Thursday, October 4, 2018

October Horror Challenge 2018 #10: "Retro Puppet Master"



When I watched the original Puppet Master movies, I was surprised to learn that, while the first and second movies were pretty terrible,  the third one was actually pretty good. It's not typical for the third movie in a franchise to be the better than the first two, but the backstory of the magic that brought the puppets to life back in a time when the puppeteer had to hide from the nazis was a compelling story.

The fourth and fifth movies were ok as well, once the series found new life with the third movie. This is the seventh movie in the series, though, and we're back to the silliness that permeated the first two movies.

This movie focuses on a puppeteer who uses magic to bring his puppets to life. The movie begins with him telling his story to his puppets (which, wouldn't they already know? They were there when it happened). Soon we find ourselves in ancient France, where no one speaks French and yet they all have weirdly unidentifiable accents. We see a puppet show being put on by a young puppeteer, and soon he meets an old man who claims to be an ancient sorcerer capable of bringing the puppets to life. This causes a bunch of problems as other evil forces want their hands on the secret of life.

The special effects aren't great here, though I do enjoy seeing the puppets lurch around and kill people. I would totally have loved this movie when I was a kid. The half baked love story feels tacked on, but that's to be expected bec9i swear every one of these movies has a love story subplot for some reason. At least the actress who plays the love interest isn't bad. I think she's actually the best actor in the movie. Overall the movie is pretty bad, but I did enjoy watching it and making fun of it.

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