Search - Retro Puppet Master on DVD

Bad attempt at revitalizing the saga

TrezKu13 | Norfolk, VA | 12/23/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I personally think the series should have ended at Puppetmaster III. Unfortunately, I'm not the people in charge of the films, so we get things like this.When it opened up with the aging Toulon (THE puppetmaster, in my opinion) and his friends, I had high hopes. However, he's not here to act he's here to tell a story about his younger days. You see, a long time ago a bunch of white people pretending to be Arabs stole the secret to revitalizing life from Sutek (who, if I remember my Egyptian lore, was banished to another world and has no powers any way). Sutek gets mad and revives three mummies to catch the Egyptian that stole it. These mummies are perhaps the craziest part of this movie. For one, they annoyingly repeat each other's sentences. For another, they act and look like the Agents from the first Matrix (even with one leader mummy, the "Agent Smith" of the Undead). Also, they're not that scary. They kill you by basically pointing at you. This means no gore and no real excitement. Any way, back to the puppets:Toulon originally was head of a puppet troupe entertaining the wealthy of 19th century Paris. The Egyptian comes and teaches Toulon the secret of revitalization. This isn't all that great - the mummies come to the theater and kill off all of Toulon's friends looking for the Egyptian. Toulon finds them and puts their souls into the puppets. The mummies come and attack Toulon, but thankfully Toulon has the puppets to help. Actually, the puppets aren't all that great. One of them just kinda nips a mummy in the ankle and then gets kicked away. And that was your fight scene for the entire movie.Things just kinda happen from there...the love interest gets kidnapped from the Swiss Embassy, Toulon saves her, and then the movie up and ends. Like the reviewer before me said, the film suggests a sequal. Toulon looks to his puppets and says, "that is another story for another day."All I had to think of was, "NO GOD! NOOOOO!!!"This film had a lot of potential (leaving those stupid teenagers getting attacked by demons and going back to Toulon's story) but unfortunately it gets marred by bad scripts and acting. I might also add the special affects in this are HORRIBLE. How horrible? In one scene, you can see the hand holding one of the puppets! No I don't mean if you look hard you see a finger, I mean you can actually see a full-fledged, identifiable hand lifting a puppet up! Did the editor want to kill the movie? What would it have cost them to refilm that part? $2? Maybe a quarter?"