I had fond memories of this movie from 1989
and was going to include it in the video vault until I watched it
again on Zone Horror. They are having a Puppetmaster season at the moment which I was almost looking forward to. What was I thinking? This film is absolutely crap!!! I know this review won't be up to my usual standard as I've had a busy internetting day but I'll give it a go anyway...
The Blurb (in case you've never heard of this before!): "Puppet maker Andre Toulon shoots himself at the Bodega
Bay Inn before his Secret of Life can be stolen by the Nazis. 50 years
later in 1989 the secret is discovered by Neil Gallagher. Soon he sends
messages to his psychic friends Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank
Forrester and Carissa Stamford who arrive to find his wife Megan who
claims Neil to be dead. As the night goes by, the murderous puppets are
awakened and unleased on the group, only for them to discover that evil
comes in all sizes."
It
appears that this film has a cult following. Presumably the fans are made up of
people my age who saw it through a drunken haze back when they were in
their late teens too! In comparison with a lot of other killer doll
movies which came out at the same time this is still awful but I
remember it being heavily promoted by Blockbuster... which is probably the only reason why we
all watched it. What suckers we were!
The tagline for this film was "This is not child's play!". Obviously "Child's Play" is a far superior story and pretty much set a precedent the previous year anyway.
"Puppetmaster" is badly directed/poorly edited, the acting is below average, there are huge plot holes
where things are not explained at all, and the stop-motion puppet
effects are not just really dated but were actually pretty archaic when the film was new too.
The worst thing about it is the
pacing though. It takes absolutely ages to get going. The first 10
minutes of the puppets getting hidden away while two Germans come through the hotel (presumably to do something nasty to Toulon) are a complete waste of film. I'm sure there was supposed to be some tension here but I didn't feel it. How ineptly can tension be handled? Just watch this and find out!
After the death of Toulon nothing else happens of any importance until almost
three-quarters of an hour later. Yes, that's 45 minutes of yadayada just to set up two-dimensional characters who you won't care about anyway. Then, when anything does happen, the scenes
are so drawn out that it all just becomes boring.
It's not very
gory, isn't scary at all, and there's only one nudie bit. Kathryn
O'Reilly (I think that's her name!) plays a sexy blonde and she's
probably the only good reason for watching this at all. Barbara
Crampton is in this film too for a few seconds but to see her getting
sexy you need to watch "From Beyond" instead.
The
puppets themselves were nicely thought out but are completely wasted:
"Blade" (no, not Wesley Snipes!) should be the main character but you hardly see him doing anything; "Tunneler" may have a drill coming out of his head
but he doesn't really get to do a lot with it except kill the only pretty
woman in the whole thing (and that happens off camera!!!); "Pinhead" (no, not the cenobite!) only attempts to strangle and
then punch Irene Miracle before she just throws him down the stairwell anyway; "Ms Leech" (I have no idea if that's what she's really called!) takes absolutely ages just to spew out the few
leeches from her mouth which provide the ruination of the film's only
sex scene; and "Jester" is the most pointless as he just doesn't get to kill
anybody!
It doesn't even have a proper ending... Obviously this factor lead to the half dozen even crappier sequels.
"Puppetmaster" is a Charles Band film after all and, with hinesight, that pretty much tells you
all you need to know about how this series ever continued. I really think the only decent film that Full Moon ever
made was "Phantoms"
(aka Meridien) and that was only because Sherilyn Fenn got nudie in it.
Remember her? What happened to Sherliyn Fenn? The last I saw of her she
was getting her arms and legs cut off in "Boxing Helena".
Anyway, my rating? 1 out of 10. I think everyone should watch this at least once though to see how not to make a horror film.
