Curse of the Puppet Master
Curse of the Puppet Master
R | 26 May 1998 (USA)
Curse of the Puppet Master Trailers

Andre Toulon's diminutive assassins take up residence at The House of Marvels, a traveling doll circus run by Dr. Magrew, who has been trying to create a living doll of his own with little success.

Reviews
paulclaassen

Despite the film's logline, his intentions are not clear until the very end. The entire film we see the scientist (George Peck) have Robert (Josh Green) cut and carve little wood blocks, but we actually never see the end result.This is the film that rebooted the franchise, which still continues to this day. This installment is not so much about the puppets, but instead more about the 'dummy boy' Robert, who steals the show. The plot is more solid than the other Puppet Master films, and I enjoyed this film more than the previous installments. In fact, this would hold pretty well as a film on its own and not part of the franchise, especially also since it is a completely new storyline. George Peck was also rather good as the scientist.Pity the film had such an abrupt ending...

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atinder

(I was going to skip this one)This movie is a stand alone movie in the series, is not connected to the last two movies or the others,Is brand new master and this as a New plot, A scientist attempts to master the art of transferring people's souls into puppets.I didn't think it was too bad but i liked the Idea of the plot, it's brought some freshness to the series, it felt like the Puppet as some of Creep factor back.There were some very bloody moment in this, which was not bad, I felt same as all the other in this series, another Average movieThe acting was not that good at all from some of the cast and some were bearable5 out of 10

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MaximumMadness

From director David Decoteau (under an alias for some reason in the credits) comes the sixth movie in the "Puppet Master" franchise- "Curse of the Puppet Master." And to me, this is the first film in the series that was an all-in-all bad movie. Sure the previous five movies weren't high art, but they had a lot going for them. The first two films were fun little creepy horror movies that were easily accessible and had some nifty special effects. The third movie (also directed by Decoteau) was actually a decent revenge tale telling the origins of the story in Nazi Germany and had a lot of cool (albeit low budget) moments. And the fourth and fifth films, which were shot back-to-back and were essentially one movie split in half, were silly but a lot of fun and were the first movies to turn the puppets into "heroes", and actually explain more of the magic behind it all.The sixth film tries very hard to be unique, at times feeling like an ode to classic Universal monster movies like "Frankenstein", but it just can't quite pull itself together. It lacks back-story, is extremely rushed and feels a lot cheaper than the previous movies.The evil Dr. Magrew (George Peck in a delightfully hammy performance) has somehow taken possession of Andre Toulon's magical puppets, and uses them in his "House of Marvels" tourist attraction. His daughter Jane (Emily Harrison) has returned home to visit, and seems worried that his past assistant has gone missing. They soon meet socially awkward Robert "Tank" (Josh Green), a kind-hearted but meek young man whom is a talented sculptor, but is bullied by others. Magrew hired Robert to help sculpt him a new puppet, and a friendship between the two grows, as does a romance with Jane.However, when a bully from Robert's past threatens Jane, the puppets must once again resume their deadly deeds, and Magrew's devious secret plans are revealed shortly after... plans that may spell doom for the innocent Robert...The problems with the film begin from the opening credits, which made me realize this film was going to be padded beyond belief with re-used footage from the previous films. The credits seem to stretch on forever, and it's simply a montage of poorly edited snippets from previous films. And this film is very bad at hiding the fact that most of the puppet footage is re-used. You will recognize shots from the previous movies constantly, and its very distracting.This film also has a ton of continuity problems from the cheap budget- you can tell the didn't have time to shoot all of the footage they needed. (Case in point is one hilarious scene where the puppet Pinhead is injured, and while he is being fixed, they show a shot where you can clearly see him in a cage, put back together, before cutting back to him being fixed again. It was atrociously bad editing.)The biggest problem, though, is the lack of explanation of the story- the film makes no effort to connect itself to prior entries with no explanation of what happened to characters from the previous films. Also, the film seems to make up the rules as it goes along, and it's very messy- the story simply doesn't make sense, and without spoiling anything, the final 20 minutes are a poorly edited pile of shots with almost no coherence or logic. The story needed a lot more work than the screenwriters gave it.This is the first truly awful movie in the series. While a few of the entries after this one (particularly the more light-hearted and fun "Retro Puppet Master") were actually decent, starting from this movie onward, the series fell in a big, bad way. This gets a pretty-bad 3 out of 10.

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boy_in_red

Phew! After the torture of plodding through through parts 4 and 5 (I kid you not it must have taken about 6 separate attempts for me to make it all the way through both those films) the sixth film is the series is actually a lot of fun and, thankfully, a change in direction.What I like about the stronger Puppet Master films is that rather than simply present a film about puppets killing people, there's often a lot more happening. Colourful characters, or set amidst a Nazi uprising, there have definitely been factors that make this straight-to-video series a little more sophisticated than you would expect.This film is not the strongest of the series, but still we're given some nice story elements that keep us watching- the shy Robert taken in by Dr. Magrew, who runs a showroom of oddities, a man who seems to have dark secrets that go beyond the living puppets he now owns.I enjoyed this film, it took the action away from Bogada Hotel, and it doesn't follow continuity with the previous 2 films (thankfully!) It brought a sense of fun, tension and mystery back to Puppet Master.Of course it's not perfect. Yes some of the acting is downright atrocious, and it's clear this film represents director Decoteaus' first steps towards his soft-core "jocks in tight boxers" style of horror film making, opting for looks over talent in some of his male actors, but thankfully it doesn't dominate this film- I watch horror to be scared, not aroused.Overall a fun way to spend 90 minutes, and one of the better sequels.

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