Retro Puppet Master (1999)

I had been forewarned that some of the later sequels in this series were not good, but this is the worst so far. I'm watching them all in sequential order. The first six were fine, but this one was obviously written by someone who never watched the previous entries, or just did not care.We are introduced to a young Andre Toulon and Ilsa in 1944, even though in the third movie they were much older in 1941 and Ilsa died! The actor playing young Andre Toulon is just a bad actor, there's no denying it. The puppets are better than him. And that he looks like a teen aged, pre-broken nose, baby-faced Owen Wilson is too distracting.At approximately the 30 minute mark, a dead person is shown to be blinking in the shot! Just careless film making! Bad sequelship, bad acting and badly made, it's simply thrown together without any care for the finished product or the fans. This doesn't bode too well for the next batch of sequels I must endure, does it?

As being a fan of low budget films, I enjoyed this one greatly. It had a good story line that kept me paying attention throughout the whole movie. The acting was fine; I did like Greg Sestero casted as Andre Toulon. I liked the evil minions of SuTekh, with their powers and abilities. There was cool fighting sequences between good and evil. And, was pleased me most of all was the puppets! Their names, features, and abilities were quite interesting. And, let me tell you something; they kicked butt! With this film, it felt like a Full Moon classic again. It was a good entry. I recommend this film to all Puppet Master/Full Moon fans.

Rather uneventful (in terms of puppet-action) 7th installment of the "Puppet Master" franchise. It lacks the stop-motion action of Dave Allen (involved with the previous movies). It was nice to see the older (retro-)versions of some of the famous puppets these films are known for and it was interesting to learn something about the origin of Andre Toulon's re-animating skills. Most acting felt a bit below par. Only Brigitta Dau was decent enough. As a 'neo' Full Moon movie, this one would pass the test. As a 'horror' movie in general, I'd have to flunk it. Hence my over-all rating. Being that it's part 7 in the "Puppet Master" series, I actually thought it would be worse. And given that it's directed by David DeCoteau, I expected it to even totally suck. You just never really know anything for sure, do you? Or maybe once in a while miracles do happen after all.

In the literal sense....Reminds you of those "cops-and-robber" or cowboys-indians" role-playing games you played with your 8 year old friends. Tedious and un-inspired, the storyline was obviously written to make bad acting and dialogue seem as part of the plot, but all it does is showcase it. I cant believe John Badham let his name be associated with this piece of crap. This could have been done better by a high school film buff who had been given the camera lighting, filmstock and editingDestined to be a time-filler on Sci-fi channel, when they've overused everything else from their library, and barely better than the paid programming shill downstream.