Puppet Master II (1991) has a group of paranormal investigators checking out the hotel because of the deaths of all the psychics in the previous movie. They don't do a whole lot of paranormal investigating, but find that the hotel has a mysterious inhabitant who claims the hotel belongs to him, and once again the puppets show up murdering the investigators, and others, one by one gathering glands for a serum that will transfer the life force of their reanimated creator into a life size human puppet of his younger self.
This movie scores points for having a character swathed in bandages who looks like a cross between the invisible man and Peter Lorre's character in Mad Love. The puppets get more screen time and better special effects, partly because the movie is directed by stop motion animator Dave Allen, who does some decent work, but is unable to overcome the deficient script and the overall poor acting. The bad acting draws further attention to itself when compared to Steve Welles' nuanced performance as the mysterious man in the bandages. This movie just seems to plod along without much happening for long periods of time where all that we have to do is watch bad actors delivering meaningless dialogue that does nothing to move things forward. Like the first movie, this one has some ridiculous lapses in logic, such as when the brother of one of the investigators is killed, and not only do they not report it to the police, instead putting the body in a refrigerator, while the sister immediately gets over her grief to continue her investigation and begin a love affair. Also, like the first movie, this one suffers from poor editing. Everything is presented in a very matter of fact manner and there is no build up of suspense to be found anywhere. The make-up used at the end of the film to create the life-sized human puppets is pretty effective and creepy, but it's not enough to merit watching the rest of this.
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