Blade: The Iron Cross

Blade: The Iron Cross is a 2020 American horror comedy film directed by John Lechago. The film is the fourteenth entry in the Puppet Master franchise. It is a spinoff of the series and concentrates on the puppet Blade. It was released on July 7, 2020.

Blade: The Iron Cross would mark the series’ first spin-off film, which would be followed by Puppet Master: Doktor Death, a spin-off of Retro Puppet Master, released in 2022.

Plot
In 1944–45, Ivan has moved to Russia to study brain research and he leaves the puppets with Elisa. During this time Elisa begins to have vivid nightmares about Elsa's death and Major Kraus. She soon realizes this is psychic memories that she is picking up from Blade and she also has vivid visions of Blade in distress, explosions and an evil doctor and she knows these are events which will transpire. Blade is the only one of the puppets that can make slight movements, despite having virtually no elixir left in his body and he spends his time either hiding behind the trunk like a guardian or observing Elisa as she bathes. Elisa notices Blade is different from the other puppets and he is able to feed off of her psychic energy and she also sees that his knife is dull and she sharpens it up but cuts herself by mistake, which causes her to bleed and this creates a blood bond between the two. She also uses her psychic powers to look inside of Blade, and thereby possibly discover who he was in his human life. Meanwhile, Dr. Hauser, a Nazi doctor that was a former colleague of Hess, is continuing the Deathcorp Project at a hideout in California and is performing experiments on innocent victims. His project is funded by an American district attorney, James D. Madison, who has betrayed America and had sided with the Nazis. Madison also has top secret files from the government which have scans of the Scroll of Osiris, as well as photos and information about Toulon's puppets.

Blade manages to have enough energy to sneak out into the night to participate in his own solo Nazi hunting and he hides out at a factory under a sheet and Officer Bruce, a corrupt American police officer is also there and stealing supplies for the Nazis. Bruce hears Blade's footsteps and discovers him under the sheet and calls him Pinocchio before hitting him across the room with his baton. Bruce picks up Blade to hit him again but Blade uses his eye spikes to impale Bruce's hand, which causes him to smack Blade against a wall, which only causes the spikes to go in further. Blade manages to break free and musters enough strength to impales Bruce's ankle with his hook and drag him across the room and then finishes him off by sawing his head off violently with his knife. During this time Elisa is at home dreaming of these events as they play out and she feels a jolt of power every time Blade's knife is used, which reveals a psychic link between the two. Later on Gloria Vasquez, a Spanish nationalist spy and her henchman break into Elisa's apartment and tare the place apart looking for Blade and the scroll of Osiris. They manage to find the scroll hidden behind a painting and then she uses a special chemical to put press photographer Barney Barnes to sleep and take him back to be experimented on by Hauser. During this time Blade was observing the events from a closet, before moving to the window where he had hung on by the tip of his hook, he then jumped down many stories and landed on the ground without any sign of injury and followed Gloria to Hauser's secret hideout. Meanwhile, Madison used a smoke bomb at the Daily Herald to knock Elisa and detective Joe Gray unconscious and also take them back to the hideout and Blade was already there and hiding behind a shelf. Joe is chained up on the ceiling and his leg is broken with a wrench and Elisa is strapped to a torture device and repeatedly electrocuted and asked to hand over the translation of the scroll of Osiris, as Hauser was unable to do it himself as he did not understand Russian, Greek and Egyptian symbols, he also reveals that he plans to uses a giant Death Ray on the roof to shoot out a signal which will kill half the population of California and then revive them as murderous zombies that will follow orders from the Nazi regime.

Elisa refuses and is continued to be electrocuted with the torture device but she uses her psychic bio-energy to shut the machine down. After this Blade cuts Joe down from his chain and systematically goes on a killing spree across the hideout and he begins by putting his hook into the mouth of one of the henchman and cutting him in the back of the head and slitting his throat. He then is fired at by Lang's gun but each bullet misses and Blade finishes him off with a few stabs to the throat. Hauser then uses his machine to transform Barney into a zombie slave to go after Blade, but he attacks Gloria instead, biting her and leaving her for dead and then Blade stabs her in the throat before putting Barney out his misery by cutting his leg and then sticking his knife through the back of his head and out the front of his mouth. Blade then kills the Nazi that is operating the torture machine by slitting his throat and then runs full speed at Hauser. Hauser manages to grab Blade with his mechanical hand and then puts him into a scorching hot furnace. Elisa is stunned on the floor as she is experiencing Blade's pain and then Hauser wants to prove that the puppets can be destroyed, despite them being magical, by hitting Blade over and over with a sledgehammer. Elisa is also feels every strike of pain through her strong psychic connection with Blade and Hauser eventually smashes Blade's head to pieces, which causes his entire body to combust into ash. Hauser is proud to have defeated Blade but also disappointed he could not keep the knife as a souvenir and then Hauser accidentally breathes in the bio-energy that emits from Blade's corpse, which causes Blade to be fully reborn within Hauser's belly and he kills Hauser by chopping his way out. For a few moments Blade's facial form has changed to display his eyes in an evil frown but after putting his hat on, the face changes back to his regular face and all of Hauser's blood mysterious vanishes. This attack on Hauser was unfinished business between Blade in his human life and his former colleague. After Hauser died, his 'dead-man's switch' on his mechanical hand had been set off which meant that the Death Ray was going to shoot out its signal, so Joe hands Blade a wrench and he climbs inside of the machine and breaks the inside. This causes the ray and the hideout to explode and Blade, Elisa and Joe manage to escape unharmed. After this Elisa prints a story about a killer puppet foiling a Nazi death plot in her newspaper article and because the Daily Herald is known for printing fictitious tabloid headlines then it is not believed by the public. After this Joe uses Blade to climb through the vent in Madison's office and unlock the door. When Madison arrives he is ambushed by Blade and he is killed by having his throat slit and so that his corpse would look like he had committed suicide. After this Joe sets out with Blade on a mission to track down more double crossing Americans that are assisting the Nazis.

Puppets

 * Blade

Release
The film was released by Full Moon Features as the first installment of their ‘Deadly Ten’ sub series.

Reception
Film Threat said, "This is a Charles Band production after all, and what he ignores in plot and rehearsals, he makes up for with zombies, mad scientists, dumb cops, nudity and of course, the star of the show, the bloodthirsty puppet Blade. Band makes exploitation films the way they did for drive-ins and grindhouses in the ’60s and ’70s: short, sloppy, and entertaining as hell. Who needs a convoluted storyline when you have tits, gore, and a murderous puppet?"

Bloody Disgusting said the film "is definitely emblematic of the lower tier of the Puppet Master franchise. It may not be the absolute worst in the series and it’s technically a little less insulting than Puppet Master: The Legacy, but this feels like the death rattle of a corpse that’s been brought back to life with some half-baked resurrection potion."