Reviews

Where do I start? "Puppet Master" is one of those films, that if you're a horror fan, you hear ripples about all the time. I'd read about it on the Internet and heard about it in countless other places, but had never got round to seeing it. I really wish it had stayed that way, because this is without a doubt one of the worst films I've ever seen.

Now let me first say, that I'm not a film snob, I enjoy dumb fun as much as the next horror fan. Some of my favourite films include things like "Friday the 13th" and I recently saw a film called "Monster Man", a very low budget horror-comedy which although terrible, tickled me in the right places. Carrying on from there, "Puppet Master" is still an extremely bad film, even from a trashy, gore fiend's point of view.

Now I'm not going to even bother complaining about the acting in the film, because lets be honest, no one sitting down to watch a film about a group of murdering puppets expects great acting. The acting was believable, lets leave it at that, it's the most you can hope for.

The direction however was one of the worst things about this film. There are a lot of overly long, drawn out sequences in this film and it's not until about 45 minutes in, halfway through the film, that anything happens. The worst example has to be the opening sequence where Toulin (the "Puppet Master") is collected up all his puppets and hiding them away, as someone is after him. As we see him do this, it is inter-cut with two men in black making there way to him and at the same time, one of his stray puppets trying to do the same thing. This went on for about 10-12 minutes, it was just the two guys walking and a point of view shot from the puppet running around trying to get back to his master. About 2/3 into this sequence I was shouting at the television, as I was so bored and frustrated that the film wasn't progressing. Another example is the scene at the end, where the puppets turn on their new master and attack him in an elevator. It went on forever! It was not scary or particularly violent and quite simply bored the ass off me!

There are also a lot of ideas and concepts within the film, which might have sounded good on paper, but do not work at all in the film. The first thing that springs to mind is the female puppet "Leech Woman", the whole thing of her regurgitating leeches which suck her victims dry, is both utterly unconvincing and totally retarded. For a start, the effects used for this scene are abysmal! You can clearly see that it's just either a real leech, or a fake, being forced through the back of a rubber head and out the mouth. I mean, come on, the rubber puppets head even distorts and bends as the puppeteer struggles to force the leech through the mouth. Another is "Pinhead" ("Hellraiser" already took that one morons), it is never once explained why on earth a puppet has a pair of what are clearly human hands. It looks ridiculous and the fact that we have no idea why he doesn't just have puppet hands makes it seem all the more ridiculous!

All in all, "Puppet Master" is an awful film and I cannot begin to imagine why it has such a cult following. The vastly superior "Child's Play" had already covered this ground the previous year anyway, so I guess the keyword here, is POINTLESS. It is badly directed, the acting is average and the effects show the age of the film like nothing I've ever seen before.

When I borrowed this film from a friend, I also borrowed the sequel "Puppet Master II", I somehow don't think I'll be bothering!