Andre Toulon

Andre Toulon is a male movie villain that features in the Puppet Master series.

Biography

Toulon was born May 1, 1877. The youngest we see him is during Retro Puppet Master, taking place in 1902. In "Retro", Andre is a fairly successful French puppeteer, who owns the "Theatre Magique", along with his friends. One night following a show, Toulon stops an old man from being beaten to death and takes him in to care for him.

As it turns out, the man is Afzel, a sorcerer who stole the secret of life from the demon lord, named Sutekh(Osiris's brother and murderer), whose followers hired the men to mug him. During his stay with Toulon, he animates the puppets used in the show, though he tells him that this is not true life. Later, Toulon brings in the dead body of a beggar friend of his, leading Afzel to present him with a ring containing an extendable needle. With Afzel's guidance, Toulon pricks the beggar's neck and injects the needle into a puppet known as "Pinhead" and says magic words told to him by Afzel. Due to this, the puppet comes to life, signaling that it knows who Toulon is and what he has done, though Afzel pulls him away before Pinhead can signal whether or not he enjoys what has been done.

Later, Toulon is met with a young Belgian/Jewish aristocrat named Elsa, or Ilsa, who enjoyed his show, only for the both of them to be taken back to the Belgian embassy by her bodyguards. Elsa's father tells her not to go out again and the bodyguards assault Toulon, leaving him out in the cold night. During this time, Sutekh's followers detect Afzel in the theatre and kill Toulon's friends and fellow puppeteers before Afzel kills himself so Sutekh cannot "lay claim" to him. When he returns, Toulon finds his friends dead and uses Afzel's technique to re-animate them within his puppets. Toulon addresses his friends (Including the returned Pinhead as well as Afzel, residing in a puppet known as "Six-Shooter") by their puppet-bodies' names, and vows revenge. One puppet wielding small blades cuts a symbol of protection into his arm to aid in the quest. Shortly after this preparation, Toulon confronts Sutekh's followers (who sensed Afzel's magic being used again) in his theater, and along with the puppets kills one and incapacitates the two others. Afterwards, he plans to flee the country, saying there is nothing left for him in France. Sutekh magically resuscitates and re-empowers his other 2 followers, who continue in their plans to kill the puppet master. In their bid to do so, they capture Elsa and send a dream across the city telling Toulon of their location, aboard the caboose of a train.

Toulon and the puppets board the train in hopes of rescuing Elsa. The puppets kill one of Sutekh's men whilst Toulon himself throws another one off the train. With the threat temporarily ended, Toulon introduces Elsa to his "friends", and he and Elsa begin to profess their love for each other.

Toulon, Elsa and the puppets go back to Paris, where he retired from being a puppeteer to become a teacher of medicine in Chemistry and Anatomy, and became a gifted surgeon. In 1912, after saving up on money from teaching medicine and saving lives, he resumes his career as puppeteer and begins an expedition to Cairo with Elsa, where he has put on a puppet rendition of Faust starring his (presumed) seventh living puppet Mephisto. When World War I broke out in 1914, Toulon retired from his career as puppeteer once again to return to France and resumed his career as a doctor, providing medical care on the battlefield. After the war ended in 1918, he finally retired from his career as a doctor because the sight of blood was taking a toll to his psyche. He and Elsa traveled back to Cairo to continue his expedition of the show Faust in the early 20s, and became one of the most famous puppet masters of all time, but over the course of the late 20s, the show had gained little popularity.

Somewhere during all of this, the Egyptians had developed a method of giving life to inanimate figurines, a potion somewhat close to being the Elixir of life, and these Egyptians were tasked to teach this method to few practitioners of magic. However, the magic in this potion comes from the secrets of Osiris, which Sutekh now claims, and Sutekh's followers, a tribe of Ancient Egyptian Sorcerers, take the method back and were tasked to protect it from being discovered. In 1929, a Merchant from Cairo steals the formula for the Elixir from the tribe, who comes across Andre Toulon's play, and sets fire to the stage and the puppet Mephisto, apparently using his mind. Later, the Merchant meets with Toulon and Elsa afterwards, and shows the two of them a goblin-like puppet he gave life to, named Homunculus, which moves of its own accord. He offers Toulon the puppet's secrets, claiming the artificial enchantment of his marionettes (the ring) belong to the last century. The Merchant makes a profit off of it and puts the blame on Toulon, making Toulon Sutekh's unintentional adversary for the second time. Andre and Elsa move to Germany and settle In Berlin. Thanks to Toulon's background in chemistry, the puppeteer uses the Elixir to bring four new puppets to life: Tunneler, Jester, Pinhead and Six-Shooter. Tunneler, Pinhead and Jester are based on their friends: "Joseph Sebastion" (Tunneler), an American Soldier who was captured and forced to work in the salt mines by the Nazis; Jester, a book-keeper named "Hans Seiderman" who the Toulons liked for his love of jokes and who was shot to death by the Nazis; and Pinhead, a kindhearted man called "Herman Strauss" who was killed for smuggling food into a work camp (Six-Shooter's identity was never revealed)., making him even more popular with the crowds in the.

In 1943, with Germany losing too many soldiers on the Eastern Front, Herman Goering orders General Mueller to execute Project Deathcore: experimenting with deceased soldiers and reanimate them as human shields for the living. Dr. Hess is tasked with carrying out this project while being supervised by Major Krauss of the Gestapo, who reports back to Mueller up to Goering. For over a year, Dr. Hess has time after time experimented but can't get it right. In April of 1944, Krauss's driver, Lt. Eric Stein, a puppeteer like Andre, sees Andre's new show, making a mockery of Hitler. Not only that, he spies on Toulon and sees him injecting the puppets the Elixir of Life. He reports this back to Krauss, who then orders for Toulon's arrest and demands his cooperation with Dr. Hess on the Deathcore Project. Elsa was murdered by Major Krauss when she tried to stop the Nazis from kidnapping Andre and the Puppets. Andre later went to a morgue with Pinhead and Jester, where they took the tissue from her corpse. Back at their temporary camp, Andre injects the formula that he made from the tissue into the puppet he made for her, resurrecting her as Leech Woman. Toulon and the puppets go on a murder spree, taking down those responsible for Elsa's death (Eric, Mueller, Krauss, and any German/Nazi that gets in the way). During this time, Toulon creates Blade based on Kraus's appearance and puts Dr. Hess's soul into it when he died attempting to get Toulon out of Berlin. After the vicious murder of Krauss, Toulon gets a forged passport and assumes Krauss's identity and leaves Berlin to Switzerland with Peter Hertz. After dropping Peter off with relatives, Toulon and the puppets stay at an Inn in Kolewige, where they discover Cyclops in their trunk, and Toulon explains to them the times he had with the Retro puppets.

Toulon moves to America between late 1944 and early 1945, residing at the Bodega Bay Inn on Scareb Hill. Toulon is first seen in the original Puppet Master, staying at the Bodega Bay Inn. He is shown to be hiding from Nazi agents there, and also shows a very deep affection for his puppets, having created an oriental puppet named Shreddar Khan and an Indian puppet named Gengie. However, during his stay there, he begins to set up an experiment in an attempt to bring Elsa back to him, creating two life-sized dolls that he kept hidden in the attic of the hotel. The experiment is soul transference. It's speculated that Toulon experimented with soul transference for a while. Also in the attic, Toulon kept his unfinished masterpiece puppet, Decapitron, the only puppet that can destroy Sutekh and possesses Andre's soul. He writes a letter to friends of Elsa's, asking them to send her belongings to him for the experiment. They did, but ratted him out to the Nazis, sending them to sneak into the U.S for Toulon. Toulon hides the puppets as the Nazis break into his room, and on March 15th, 1945, he shoots himself to prevent them from ever gaining the secret of life.

Toulon returns in His Unholy Creations, brought back from the dead by his puppets, who reanimate him in the same way that he has animated them. He claims to want to give the puppets more of the Elixir, but needs massive amounts of the animation serum to do it. To make the serum, he needs various pieces of people, so he sets his puppets off to murder a few. A woman named Carolyn Bramwell leads of group of parapsychologists into the hotel to uncover what happened in Puppet Master. During her stay there, Toulon believes her to be the reincarnation of his long dead wife Elsa (Puppet Master 3 seems to contradict this, as Elsa's soul is inside of the puppet, named Leech Woman. However, it's been stated that the puppets don't have memories from their previous life, and this new life creates new memories for them). Toulon continues his soul transference experiment he began almost 50 years ago, and transfers his soul into his new body. Toulon betrayed his loyal puppets in favor of Carolyn. Dismayed and enraged, the puppets turn on him, and set him on fire, causing him to fall out the attic window and fall to his death.

In The Demon and The Final Chapter, a young scientist prodigy named Rick Meyers is working with Biotech Industries to discover artificial intelligence that can simulate life, called Project Omega. Once again, Osiris's secrets, now claimed by Sutekh, is nearly found, but this time, Sutekh has his demon worshipers, called Watchers, put their life force into their children, Totems, and send them to the Up-World to kill those involved in Project Omega (Dr. Leslie Piper and Dr. Carl Baker). Rick discovers the puppets along with his girlfriend Susie, her friend Lauren (who is a psychic and a medium), and Rick's old colleague and Lauren's boyfriend, Cameron Phillips, who is also involved in the Omega Project. After Cameron is killed by the totems, the spirit of Toulon, having seen the error of his ways, possesses Lauren and aides Rick in fighting off the Totems, having him bring Decapitron to life, the only puppet that can stop Sutekh. After Rick is paroled for the murders of Baker, Piper and Phillips by Dr. Jennings of the Phoenix Division, Jennings and three goons go to the hotel to steal the puppets, only for all three goons to be murdered by Sutekh. Rick and Susie join Jennings and bring back Decapitron to fight off Sutekh. After the puppets kill Jennings for attacking Rick, the puppets, led by Decapitron, kill Sutekh and all almost die in the process. Toulon leaves the puppets in Rick's care.

In The Legacy, Toulon somehow managed to document everything from Retro to Curse onto a tape recorder for any possible candidates for puppet master to find. (Possibly recorded it while possessing the puppet Decapitron or possessing Lauren). The puppets end up in the care of Peter Hertz after a rogue agent named Maclain shoots Rick Meyers dead, supposedly for the secret to animating the puppets to life. She tracks Peter down to Bodega Bay Inn in the basement, and he plays Toulon's tapes for her, distracting her long enough for him to fatally wound her with her own gun. She reveals that the people she's working for don't want the secret of life, they want to know how to DIE for good. She explains that because of Toulon's attempts at soul transference, he, along with the other puppet masters who attempted to duplicate his work, left behind immortals trapped in wooden bodies, living every day in agony, wanting revenge on their Puppet Master. She dies, and ALL of the Puppet Masters creations attack Peter and the puppets (off-screen), ending the series with the good side of Andre Toulon (the puppets) to fight with the bad side of Andre Toulon (immortals).

Notes

• Andre Toulon was created by Charles Band and David Schmoeller where he was initially portrayed by actor William Hickey.

Appearances

• Puppet Master:
• Retro Puppet Master:
• Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge:

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