Episode 176 - The Horrifying History of Puppets

This week Abby sits down with Kate Rotunda to discuss the very unnerving history of puppets.

Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. I'm Abby Branker, sitting here with Kate Rotunda.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hello.

Why Puppets Feel Uncanny

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Kate, thank you so much for joining us again. Thank you for having me. Our horror encyclopedia friend Kate, who does so much writing for LunaticsProject.com. So definitely check out some of her very thought-provoking articles there. You flatter me so. Well, I really do mean it. Today we are here to talk about the intersection of puppets and horror. And of course, the history of this very specific subgenre. Similar to dolls, clowns, and robots, there's something about puppets that just doesn't sit right with most of us. Me included. Especially when those puppets seem to move on their own or come to us with big kitchen knives, right? So first let's talk about our sources. There's a New York Times article from 1998, Pulling Strings, The Geppetto Effect by Sarah Boxer. A National Geographic article by Carolyn Wilk from 2025. Who made these unusual ancient puppets and left them atop a pyramid? A Time article, How Creepy Dolls Like Megan Became a Horror Phenomenon by Megan McCulski. And an Atlas Obscura article by Andy Wright, The Demonic Origins of Ventriloquism. Puppophobia is the fear of puppets. Researchers have refined their theory on the root cause of puppophobia over centuries. In 1810, Honrik von Kleist's essay called On the Marionette Theater defined the unease often felt from puppets as something similar to Uncanny Valley, that their similarities to humans was what made people feel uneasy around them. Especially the manipulation of a human-like thing, perhaps symbolizing this loss of control, right? So there's two things. One is that anything that's humanoid but not human, that's uncanny, right? And then there's also this thing where puppets are controlled by a puppeteer and it sort of is a symbolism of like the loss of free will. Absolutely. But in the 1998 article from Sarah Boxer, she lays out a more modern theory. In her reporting, she describes the root cause of fear as tied to the lack of human, meaning it's creepy for this thing that looks humanoid to be moving.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

So it's like the movement associated.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah, I was gonna say, because like having a fear of puppets, if it's different from a fear of dolls. Dolls just kind of sit there. You can move them around a little bit, but they're still pretty stagnant, whereas puppets are moved in a way that they are supposed to be living beings.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Exactly. So it's like, for instance, Kate and I texted about this a little as we were preparing for this episode, but Chucky is not a puppet. I mean, he's a puppet in the movie, but he's like He's a puppet in real life. He's a puppet in real life, yeah. In the movie, he's a doll. Yeah. But because he's animated as a doll, he's almost closer on the spectrum to a puppet when we're talking about kind of like the origins of the fear there, right? Yeah. So Sarah Boxer, who wrote the New York Times article, quotes from the master puppeteer Roman Pasca, quote, It's the absence of the human that is frightening. The fact that the puppet appears both dead and alive, Mr. Pasca said. The puppet is a dead thing and it's up there moving. If it provokes deep anxieties, that's why. The closest human analogies to puppets are not powerless citizens under dictators, but mummies and corpses made to dance. In fact, puppets were once explicitly used to represent the dead, Mr. Pasca said. Pulchinella, the puppet that came before Punch and Judy, spoke with a swazzle, a reedy piece in the mouth, which is still used by Rajasthani puppeteers and is called the voice of the dead. Puppets show us that our own existence is not so different from a table, Mr. Paskas says. In the blink of an eye, the inanimate can become animate, and the animate can become ananimate again. End quote.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

It is interesting to think of puppets as like a dead thing being moved around. Because technically you can puppeteer anything. Yeah. You can make anything a puppet on the very loose definition. So it is interesting to think of like a puppet being something that was once alive or anything now just tied up with strings and forced to dance around. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

There are other reasons that puppets are scary, of course. The often jerkiness of the movement makes them creepy, right? They're not moving fluidly because they're not human, they're being controlled. In many cases, puppets are represented through stop motion, which only adds to this. I'm gonna quote from the Time article by Megan McClaskey. Quote, a 2010 study published in the scientific journal, Psychological Science, found that the creepiness of dolls relates to the way our brains detect and pay attention to faces. According to the research, humans' perception of life in a face is largely gleaned from the eyes. In turn, recognizing life in a face equates to recognizing there's a mind behind that face. That means the more lifelike a doll's face, and specifically its eyes are, the more likely we are to perceive it as aware. End quote.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

That's yeah, I can see that because I think there's cases in which both with people and dolls or even animals where you think they have more human eyes, so you find them freakier or that they are more like listening to you, or like with people, and I'm gonna use this as an example. I have a friend who, when they drink, it gets what I call dead eyes, where it just glazed over. So you can kind of see it in people, and like you see it not just obviously the drunkness is like a very small thing, but like people who are like even killers or psychopaths sometimes, you can't it's you can't read things in their eyes, right? And that is really where you're looking for reassurance of some kind.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Or even all of these masked slashers, right? Where maybe you you can see their eyes in some shots, but often you don't, and it removes like their humanity a bit.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, with dolls, I can see if you make their eyes hyper-realistic, you're like almost expecting them to do something.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Yeah. So, in addition to child's play, right, which is a really good example of this, there's also dolls that freak us out in other movies. Chucky is a little bit different because he moves, yes, right? Where like Annabelle from 2014 or even from the conjuring movie doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

But we can also talk, and we'll talk about Megan a little bit more later. Now, Megan from 2022 is about an evil robot, right? So it's different also because it's about AI. But the way that Megan moves, right? She has a body, and so she's a robot. The way that she moves sets her apart from, say, like Hal in 2001, a Space Odyssey, who doesn't have a body. Like the type of horror, even though they're both like AI that goes awry and becomes too powerful, is different. Evokes something maybe different in audiences because Megan has a body, yeah, and she's moving in a strange way, and she's able to like be a character in a different way than Hal is a character.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, because I think you could argue they're both computers trying to either take over humanity or insert themselves in humanity, but Hal, you'll always know he's computer. Megan is trying to be human. Exactly.

Movement, Eyes, And Perceived Minds

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, it's a very important distinction. Yeah, totally. Quoting again from Boxer's article, quote, in other words, the puppet is part of what Freud calls the uncanny, that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar, to a time before we were alive. It is worth noting that puppet comes from the Latin puppa, which is not only the root for the French word for doll, paupe, Freud's example of an uncanny object, and the English word puppy, but also the name of a creature enclosed in a cocoon, not quite alive and not quite dead. End quote. Uncanny Valley is the feeling of unease that can come about in response to figures that appear to be almost human, but not quite. Clowns are another example of this, right? Along with puppets, robots, dolls, and also all of these different figures are recurring characters in horror franchises for a reason, right? Yeah. They're inherently scary. It's a primal uneasiness. Yeah, exactly. But we're here today to talk about puppets, right? So let's peel that back for a little while and hyper focus on puppets. We're gonna define what puppets are a little bit in a in a minute, but I want to start by talking about how puppets have been a really long-standing element of different cultures for thousands and thousands of years.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, one of the oldest forms of entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Mm-hmm. One more quote from Boxer's New York Times article, quote African and Asian cultures have always been more mindful of the puppet's awful otherness and its strange power, Mr. Pasca noted. For example, in Indonesia, which by the way, I have a set of Indonesian puppets in this apartment. Puppeteers have the status of priests and are thought to spiritually possess their puppets during the performance. Indeed, it is considered dangerous for puppeteers not to finish a show. Mr. Pasca said, and when a puppeteer dies, his puppets are buried with him. Puppetry is a kind of necromancy. A puppet doesn't exist alone, Dr. Newtzel said. By itself, the puppet is just a dead thing. If if the audience fails to imbue it with life, there is no show.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Oh yeah, there's so much that is done by people watching puppet shows as much as there is by puppeteers. Yeah. You have to acknowledge it's a suspense of disbelief. Exactly. That you have to acknowledge that not the person is no longer controlling it, even if it looks like they are.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

I also think a really interesting piece of that is puppetry was not just used as entertainment, it was used as ritual.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

And like and religious, like part of this like religious ceremony in many, many different cultures. And so it's also just like the the passing down of that information and knowledge, I think, seeps into the fear of puppets a little bit sometimes, right? There's a darkness associated with some of this. Yeah. Puppetry can be traced back to the fifth century BCE in Greece, when it was used in ancient theater. The oldest known written record of puppets comes from the work of Herodotus and Xenophon. The Greek word for puppet means drawn by strings or string pulling.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Interesting that it originates with like marionettes.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Uh-huh. Somewhere between 384 and 322 BCE, Aristotle discussed puppets. And also, just to your point, that's like the earliest written record. But there certainly, I'm sure, were like more primitive versions of puppets before marionettes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

But yeah, for sure. Again, like I said before, you can puppeteer anything. Like moving something around and making it speak inherently is puppeteering it, and I'm sure that has happened.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

I do that to my cat all the time.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Exactly. You're taking away his bodily autonomy and forcing him to puppet.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

All the time. So quoting from Aristotle's work called On the Motion of Animals, quote, the movements of animals may be compared with those of automatic puppets, which are set going on the occasion of a tiny movement. The levers are released and strike the twisted strings against each other, end quote. We also know that puppetry dates back to ancient times in India. There are mentions of puppets in Tamil literature, dating back to the second century BCE. But I want to talk a little bit about the origins of different types of puppets and famous puppets. Most people are probably familiar with hand puppets, which are often made from a glove, right? So you could think of that as like something you did in kindergarten where you literally put like googly eyes on a glove. Yeah. Or you could think about Kermit the Frog.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Who sits right on the hand of a puppeteer.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yes. So I am a huge Jim Henson is my god. I worship at the altar of Jim Henson. The Muppets are one of the most innovative things. But Kermit the Frog, especially, was one of Jim Henson's first puppets, and he was made from the fabric of an uh old coat of his mother's.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

And Jim Henson was once said basically that Kermit the Frog is most like him because it is his hand. Kermit the Frog is one of but is also one of the most expressive Muppets because the way he manipulates his mouth, even with just his hand, he's able to express so much with him. His eyes don't move. Just his mouth moves, but he's still able to do so much with him just by moving his hand around and contorting his face.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Um but there's also uh what I love and like what we talked about before with like a suspense of disbelief, there is an interview with Jim Henson where he is puppeteering Kermit the Frog, and the interviewer asked him is if it's ever weird for kids to meet him with Kermit, because Jim Henson is famously not a ventriloqu ventriloquist. Right. He is just a puppeteer. So when he speaks, you see him speaking. Uh-huh. So the interviewer asked him if it was weird for kids to see it. And he's like, No, because no one looks at me. They just look at the puppet. These the Muppets became such their own personalities, their own characters that no one cares if you see Jim Henson talking next to Kermit. That's Kermit the Frog. He is so his own self that you gave that the audience gave so much life to this hand puppet that even if you see someone actively controlling him, it still feels like an entire different entity. Yeah. Took on so much life of his own because of the way the audience reacted to him. Absolutely. And the life that Jim Henson built for him.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Okay, lightning round. What's your favorite Muppet of all time? You can only pick one.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Riz of the Rat. Oh. Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

What a great answer. Another really famous example of hand puppetry is Punch and Judy, which are really famous puppets from history. Mr. Punch and his wife Judy date back to 1662 in England. And it's like it's a set show, right? It's like a scripted. It's a set scripted show. And it's made up of like a handful of short scenes around these central characters. Another popular type of puppet is marionettes. Arguably one of the scarier types, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

I was like, well, that's the more puppeteering something dead almost because they're like just flaccid objects on a string.

Uncanny Valley And Etymology

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah. Marionettes are figures that are connected to wires and controlled from above, where the wires attach to a bar or like a set of bars, right? Pinocchio is a really great example of this. And also Chicago, the musical.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Oh yes, they both reach for the gun.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yep. I had to ask my friend because I'd only seen the movie. I was like, do they use like puppetry in the stage play? And he was like, they move as puppets, but there's not anyone actually puppeting them.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yes. Also, Little Shop of Hars, fake. That's well, that's an actual yeah, they use puppets in their scenes. Yeah. But that's not the they don't talk about puppetry like they do in Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Right. Elmo is a rod puppet. A rod puppet is a puppet that's controlled by rods attached to the arms and sometimes the head. Another really cool type of puppet is shadow puppets. Typically flat cutouts that are held in front of a light source to create a shadow projection on a wall or on a screen, or you know, you know the deal. Yes. Shadow puppets can be traced back to Indonesia, China, and Turkey. But I think the ultimate scary puppet is a ventriloquist dummy.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Oh, yeah, because that's the least human involvement that you see almost. Right. Well, I guess marionettes are not very like you don't see all the human involvement, but the the talking.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Yeah. The talking is another layer. When you think about the throwing of the voice, it puts the uncanny valley into turbo drive, I think, you know. Ventriloquist dummies are solid puppets with blinking eyes and a movable mouth, typically. Right. That's like the typical version. It's generally operated by a ventriloquist who provides the voice. Just a quick side quest on the history of ventriloquism because I was really interested in this while I was researching. Did you know that originally ventriloquist puppets were part of a religious practice?

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I did not.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

The word comes from Latin, meaning to speak from the belly. So in ancient Greece, oracles would deliver messages using this belly speaking method or ventriloquism, essentially. The voices were thought to be the voices of the unliving. The idea was that the oracle could interpret these noises and both speak to the dead and be able to tell the future. So it was like this like idea that these like stomach noises Yeah, were actually people speaking. Were yeah, some kind of like deity or message from the other world.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Now, would that suggest that everyone has these voices in them, but only the oracles can decipher them, or only the oracles have the voices? Yeah, I think only the oracles. And then everyone else's stomach noises are just stomach noises. Yeah.

unknown 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Only oracle stomach noises are special. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Well, I think part of it is that the oracles are making, like they're using, they're throwing their voice to their stomach.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Interesting. Yeah. I'd love to be able to throw my voice. I don't know how they do it. I don't know either. It's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Quoting from the Atlas Obscure article by Andy Wright, quote, fast forward a couple centuries, and voices from nowhere became associated with another unpopular trend, possession and witchcraft. Both circumstances that tended to come with a lot of vocal acrobatics. Not surprisingly, this didn't mean great things for ventriloquists. During the Reformation, there was a nun named Elizabeth Barton in Kent, whose ventriloquical prophecies were well known, but when she uttered a supposedly divine statement that King Henry VIII shouldn't marry Anne Boleyn, her popularity plummeted with the audience that mattered most, the king. Barton was hanged. Henry got married.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

And honestly, Henry should not have married Anne Boleyn.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

He shouldn't have married anybody. No. He was a mess. The practice shifted from prophecy to entertainment in the 18th century, specifically with traveling fairs. But up until this point, it's like really important to know that ventriloquism started off as this like ritual, real quasi-religious practice, even up until Henry the Eighth, right? It was thought of as like a prophecy. Then you know, and I'm not saying that it shifted to entertainment because of that, but after that, later in time, it's then in like the 18th century, so not until the 1700s does it become entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Oh. It is interesting to see different things, and there's pen plenty of things in life that were once like so religious and spiritual that they've now become just just for funsies. Right, just for funsies. Just for a good time.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, and not to say I'm sure there's some versions of entertainment that, you know, happened over the years, but there was, I think around that time is when the religion exited versus the entertainment. You know, I mean it became fully entertainment around that time. By the mid-1700s, we started to see paintings and depictions of ventriloquists. And by the end of the 18th century, the practice had solidified itself as standard entertainment. But an important distinction to call out is that not all of these acts use puppets. For example, Joseph Askins, a well-known ventriloquist of the time, advertised his performance in 1790 as, quote, curious ad libitim, dialogues between himself and his invisible familiar little Tommy, end quote. So fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

That is fun. Because yeah, if you have the ability to do the act of ventriloquism where you can speak without moving your mouth, yeah, you don't really need a puppet. You can make anything. This is my invisible friend, Tommy.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah, little Tommy.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

You can hear him. Yeah. You need to see him.

Ritual Roots Across Cultures

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah. As time went on, the addition of puppets became more and more common practice. The standard dummy, as we know them today, really started to become standard in the late 1900s. Like when I was born. So back to puppets broadly. In 2022, clay figures were unearthed in El Salvador. These figures have movable heads and expressive faces. According to the National Geographic article by Carolyn Wilkie, while these aren't the first figures of this type to be found in Mesoamerica, they are the best preserved. When the researchers assembled and stood up the figurines, they found that they all faced west in a line. So it's kind of going back to this idea of puppets, especially ancient puppets, having a spiritual or, you know, religious meaning, not just entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah, like they were placed there in that order for a reason. Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

There was something, yeah, about the pattern. In 2012, similar figures were found in Guatemala at a Mayan tomb. Those were configured in the four cardinal directions. Back to El Salvador, three of the larger figurines are about a foot tall. They are both naked and bald. I'm going to quote from the Nat Geo article. Quote On the one hand, the face has this empty, absent look. The figurine's eyes appeared to stare into the distance, and its mouth was open. It seemed aloof or maybe full of disdain, but its expression seemed to change as the researchers turned its head. Which is so creepy. At a sharp angle, it looked a bit angry. Viewed from above, it looked perhaps scared. With the fading light, we had this weird sensation that we found something eerie, he says. One of the researchers. After four days of excavation, the team had uncovered five. clay figurines in a layer dated between 410 and 380 BCE.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Well yeah, that's another example of just the uh the people doing most of the work when it comes to puppets. Like them saying it looked aloof, it looked this it looked scary, its face changed. Like you're adding so much personality to these beings, but because they look human. Yeah, absolutely. They look like something that should be able to change its face, that should be able to feel emotion.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, absolutely. Something we didn't really talk about but we should talk about is your connection to puppets.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Oh yes. My deep deep love of puppets. I don't know where it started. I think probably just the Muppets. I think watching the Muppets growing up it was always a big thing in my house. We watch the Muppets Christmas Carol every year. But I just think I'm also a big lover of animation and claymation and anything like anything that is so obviously has the care of people put into it and just so creative. But puppets I think I love especially because they are an extension of the person. Well animation is obviously something that someone drew, created, came from their heart. Puppets are being manipulated by the person. They are that person. They are a part of them. They are voiced by someone they are moved by someone. They're just these they're made with so much love and they're moved with so much love. And yet you kind of get lost in it. I think in the act of puppetry it's such a there's just something so passionate about puppetry and you can get so creative with it. Like I said you can puppeteer anything and I just think it's so fun that the mind will accept anything as a puppet. Right. Like and it same goes for animation obviously like you can make a crude animation and it will still work but you can make a crude puppet and it still works for what you want and you can move it and it takes on the mind of its own. Like I've made little like stupid puppets that just they look horrible or like I really don't like I I've like I've made like little things where I I purchased a lot of puppets and it just kind of becomes its own thing where it's like a puppet that I am puppeteering will look different if you puppeteer the same puppet in my point of view.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

And obviously there's something to be said for like puppeteers go down the line especially in the Muppets there's multiple of them but I think you can tell sometimes and but they still take on personalities of their own. Right. I just think it's a very human thing to create a figurine that you can control and just do like fun little plays with and I just think that every puppeteering work I've seen I've loved.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah absolutely okay do you have an ultimate before we get into the horror of puppets okay do you have like an ultimate I know you're gonna say the Muppets a bit more specific. Like what's the ultimate puppet piece of art?

Types Of Puppets Explained

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Ooh I do think it's actually a mix between the Muppets and just individual ventriloquist because the Muppets are obviously something that have spanned generations and like uh there's Muppet babies there's the Muppets there's new Muppets shows there's new Muppets um movies there's old Muppets there's all this and the the characters are just continuous and they relate to every generation. So there's obviously that and my personal favorite is um Muppets Christmas Carol because you take this like timeless classic and then you make it its own thing and it's just so fun. But I also think just watching if you have the time to just look up people doing puppet shows and especially ventriloquists um especially marionettes as well it's just so beautiful and you can see so much passion in it. Yeah. Especially when the puppets are handmade it's like creating like a just another version of them or just this this being is made, controlled voiced by this one person but becomes its own thing that you kind of see almost a split in this person. Yeah. Especially when they're talking to themselves via the puppet. It's just like a beautiful like comedy or story being done of like turning yourself into more people and like turning your artwork into so many different personalities.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

I'm pretty sure I'm seeing a puppet magic show on Broadway in December.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

There is the Muppets are coming to something on Broadway. But also Broadway uses a lot of puppets. Yeah Little Shop of Horrors is one of my all-time favorite musicals same and the plant in that is a puppet and I just think that's so much better than I or the Jim Henson company still makes puppets for things. Uh Five Nights at Freddy's the new horror movie terrible movie. Those are puppets right I think it's better than CGI. It just looks more it ages way better too ages way better and it looks more real and it just looks again uncanny. It just yeah and same with like claymation like claymation puppets are puppets of themselves Coraline the Leica Studios all of that um Mad God all of that yeah Mad God's a great example just beautiful creations that are being changed and manipulated. Wallace and Gromit I love especially old ones because you can see the fingerprints in them while they're being moved. Yeah and it's just I think it's great I love being able to see the artistry the artistry of it. I don't need something to look so seamless. I like to see movies where it's clear people made this and people cared about this.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

I love that my favorite Muppets movie I'm preparing to be judged by you is The Frog Prince.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

So one of their fairy tale ones that's that's fun. I love it. Alan puts it on for me when I'm fussy sometimes. That or Twilight yeah truly all right let's talk about how puppets have intersected with horror films which is so many ways right they're so perfect for horror. Yes. Puppets have been used in movies from the early days of cinema. The enchanted drawing from 1900 is one of the earliest experiments with animation and you don't this film doesn't specifically use a puppet but it sets the stage for puppetry animation and the uncanny in film. The mascot or the devil's ball from 1933 is a short film that uses stop motion animation in puppetry. And so the film was made by one of the first filmmakers to use puppets in cinema. You can actually watch a really beautifully restored version of this on YouTube. It's like 30ish minutes I think it's worth a watch it's also interesting to me that it's I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the first films to really truly use puppets is also like a horror film about the devil.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

Yeah. Well it's also like I think puppets can use be used as a way to get around censoring.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Totally right like yeah it's like not a real thing so it's like this is the story I want to tell this is the way I can tell it. Yes and still I can be graphic and evil with it without people associating it with people. Yeah totally it's a good point. And of course in 1940 Disney released Pinocchio the film was based on the 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Colotti. While not horror I would argue that the story is intensely scary and I'm not the only one that thinks that Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio from 2022 is a much darker version of the same story. Yes. And both of those films Pinocchio and uh Gueramo del Toro's Pinocchio I think are beautiful and haunting in like a very visceral way.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Well I think also when we talked about before the the act of the puppet being a dead thing or a humanoid thing not being able to control itself that the obviously the scene um I got no strings on me is a lighthearted scene but it is scary. He is being controlled when he is alive.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

And so just being this creature that is supposed to be controlled, supposed to be made of wood, not real and being treated as such, but you do have life to it and that there's someone else controlling you. Yeah. And while Pinocchio may not be her, I do own a little comic bookslash graphic novel called Pinocchio the Vampire Slayer. Oh which is actually a very fun comic that if you can find it I recommend you read um about Pinocchio's a vampire slayer and every time he goes to kill a vampire he tells a lie and breaks off his nose and uses that as the stake of vampire so good that's so cute. So he'll tell a little lie and snap off his nose and kill the vampires with and it is a very dark comic yeah I bet that's so cute. Aside from just Pinocchio that movie's scary with the donkey boys.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

And being in the whale's stomach. Yeah yeah there's a lot that happens I mean also in 1883 when this was written as a as a novel so much of Pinocchio is like am I a real boy? Am I you know and like that's exactly everything we're talking about. It's like this puppet is questioning his own or trying to understand his own relationship to humans which like I think today's version of that is a film about AI but like in 1883 that's that's what we had you know I'd rather a puppet than AI.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Absolutely I'd rather every puppet and doll come to life on this earth than have to look at another thing that was made with AI.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Absolutely quoting from the Time article again quote back in 1929 musical drama The Great Gabo, while not a traditional fright flick introduced audiences to a spooky ventriloquist dummy named Otto and his malicious owner Gabbo the creepy doll subgenre of horror seems to have sprung from here with 1945 horror anthology film Dead of Night featuring a segment titled The Ventriloquist Dummy that relied on the even more sinister relationship between a puppeteer and his dummy end quote that's another thing you see a lot in both puppet horror and in jokes about puppeteers is this like I think in horror it's becoming like unnerve it's unnerving how much they're attached to their puppet but there's often jokes in shows or like when I was growing up the show Victorious they have a character in it who's like un like unnaturally attached to his ventriloquist dummy and like all of this like it's its own entity but it it it is interesting to see this like human need to have almost a friend or just this to see people become so reliant on something that isn't alive.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

But just the fact that puppets can become so lifelike to even the people maneuvering them. Right. That they take on a life of their own. So like even the people who are giving them life don't distinguish them as something that isn't alive.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Is there a horror movie where the puppet comes to life but only for the puppeteer?

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Like like actually supernatural or like it's the question he's crazy.

Ventriloquism’s Dark Origins

SPEAKER_00 29:41

I yeah magic I would argue. And obviously ventriloquists have created a very specific place for themselves in horror history. Quoting from the Alice Obscura article quote legendary Broadway critic Walter Kerr wrote of a 1977 Greenwich Village cabaret act featuring ventriloquism quote do you realize what an ominous presence a ventriloquist dummy can be often is quote he compared them to Frankenstein's monster and the artists fear their creation could destroy them. Filmmakers haven't been able to resist musing on the horror of the dummy either a ventriloquist gripped with insanity appeared in the 1945 Dead of Night and in 1964 Devil's Doll, a demonic dummy successfully swaps bodies with his master Anthony Hopkins plays a ventriloquist named Quirky who commits murder with with his animate dummy Fats in 1978's Magic and in 2007 the creators of the Saw franchise offered audiences Dead Silence in which an evil ventriloquist turns human victims into marionettes end quote. Puppet Master was released in 1989. It was directed by David Schmoller and tells the story of a group of psychics who gathered together at a seaside inn the location of strange experiments that their old friend Andre Toulon had performed. We find out that back in the 30s Toulon had managed to give life to his puppets via this ancient Egyptian spell but ended up taking his own life to keep the Nazis from taking his secret.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

But now the puppets are ready to play that movie I actually just watched for the first time a couple days ago in preparation of this. I actually I had seen it a long time ago but um or I saw one of them a long time ago I don't think I ever saw the first one because there's a whole series now. That one's very interesting because in it they suggest that the puppets take on the characteristics of their master so when the puppets are serving under the original puppet master they're very like sweet and harmless but when they're under the presence of a different master they that's when they become violent.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

So they kind of keep not only are they animate they keep the mentality of their master then they do at one point break off and kind of do their own thing but it's interesting to see that they maintain the still even though they are alive they're still kind of being puppeteered in a way. Absolutely yeah that's cool. Did you like the movie? Uh it's fun I liked the puppets in it because they're like little claymation like their stop motion clamation there is and I think I texted you about this when I was watching it there is a scene where a guy is having sex with his girlfriend and he's blindfolded and his girlfriend is replaced by a tiny little puppet doll and he does not know this.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

It's like the tiny little puppet hands on him and he's like oh there she is that's my girl that's crazy. But it's it's cute. It's I mean it's cute because I think the puppets are cute. It's a it's a cheesy, it's a cheesy 80s movie um but it has its fun moments and the puppet designs are very cool.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Yeah yeah one of the most famous puppets in horror is Billy the puppet the toy of Jigsaw from the Saw franchise Billy the puppet dates all the way back to the original Saw movie from 2004 directed by James Wan. In the Saw franchise Billy ends up being a proxy a way for Jigsaw to communicate with his victims via recorded messages though he is more clown than human I would say like Billy still evokes the uncanny when you look at him not to say that clowns are not human but he's not like he's not like he doesn't look like he's costumes he's not meant to look like a person he's meant to look freaky. Yeah he is both familiar and alien at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Yes and they often have him riding in a little tricycle which I don't know they never explained in the movie how he gets him to do that because the doll is not alive.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

It's just a puppet but sometimes he's like fully pedaling oh is he I've I've only seen Saw five and then I was like crazy never again but I like almost got into a car accident driving home from that movie because I was so afraid. But I was always just picturing because I know about the tricycle that like Jigsaw would just sort of like give him a little push.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

I guess so but I feel like there are moments in it where he's like pedaling a little bit um the Saw movies are all ridiculous. I've seen them all I've seen all 10 of them at least twice which is unhealthy for my brain.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah. But I mean yeah you're you're a little desensitized I would say by the horror you know yeah 2007 gave the puppet horror genre Dead Silence also directed by James Juan who clearly has a thing for this Dead Silence tracks a couple who receive a ventriloquist puppet named Billy in the mail another Billy uh this is probably a James Wan thing I would say they don't know who sent it Dead Silence is fun. I really enjoy Dead Silence. It is fun it's creepy so 2007. So so 2007 it has like a almost like an Annabelle vibe to it because it's like this thing that's moving or it's in places it shouldn't be. I think it's a fun like contained little movie.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Yeah for sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Okay again I'm gonna talk a little bit about Megan I acknowledge Megan is not a puppet.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Well I think it's important to talk about how puppets are also used in horror even if what they're in the movie is not a puppet. Yeah totally puppetry as an art form is used a lot in horror to control like Chucky is a puppet in real life. Absolutely Megan is a puppet in real life or someone in a suit I can't quite remember but I'm sure there are some moments where it's puppetry different like again claymation figures, little shop of horrors like puppets are used in horror even though puppets are alive and well. Yes. I'd also like to say there's at least two soons two scenes that I can think of in which people are puppeted in horror movies. Tell us. I'm sure there's more I'm sure there are more one is in Nightmare on Elm Street I just watched the first three oh yeah Nightmare on Elm Street 3 there's a scene in which one of the characters veins are pulled from his arms and Freddy is like puppeteering him using that. Yeah and then in um a scene in Killer Clowns from Outer Space there's a scene where one of the clowns picks up a police officer and like puts his hand up him and starts puppeteering his mouth. Yeah. Which that I think is really creepy when they make people puppets um and absolutely again dead people. Yes. And again I am sure there are more scenes where that I'm just not thinking of where they use people as puppets. Wait there's like one that's coming to my mind. Oh it's it's mirror mirror not the 1990 one it's a snow white one. So it's not a horror film at all but it is a weird scene but that's what sorry that's okay but like my brain was like I need I can see this so clearly. That's so interesting. But um just the act of not being able to control your own movements I would argue that did you see the m the new movie Weapons?

SPEAKER_00 36:10

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Okay I'm just gonna give a very quick thing without spoiling if anyone's seen the movie Weapons they're not puppets but you could argue that it plays into the same idea of a lack of self-control that puppetry invokes. Yeah.

Ancient Figurines And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Yeah fair enough that looking at puppets kind of makes you feel sure I mean you could unlock this whole to your point other subgenre of horror around like possession or control right where even if somebody is possessed by something it's the same as being as being puppeted. Yeah. Absolutely even in in a scarier way maybe because you're not just giving up your body after you've died you're giving up your life and your brain while you're alive. Yeah yeah absolutely it's easy to file puppets into a category with clowns, dolls and robots have we've done multiple times today. All things that move and feel slightly off to most humans. And it's also easy to see why puppets make such a good horror topic. Like I said historically right before as they were used as entertainment puppets were used in religious and ritual practices and beyond the oracles of ancient Greece in ancient Egypt puppets were used in ceremonies to represent deities and gods shadow puppets in India were used to teach moral lessons like we talked about oracles in Greece and Rome used belly speakers to communicate with the dead puppets were also used in ceremonies in ancient Greece and Rome to represent gods. In Japan Boon Raku puppets taught history and cultural lessons so puppets and the use of them is very historic and again like so many things on this podcast spans almost every culture. Long before other visual art forms puppets have been used to represent and illustrate beyond their inherent agency to Uncanny Valley they also work really well in films as metaphors a really on the nose example but but again think about their use in Chicago marionettes are used to illustrate that Billy Flynn is indeed pulling the strings a phrase that by the way comes from puppets.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Oh I guess yeah that makes sense but I guess I never thought about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

In Africa in Oceania puppets were historically used in rituals to connect with ancestors for guidance and to protect the village. Throughout their history puppets have been used as a conduit to the dead a tool for ritual entertainment and education.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

I just think it's important that people need realize that puppets are one so important in artwork to this day and two so many things are puppets like that you watch like I said the Friday uh the five nights at Freddy's those are puppets the animatronics are puppets um every claymation movie you watch those are puppets those are considered puppets and that puppetry is not just ventriloquism it's not just marionettes it's so many things and it can be it can you can do so much with such a simple thing that I would like I even creating like a sock puppet and then making it talk and just do things can be just so whimsical and fun and also support Sesame Street and GBS. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Last year Alan and I were lucky enough to visit one of his friends now one of my friends Shane Morton who lives in Atlanta and it was so Shane makes like practical monster costumes and masks and puppets and you know he made the cheddar goblin and Mandy and look him up find his website. Yes I will link it it's so impressive and it was like literally a highlight I feel like of my life to be in his studio and his workspace and his partner is also so incredibly cool. But not only do they collect like figurines and things but to see what he has crafted for horror films, which is prolific and that he made these things from hand his hands and molds and it's such an art form. And I think it gets a bad rep or like it's not even thought about like when you see a a a campy horror movie and you're like okay like of course there's this weird creature. But you don't think About the art and the work and the tears and the labor that goes into creating that puppet or that figure. And so that was really, really cool to see in person.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Yeah. And I would say if you're interested in puppets and like horror, like I am, and all of that, and you like don't like I'm not good at making things like like by hand. So I buy puppets and I puppeteer them. Like, just because a puppet isn't your own work doesn't mean you can't make something cool with it or make it your own. So I like if you're interested in starting, puppeteering is a very fun hobby to get into. And it may make me sound like a huge loser nerd, but I just love them. And I think more people should be interested in the art.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Where do you like where would if I wanted to buy a puppet, where would I go?

SPEAKER_01 40:42

You can go to many places. Um Toy Stores have puppets. Um, Amazon has puppets, um, craft fairs sometimes, uh, Etsy has homemade puppets. There's even if you want to try to make your own, there's tons on Etsy and online sewing designs, sewing examples, videos showing you how to make different puppets. But yeah, I would say if you can support a small creator, Etsy has a lot of homemade puppets on it. And then yeah, you can also just, if you're not sure where to start and you want to try to make one, you can buy a design.

unknown 41:09

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

And then, yeah, if you just want a little one, Toy Stores still have tons of little finger puppets and little hand puppets. Yeah. All around. Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Well, thank you so much for being here, Kate. Thank you for having me. As always, it is a blast to talk to you about anything and everything, especially puppets and things that you're so passionate about. Thank you guys so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.