[.ca] Retro Puppet Master - DVD (ISBN 1573471399)

Retro Piece Of...:
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 \o...stink\c. 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.

JULIAN JAYNES WOULD HAVE LOVED IT:
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.

Full Moon Picture's Worst!:
This film needed alot of work.When I rented it I only watched it once since it was so stupid and non violent.Puppet Master 1,2,3,4,5,and 6 are all good but this is just plain and stupid.The film's special effects stunk and so did the cast this film.The Puppet Master Series I think was Fullmoon's greatest series next to Subspecies but this film broke the best series.Don't let the cover fool you.They look so mean and bad but when you first see them they are not mean and angry like the first Puppet Master films.I think FullMoonPictures should have never made this since it doesn't have Horror,suspence,drama,or even love.I rather watch Puppet Master 6 than this one.Hey,Fullmoon don't make a film like this again or prepare to suffer.This film really is for kids not teens and adults.Kids may like this since it has a Fantasy side but I hated it.

Do not watch this !:
This was like watching an episode of "Are you affraid of the dark". Yes thats how lame it was, not at all what I expected. Violence was a big problem there were only a few mildy violent scenes. Nothing else. It's a very bad movie, very bad. I don't need to get deep in details but like I said picture yourself watching "Are you affraid of the dark". The effects were so bad, you could even see the string on the puppets. If you want to laugh watch this but if you want a good time, look elsewhere!

Bad attempt at revitalizing the saga:
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?