Made of Blue Felt and Working Blue, Too: Dirty Puppets on the Big Screen

Director Brian Henson wasn’t surprised when some viewers were mortified by the red-band trailer for his new movie “The Happytime Murders” — so explicit it can be shown in theaters only before R-rated movies. In one scene, “I used puppets and Silly String to comically depict a man ejaculating,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s the choice of Silly String that makes people say, ‘Oh, this is just naughty, ridiculous, guilty-pleasure fun.'”

Of course, the fact that it’s puppets having sex might be a clue, too.

“Happytime” (which opened Friday), a mystery spoof starring Melissa McCarthy as a cop who teams up with a puppet partner to investigate the killings of blue-felt victims, isn’t the first risqué puppet opus — there was “Avenue Q” on Broadway and the 2004 comedy “Team America: World Police.” It’s not even the only transgressive puppet satire coming out this month: “Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich,” a darkly comic, Nazi-themed reboot of the horror franchise about demonic toys, hit screens Aug. 17.

But “Happytime” is the first R-rated movie from the Jim Henson Company, founded by Brian’s father and famous for family friendly fare like “The Muppet Show.”

“I was worried the audience would be upset,” Brian Henson admitted. “But truthfully, this is very similar to what my dad and all those Muppets guys would do when cameras weren’t rolling — they had naughty, blue senses of humor.”

That was offscreen, though. How would the elder Henson, who died in 1990, feel about gags like the porn-movie scene in which an octopus milks a cow’s eight udders simultaneously? “I think he would enjoy it and say, ‘You went over the line in a couple of places,'” Brian Henson said. “But there’s an expectation with R-rated comedies these days that you should go a little too far, so I did it on purpose.”

McCarthy agreed, saying she wasn’t concerned about offending moviegoers. “Sometimes, when things aren’t real, you can push it a little farther,” she said. “These are puppets, so you can only take them so seriously, and that’s the fun of it.” Still, the mother of two preteenage girls added, “My kids will not be seeing ‘Happytime,’ and other children shouldn’t see it until they’re older.”

Thomas Lennon, the veteran comedic actor (“Reno 911!”) who plays a comic-book artist battling white-supremacist marionettes in “The Littlest Reich,” allowed his young son, Oliver, to play a small role in the movie. “He was very excited to be in it,” Lennon said. “But he might not ever see it.”

That’s because unlike in “Happytime,” actual human beings engage in explicit sex — and are gruesomely slaughtered by the mini-Nazis. “I approached it as a horror movie, but everything I do has comedy,” said screenwriter S. Craig Zahler, whose credits include the acclaimed indie gorefests “Bone Tomahawk” and “Brawl in Cell Block 99.”

There are precedents for puppets committing mayhem, like the 1978 Anthony Hopkins ventriloquist shocker, “Magic,” and 10 years later, “Child’s Play,” the start of the Chucky slasher-film series. Lennon puts puppets in the same disturbing category as clowns: “Somewhere in all the John Wayne Gacy-ness of it, these things are designed by adults to appeal to kids,” he said, referring to the serial killer who volunteered as a clown. “But they’re handled so wrong.”

Zahler offered his own theory about why puppets can be spooky. “Anything with fixed facial features is creepy,” he said. “If the visage is locked in one emotional state, the person looking at that face has to interpret what’s going on underneath the surface. If it’s a smile, you’re like, ‘Is that dude really happy all the time?’ Probably not.”

No one was likely to be smiling at Sesame Workshop when “Happytime” unveiled its provocative marketing tagline: “No Sesame. All Street.” The makers of “Sesame Street,” longtime home of the Muppets, filed suit, arguing the film “deliberately confuses consumers into mistakenly believing Sesame is associated with, has allowed, or has even endorsed or produced the movie and tarnishes Sesame’s brand.” A federal judge dismissed the suit, and Brian Henson has no hard feelings. “Sesame Workshop needed to do that to distance itself as publicly as possible from the movie, which is fair enough,” he said.

Don’t call the “Happytime” characters Muppets, either. “The Muppets are ‘The Muppet Show’ characters, and Disney manages those,” said Henson, whose new film is being released by STX Entertainment. “Then the ‘Sesame Street’ Muppets are different. We call these guys the Henson Miskreants."

Lennon said the movies may serve as counterprogramming. “Ninety-nine percent of people are just fighting about stuff on Facebook, so it’ll be nice to take a couple hours and watch puppets say and do disgusting things to each other.”

Whether audiences turn out or not, we haven’t seen the last oddball puppet film. Zahler is working with the Jim Henson Company to produce his dream project, “Hug Chickenpenny,” a Dickensian fable about an Elephant Man-esque orphan embodied by an animatronic puppet. “It’s got a gothic horror feel, but it’s a very heartfelt piece,” Zahler said. One aspect will set it apart from “Happytime” and “The Littlest Reich.” Zahler said, “It will be PG or PG-13.”