The Toymaker (film)

The Toymaker
Official release poster
Directed by	Andrew Jones
Written by	Andrew Jones
Produced by	Lee Bane Andrew Jones Rebecca Graham
Starring	Erick Hayden Jo Weil Nathan Head Lee Bane Sophie Willis
Cinematography	Jonathan McLaughlin
Edited by	Andrew Jones
Music by	Bobby Cole
Production company	North Bank Entertainment
Distributed by	4Digital Media Take One Great Movies Frighten Entertainment Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Red Square Encripta
Release date	August 21, 2017 (2017-08-21) (United Kingdom)
Running time	84 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Toymaker (also known as Robert and the Toymaker) is a 2017 British supernatural horror film written and directed by Andrew Jones. A sequel to the (2016) film The Curse of Robert the Doll and (2015) film Robert and a third installment to the Robert the Doll film series. It stars Erick Hayden, Jo Weil, Nathan Head, Lee Bane and Sophie Willis. The film is about the Nazis pursuing a Toymaker who has acquired a mystical book which gives life to inanimate objects.

Plot

Bavaria, Germany, 1941. Fleeing from the Nazis, Benjamin Hoffman seeks refuge with Christophe Muller and his wife and daughter. He reveals that the Nazis are seeking the occult secrets of a book he carries. SS officer Colonel Ludolf von Alvensleben comes to the house, believing Hoffman is there. In the course of this, he kills Hoffman and the Mullers. However, the Mullers’ teenage daughter Esther escapes with the book and seeks refuge with the toymaker Amos Bluchert before dying. Fascinated with the book, Amos reads from it and uses a spell to bring Robert and other dolls in his workshop to life. However, after seeing the living toys, his assistant Abigail Kendrick becomes fearful and turns Amos in to the Nazis seeking the reward.

Cast

• Erick Hayden as Colonel Ludolf Von Alvensleben
• Jo Weil as Officer Hermann Fegelein
• Nathan Head as Officer Heinrich Berger
• Lee Bane as The Toymaker
• Sophie Willis as Elisabeth
• Bodo Friesecke as Officer Karl Gebhardt
• Claire Carreno as Abigail Kendrick
• Rik Grayson as Benjamin Hoffman
• Harriet Rees as Esther Muller
• Ali Rodney as Brigitte Muller
• Francesco Tribuzio as Christophe Muller
• Jonathan Willis as Josef
• Robert Graham as Wilhelm
• Courtney Bartle as Francesca
• Adolf Hitler as Himself (archive footage) (uncredited)

Production

Filming

Filming took place in November 2016 at Tredomen Cottage in Crickhowell and at the Traditional Toys shop in Llantrisant, the Old Natwest Bank building in Bute Street Cardiff, Gwili Railway Station in Carmarthen and the Cardiff Masonic Hall.

Release

The film was released nationwide on August 21, 2017, and was released in DVD on September 5, 2017. The film also released in Netflix on April 30, 2022.

Reception

Moria Reviews gave the film a rating of 2 stars and wrote; I found The Toymaker a somewhat better film than Robert the Doll. That said, it is past the one-hour point before we get to see Robert. It is still the same scrawny immobile puppet it was in the first film, although this time it gets to be accompanied by a couple of other dolls.

Culture Crypt gave the film a negative review and giving the film a review score of 20 and wrote; Even though it rips off what Full Moon already did with its “Puppet Master” series, “Robert and the Toymaker’s” dolls versus Nazis theme should create a playground for midnight movie madness. Yet it ends up being even more intolerably stale and un-fun than the two movies that came before.

Sequels

Main article: The Legend of Robert the Doll

The Legend of Robert the Doll was released on 6 March 2018, and Robert Reborn on 24 June 2019.

External links

• The Toymaker at IMDb
• Official website