path she can make for herself, as she cannot live independently of projected roles. Incapable of individuating herself from Kinzo with self-identity, the logical conclusion is to invert the roles and make herself Beatrice, and more importantly, Battler Kinzo. Then, she must pray for the miracle that someone would come and solve the epitaph, taking back the role she was so haunted by and carrying her to a better life…