Product Description
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Master puppeteer Andre Toulon (William Hickey, Prizzi's Honor,
In the Name of the Rose) has discovered the secret of life…or is
it the secret of death? The result is five killer puppets, each
uniquely qualified for murder and mayhem.
Tunneler has a nasty habit of boring holes in people with his
drill-bit head. Leech Woman regurgitates killer leeches that suck
her victims dry. Pinhead strangles his enemies with his powerful,
vice-like hands. Blade has a gleaming hook for one hand and a
razor-sharp for the other. And Jester, the brains of the
bunch, is just plain mean.
Together, they're an army of skilled assassins, genetically
programmed to guard the deadly secrets of … the PUPPET MASTER.
Now, for the first time, all nine films in the PUPPET MASTER
series are available in one horrifying collection.
.com
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Cue the carousel music and get the marionettes out of the case:
the straight-to-DVD Puppet Master series is hereby enrolled in a
boxed set. These nine films are connected by a crazily jumbled
chronology and the maddeningly catchy theme by Richard Band. It
all stems from a puppeteer named Andre Toulon, who discovers the
secret of reanimating puppets; the lethal little creatures carry
on the saga even after Toulon himself is gone. Fans know them as
Pinhead, Jester, Blade, Tunneler, and assorted others.
Actually, Toulon (played by William Hickey) departs the scene
very early in Puppet Master, but his character will return
(played by different actors, notably Guy Rolfe) in other
installments. The remainder of the 1989 movie has a boring group
of parapsychologists investigating the Bodega Bay mansion where
Toulon killed himself 50 years earlier. The puppets are
out-and-out malevolent in this one, but in sequels we will
actually be rooting for them.
In Puppet Master 2 Toulon himself gets reanimated. One of the
worst in the series, this one's directed by Dave Allen, whose
stop-motion animation lends a certain eerie quality to the
puppets in the first few films of the saga. For Puppet Master 3:
Toulon's Revenge, the story line jerks back to the early 1940s,
where the puppets actually attack evil Nazis. Along with the
goofy novelty of that idea, this sequel gives us a fun new puppet
(Six Shooter, a cowboy doll with six arms) and an unusually good
crop of character actors: Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie, Sarah
Douglas.
The next two films were back to back and were intended to
round off the franchise. Puppet Master 4 and Puppet Master 5: The
Final Chapter return to the present day, with the puppet crew
turning heroic when supernatural monsters menace a new puppeteer
(Gordon Currie). As usual the wooden performers far outshine the
-and-blood cast, and the arrival of Decapitron (who gets his
name honestly) adds appeal.
Curse of the Puppet Master looks like an attempt to reboot the
franchise, with a weird new story line about a young hick taken
in by show people. Something's gone very strange when the young
heroine hugs Pinhead and sighs, "You're my hero." Ham-handed as
it is, this episode's got a pretty wild finish.
Retro Puppet Master once again goes back in time, and adds a
couple of new puppets; bad as it is, it's better than Puppet
Master the Legacy, a total rip-off that tries to fulfill a geeky
need to put the series' various pieces in true chronological
order (and is thus mostly made of material from the past films).
Puppet Master Axis of Evil uses the beginning of the first film,
then spins a new adventure for the puppets during World War II,
when stateside Nazi and Japanese spies don't stand a chance
against a new Ninja puppet.
A sequel-ready ending suggests we have not seen the last of
executive producer Charles Band's hard-working wooden actors.
Maybe after nine practice runs, we might actually get a good
movie. --Robert Horton