Customer Reviews

Retro Puppet Master

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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?

Years ago a small film company named full moon productions made there first horror film, revenge of the puppet master.Since then they have produced 7 of these awesome movies.These movies follow puppet master andre toulon and his magical puppets,blade,six shoote torch,pinhead,and jester through there fights with good and evil.This film starts with toulon telling his puppets the story of the original puppets,the retros.The movie turns out to be great,probably one of full moons best. I DEFINATELY RECCOMEND THIS MOVIE TO ALL HORROR FANS.

I hadn't heard of the 'Puppet Master' series at all when this came on the SFI channel recently. 'Retro' has craftsmanship from the very start, with good acting and well-done scene-setting. Nonetheless I was startled at the high quality of the depiction of the evil followers of Zutek, a forgotten god of Ancient Egyptian times. They spoke and comported themselves exactly like the 'Bicameral Man' of Julian Jaynes book 'Origin of Consciousness..'. When Zutek spoke to them, the hypnotic power of that voice was excellently rendered. I don't know if the producers had read Jaynes, but the highly expert way they did the villains is typical of the entire movie. The puppets themselves, mere pieces of painted wood bobbing up and down, became powerful beings just via a few grunts and some very effectively rythmic music. This is one of the few movies I wanted to see again right away, and to own on DVD.

It's not very easy to do a prequel movie,(ask George Lucas), so I was very surprised that Full Moon was able to pull this off. I tip my hat to Charles Band. This movie delivers. As for the DVD itself, no surprise that Full Moon gives you your money's worth. The behind the scenes features in the Video Zone make all these DVDs so much better. The major studios need to wake up and realize movie fans desire these "little" extras. Finally, these new retro puppets are cool!

If you love the traditional Puppet Master movies and their adventures. You will love Retro Puppet Master, as you explore the history of the puppets and discover how it all began. However if you have never seen a Puppet Master movie, Retro Puppet Master will give you a reason to, as you see the history you will feel a need to explore the great adventures the puppets have in their other movies.

I remember fondly renting the originals in the Puppet Master series when I was younger--now, years later available on DVD I was intrigued by this "new" entry in the series. Wow...what a major dissapointment! This movie is terrible...let me qualify myself by saying that I enjoy bad films, Plan 9, Astro Zombies, bad horror, etc. but his movie is BORING! They spent all their time on a boring melodrama about Toulon as a young guy. The actor who plays him is a boring, "pretty-boy" whose french accent makes you want to string him up and make him dance! The only good thing about this movie is the hot chick.... The puppets look awesome but no CGI or stop-motion from David Alan just boring real puppet action which is fine for a 5-year old but these things are supposed to be alive. Please don't waste one dime on this one, if you're curious like I was simply rent the VHS. Be warned!

The Puppet Master series, definitely tired after Part III, drags terribly in this, the seventh installment, less a movie than a commercial for more Puppet Master toys. Basically a prequel, an aged Toulon tells his puppets the story of the origins of his powers and the puppets themselves, introducing a few new puppets and "retro" versions of those we already know.

Fans of the Puppet Master series are a forgiving bunch. As an owner of the box set of all seven films (so far), I must admit that my standards aren't too high when it comes to horror films, especially these Full Moon creations. This time, however, there was no gratifying gore or over-the-top characters (a la BLOOD DOLLS) to make up for the downright terrible acting and lack of action or compelling story. I'm sure the budget for this production was ultra-low, but even the traditionally bad animation of the puppets was especially stilted in this chapter. There are zero scares - and zero blood for that matter. The puppets merely slash at reanimated mummies sent to retrieve Toulon's secret--and they barely manage to scare up some sawdust while dispatching the villains.

The film's ending in itself is a reason to celebrate, save for the fact that yet another sequel is set up with a last line of "that's another story for another time." In the accompanying VideoZone feature, Charles Band assures the viewer that a full line of action figures will be marketed for this film. No kidding. If you're a Puppet Master fan, though, you'll need to own this. There's just something about a film that's so bad as to make it irresistable. In the end, I don't know what's worse: this film or the fact that I know I'll be first in line to buy Part 8 when it's released...and Part 9...and 10...

This movie was great! It had everything that makes a great Puppet Master movie. This movie moves away from the original batch of puppets (who only have a cameo here) and focus on the equally cool retro puppets and how Toulon became the Puppet Master. This movie was well made with good acting and special effects. In the end, the only complaints I had were (A) the lack of violence and (B) the sometimes strange and hokey dialogue.

This film is really not even worth the time it took to write this review, however, it has been written to prevent some poor individual from actually having to see what I saw. It has bad accents, bad dialogue, laughable costumes, wretched effects and minute amounts of violence. The dolls, retro or not, just plain [...stink]. The dark clad villians are even worse. I usually enjoy Full Moon videos but this is one that should have never been given the green light.

To begin with, before I even watched this 7th film in the Puppet Master series, I had long given up on expecting anything half-way decent from the folks at Full Moon Video. With that said, I buckled down and forced myself to watch Retro Puppet Master. And what I got was more of the same cheesy crap that pretty much makes up most of the Puppet Master series. Much like the previous film, Curse of the Puppet Master, the only bright spot for this film was the original idea of the plot. This film is basically another prequel in which it shows the young Andre Toulon and how he originally discovered the secrets of bringing his puppets to life, and how he must save himself as well as the one he loves, Ilsa (in previous films, her name had been spelled Elsa, but who's counting?) from the evil servants of the Egyptian god Sutekh. Oh, and while I'm at it, is it worth mentioned that in the very first Puppet Master, Andre Toulon is shown killing myself in 1939. This "flashback" story told by Toulon takes place in 1944. Hmmm..I guess someone didn't do their homework! Now don't get me wrong, the story is pretty cheesy, but for this series, its a step up from some of the others as far as plot goes. But if one can look past the weak plot, it is impossible to ignore the absolute HORRIBLE execution at making this film. The effects of the Puppet Master series has never been that great, but with this film being made in 1999, and the series itself at this point being 10 years old, one would be inclined one to think that the advances in special effects and technology would help out a great deal with a film like this. But to extreme my disappointment, the effects in this film has got to be the worst in the series so far. The puppets in action looked like something a 10 year old kid could do in his spare time in his parent's basement! Not just that, but the effects of the "powers" used by the servants of Sutekh and the old man were just plain stupid looking. Are you telling me that this is the best they could have done? I don't think so, since the effects in the very first Puppet Master were 10 times better than this! As far as acting, I've seen worse, but again, there is some bad acting here. But it just wasn't the actors, the writing was at fault as well. Just some really bad dialog takes place here. For example, the repeating of lines by the three evil servants of Sutekh is just utterly dumb, and the few lines given to Toulon's puppeteer friends toward the beginning of the film is just plain bad. In closing, this is yet another really bad Puppet Master sequel. But like I said before, I had long since given up on this series and wasn't expecting much. This film has no redeeming qualities to cause anyone to watch it more than once, and is really not worth watching even once to begin with. With that said, there's no reason to buy this unless you need it to complete your Puppet Master series.