Monday, October 15, 2018

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR WEEN: PUPPET MASTER: THE LEGACY (2003) **


Puppet Master:  The Legacy is the eighth entry in the long-running franchise and the first one to be directed by producer Charles Band (using a pseudonym, “Robert Talbot”).  He didn’t have much work to do as this is essentially a “Best of” clips show masquerading as an actual sequel.  (The editor was the real hero here.)  Fans of the series will probably be disappointed by the lack of new puppet action, but for a guy like me who hasn’t seen these movies in a while, I guess it was an okay refresher course (especially since I plan on watching the rest of them in the next few days).

A thief (Kate Orsini) holds Andre Toulon’s apprentice, Peter Hertz (Jacob Witkin) hostage and forces him to divulge his puppet mastery secrets.  He eventually relents and begins to bring her up to speed on the history of the puppets.  And by that, I mean he just shows a bunch of clips from the Puppet Master series.   

Since The Legacy is basically a recounting of the entire franchise thus far, that means we get quite a lot of killer puppet action with the bare minimum of plot.  I mean I can’t say any of the Puppet Master films ever came close to anything approaching a “good” movie, so whittling seven of them down to make one passable eighty-minute flick wasn’t really a difficult task.  Even if we’ve seen all this shit before, it’s hard to hate any movie in which people get offed by killer puppets about every five minutes or so.  

The new scenes that help to string the flashbacks together are adequate at best.  They take place on one claustrophobic set and look like they were filmed in a day.  Unfortunately, they feature no new Puppet Mastering, which is disappointing to say the least.  Even with these lackluster wraparound segments, Puppet Master:  The Legacy is still one of the better movies in the franchise (which really isn’t saying much).

AKA:  Puppet Master Legacy.

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