Retro Puppet Master

Year: 1999
Director: David DeCoteau
Writer: Charles Band, Benjamin Carr
Genre: Horror: Evil Dolls

After the last film, I was expecting this to be Puppet Master 6.5 or something. However, instead of picking up on the obvious cliffhanger of the last film it went in a totally different direction. This version takes us further back to Andre's story. Instead of being in Nazi Germany though this is back when he was a young man and was learning about the puppets from someone else.

Whoever the teacher was he of course got the secrets in Egypt and taught them to his one apprentice - Andre. Back at this point the puppets were different too, although they were mostly analogous to the ones in the rest of the series. What I'm curious about is what happened to these original puppets because they were never shown getting completely destroyed or anything. Unless I was too busy eating my sandwich when it happened.

So anyway, somehow they once again managed to make a Puppet Master movie interesting. In a way, it feels like an Indiana Jones adventure which is pretty awesome considering the goofy subject matter. In fact, it is right up there as one of my favorites of the series. For the 7th film in a series to do that is excellent indeed. I can only expect though that the rest of the films are not nearly as exciting.

There's not much I can say about the movie otherwise... The set pieces and outfits were nice. The acting was a little stilted and funny in the beginning but after a while it goes away. I kind of wish the puppets were more active, but it was also nice to see the story play out with more human interaction.

Curse of the Puppet Master

Year: 1998
Director: David DeCoteau
Writer: Benjamin Carr
Genre: Horror: Evil Dolls

So here were are after the supposed end of Puppet Master. As I predicted, the story has been restarted in a way with new characters. The puppets are still the same though, and unfortunately Leech Girl is back. At the very least though, she had absolutely no use in the film other than to look scary at a few points so thank goodness.

As or the movie itself, I'm not sure where it's supposed to take place in the timeline. The characters apparently got the puppets at auction some years ago but it doesn't make sense that the last owners would have sold them. That is, unless they died or something. It couldn't come before the last two Puppet Masters because the puppets were still in their Bodega Bay Inn home at that point and not shipped across country and back due to auctions. Really then, I can only assume this film is supposed to happen 20 years after the last two or something of the sort. I doubt it really matters.

So you've got a man and his daughter who operate a puppet show and have various other novelties. The father invites a young gas station attendant to work for him as he apparently is really good at whittling. He wants the young man to build a new puppet for him that lives. Of course, the father has to say something ominous and predictable like "you have to put your soul into it...". Seeing nothing wrong with this picture, the guy happily takes on the job.

The puppets seem to quite like the arrangement and are generally well-behaved through most of the movie. Only during the climax do they really get back to old form. Strangely, the acting of the puppets is even more wooden than it has ever been before. They were barely animated at all and were rarely shot in full (so that hands could manipulate them from the lower half in shots). It's really weird that the production values would shoot down so much from the last film to now. I suppose Full Moon began to tire of their star series and may have been working on other projects. I'll have to look into them more to see what else they had going on at the same time.

Overall, this film was actually a lot better than I thought it'd be. There is one glaring issue though and that is the end of a film. If you thought The Blair Witch Project had a sudden ending try this one on for size. It cuts off immediately in the middle of a climactic scene! It's as if you were watching something on TV to have it cut off for a test of the emergency broadcast system. Except, apparently, this is the way they wanted it to end. I'm not sure if the next film will be a continuation of this one, but it sure looks like that's what they wanted to do.