The Happytime Murders:

• Is Jim Henson rolling around in his grave? Has Brian Henson basically pissed on everything his father built?
• This thing was rumored to be in development for over 10 years. I’m not sure which idea was conceived first, but the vulgar puppet-starring musical Avenue Q debuted on Broadway in 2003 and then won several Tony’s in 2004. Did Avenue Q basically steal the thunder before Happytime’s lightning could strike? Like, in a world without Avenue Q, would this thing have been any good?
• Is the biggest offense of this picture that it rips off many of the central plot points of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”
• What’s worse here? McCarthy’s performance – for which she was awarded a Razzie for Worst Actress – or the puppet Phil who plays her partner?
• What’s worse? McCarthy in this movie or Charles Grodin flirting with Ms. Piggy in The Great Muppet Caper?
• Is this thing funny at all? I have a hard time imagining that muppets swearing or having sex or murdering people would be funny at all.
• How’s this thing compare to Meet the Feebles? Let My Puppets Come by Gerard Damiano 1976 too mined this territory. I felt like that movie was irreverent and wild, but… I have to be honest that I really didn’t like it. It was just crass and dumb.

Bottom five puppets:

My approach to this list was to declare the 5 worst puppets, marionettes, dummies or what have you that simply pulled me out of the story of the movie. As always, I’m going with a more literal bottom five that’s based on a lack of quality craftsmanship!

5.) Gmork – The Neverending Story – 1984 (Director Wolfgang Peterson)

• I love the movie for its imagination and what it has to say about imagination.
• I also love the story within a story construction, although you have to wonder about that school attic.
• But man, as far as villains go, while the Gmork might be sort of cool looking as a painting on the wall, it’s really dumb and fake looking when you see it in the movie.

4.) All the little trolls and elves and that stupid mushroom – Troll – 1986 (Director Charles Band)

• A lot of hay has been made over the sequel to Troll  – Troll 2 – which was the subject of a funny, critically acclaimed documentary called “Best Worst Movie.”
• But it seems not much is said about the original Troll from uber-indie multi-hyphenate Charles Band. Honestly, a lot of this guy’s filmography could be on this list as he did the Puppetmaster movies,
• This was back when Band was still able to attract talent for a movie and before he just gave up and started making almost nothing but softcore flicks and movies about killer week paraphenalia.
• While the movie stars the likes of Michael Moriarty, June Lockhart and The Neverending Story’s Atreyu himself Noah Hathaway, it’s probably best known for the appearance of Sonny Bono and is one of the first acting credits for none other than Julia Louis-Dreyfus!
• But it’s the effects that steal the show here, and not in a great way. While the title character is pretty incredible, special effects Maestro John Carl Beuchler was in way over his head on such a limited budget, so many of the Trolls are laughable looking and simply do not pass as anything even remotely scary.
• They basically have the quality of homemade ashtrays made by first graders in the 80s.

3.) Slimer – Ghostbusters II – 1989 (Director Ivan Reitman)

• Honestly, aside from Slimer in the original Ghostbusters, there really hasn’t been a good Slimer puppet, but I would have to say that whatever ‘improvements’ they attempted in Ghostbusters II were just straight-up terrible.
• I love the original Slimer, and indeed most of the practical special effects and visual effects in the first Ghostbusters movie despite director Ivan Reitman’s pretty considerable disappointment with them (as was evidenced in the DVD commentary.)
• The bigger teeth, larger eyes and more ridged forehead was, I guess, supposed to make him look more like a live-action version of the Slimer from “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon that ran from the mid-80’s through the early 90’s. Nope. He just looks dumb and his appearances in the movie are the lowest kind of fan service.
• Seriously, he drives a bus? And why is he always driving things? In Feig’s “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call” he steals Ecto-1. He’s just supposed to eat, that’s it.  He’s John Belushi. In Blues Brothers, Belushi didn’t drive! Akyroyd did!

2.) The Chet Blob – Weird Science – 1985 (Director John Hughs)

• I don’t even know where to begin with this one as the whole thing is absurd, so I shouldn’t take issue really – it’s just another fun inanity in a movie full of them.
• That said, most of the effects in Weird Science are fun – animated lightning, skewed perspectives via tilted sets, reverse motion,  Kelly LeBrock’s breasts…
• But at the end of the movie, the lead baddie in the film, Chet, a bully of a big brother played by a hilarious, scenery-chewing Bill Paxton with a buzz cut and shit-eating grin, is turned into… a farting, burping, pustual-covered blob that looks like an adolescent Jabba the Hutt.
• The effect is intentionally off-putting, but it’s also fake as Hell and it robs the movie of what should have been a better come-uppance for the completely awful Chet.

1.) The Cats Attack – Let the Right One In – 2008 (Director Tomas Alfredson)

• Not many would argue if one were to rank the Swedish film “Let the Right One In” as one of the very best vampire movies of the past twenty years. In fact, most would agree it’s one of the best overall horror films of the past twenty years.
• And while it balances a touching story with genuine performances and eerie cinematography, it also has one of the worst single scenes to be found in an otherwise great movie. And, of course, that scene sucks – in part – due to puppets.
• The scene in question is when newly-created vampire Virginia wanders into her worried neighbor’s house-full-of-cats and is suddenly stalked and attacked by dozens of CG felines.
• But it’s not the CG that ruins the sequence so much as it is the actresses reactions to a bunch of puppet-cat stand-ins that look like they’ve been velcroed to her body as she clumsily writhes around in mock agony.
• The scene plays like comedy instead of as horror or drama and it reminds me of something much more at home in the crap-fest “Sleepwalkers” based on Stephen King’s story about murderous cats.
• The reason it gets number one on my list is simple – fly too close to the sun and you’ve got farther to fall. “Let the Right One In” might have been sat alongside the very greatest horror movies ever made were it not for those stupid goddamn fake cats. 

Staff Pick: Wargames – 1983 (Director John Badham)

• A weird 80’s oddity starring a very young Matthew Broderick and Alley Sheedy before they’d go on to become super huge stars in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club, respectively, “Wargames” was part of the “smart kid” genre of 80’s flicks that included some other commonly-cited favorites like the previously mentioned “Weird Science,” “Real Genius” and “The Manhattan Project.”
• While some of it is pretty dated – in particular parts of the music score by Arthur B. Rubinstein – it’s a remarkable prescient movie for the way it deals with the dangers of technology. 
• It’s the first cinematic treatment of now common tropes – and real life issues – like hacking and remote computing.
• John Badham replaced Martin Brest who apparently was directing the movie as serious as a car accident.