B-movie guru Charles Band certainly loves making his movies with "killer puppets" in them and judging from the box, Blood Dolls is no different. But thoughts of "oh no, not this again!" are tossed aside early and replaced with "what the..." as the opening scene contains a clown faced butler, a girl rock band that's kept in a cage and forced to perform by their dwarf keeper and a little bit of electricity, a masked eccentric genius called Virgil Travis (Jack Maturin), and a blood-soaked and pleasing as Hell stomach drilling. Sure, the dolls are mentioned briefly, but goddamn if that wasn't one of the best starts to a Full Moon movie in quite a long time!

Seems this masked genius has created some form of software and when his two lawyers (one who gets that drill I mentioned earlier and the other who is transformed into one of the three killer dolls) can't stop him from losing his fortune to his scheming group of partners he decides to take matters into his own hands. That's where our lovable killer puppets come in: there's "Pimp", who is exactly what you think he is (and quite frankly the coolest Full Moon puppet outside of the Puppet Master series apart from Demonic Toy's "Baby Oopsy-Daisy"), "Sideshow" who provides the muscles and the tattoos, and "Ms. Fortune" the knife chucking Asian puppet created from the lawyer.

From there there's a few decent deaths as the greedy partners are knocked-off and it's soon revealed that our genius wears the mask to hide his mango-sized head (an effect that's actually done quite well) and that one of the partner's wives (Full Moon regular Debra Mayer) is actually the one behind the entire thing. This leads to a disappointing final third where Mayer's character tries to double-cross Virgil and the film soon starts to feel like an off-beat soap opera as the two characters profess love for each other (obviously one is lying), there's lots of overdone talkiness, and Band even decides to throw in an "alternate ending" for good measure.

Blood Dolls is probably one of the more bizarre Charles Band movies I've ever seen and for the most part that's a very good thing. The first two-thirds of the movie make for good entertainment and despite the fairly jerky and crude doll effects and Band giving to much focus to the girl band in the movie, there's a lot to like here. The whole idea is twisted, Mayer is perfect as a controlling, double-crossing bitch (in her first movie role, no less), and it plays out a lot better than most of the Full Moon releases that would follow it when they started farming out products to lesser-known companies like Tempe and Young Wolf Productions. But it's too bad the ending stumbles by getting too heavy-handed when it could've been tossing out a lot more "Blood Dolls" carnage - especially since they play second fiddle almost the entire movie.

If you enjoy B-movies, want something a little bit different, or are a longtime Full Moon fan then you should give this one a view. It's got its flaws, but it has enough offbeat fun within to make it an alright timewaster. (Chris Hartley, 9/6/05)

Directed By: Charles Band.
Written By: Robert Talbot (Charles Band).

Starring: Jack Maturin, Debra Mayer, William Paul Burns, Warren Draper.