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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