Puppet Master: The Legacy

Literally 15 minutes of passive exposition and the rest is a bunch of cut scenes from older movies. This was directed by the company owner or something like that. Basically it was an easy money.

I seriously couldn't give this movie anything more than a one. It tries as doing absolutely nothing.

The Puppet Master movies were among the best movies ever produced by Full Moon Entertainment in the early 90s. They were about a group of living Puppets who followed the orders of their master, the main concept was that if the master was good, the puppets were good and used their skills for good, but if the master was evil, the puppets were evil killers. The movies were of good quality but when Full Moon's budget started to be lower, the movies' quality went downhill, with bad effects and awful scripts. The Puppet Master series was severely affected by all this. A shame indeed, because from being one of their best series, it ended in the lowest of the low.

To end quickly, the Puppet Master storyline was a chaos with the only things that tied the movies together were the Puppets and its original master, Andre Toulon. The rest of the characters had been forgotten, changed or disappeared with no explanation. So Charles Band, the mind behind most of Full Moon Entertainment successes and failures gives us "Puppet Master: The Legacy" as a way to fix the problems of the series and finally putting an end to his beloved story.

In "Legacy", we find Peter Hertz, the boy who as child during World War II was helped by Andre Toulon and escaped with him from Nazi Germany. Now, named Eric Weiss (played by Jason Witkin), in the present, he has finally discovered the fate of his friend after many years of lost contact. In the Bodega Bay hotel he found Toulon's notes and his beloved Puppets, but he was found by a mysterious woman named Maclain (Kate Orsini) hired to find the Puppets and Toulon's secret.

The movie follows a discussion between the two of them, remembering Toulon and his actions since he learned the secret of life, until his death and rebirth. While Weiss remembers Toulon as a great man whose life was destroyed by the Nazis, Maclain knows him as a mad psycho who enslaved the puppets.

The movie works very well in terms of giving sense to the storyline, trying to fix the enormous plot holes the series had. To do this, the movie uses clips from all the Puppet Master movies, although this has to do more with the fact that it had almost no budget than with a creative decision.

The new material (barely 30 minutes) is well acted, and in fact is better acted than most of the acting in the series. It really shows how hard Band tried to fix his most successful series, as the clips from previous movies are very good edited, and work better than watching the entire awful movies (clips from Parts 4, 5 and Retro Puppet Master for example). We also get to know the fate of characters from all the movies, as they are mentioned in the conversations between Maclain and Weiss.

As a fan, watching the movie was kind of sad, because it was very obvious that this was a desperate attempt to fix a series that has been badly damaged over the years; nevertheless, the effort is very appreciated, because it finally gives a fitting conclusion to Full Moon's best selling movies.

30 minutes and clips of previous movies is not my idea of a good movie, but this movie is definitely a must see for every fan of the Puppet Master series. 6/10

Attempting to acquire the truth about the puppets, an agent interrogates one of the last known survivors of the legendary puppet masters' work and learns of their grisly history as to how they came into being as well as their history together, ultimately forcing a final showdown with them.

This was one of the worst films ever made. This is essentially a clip show of everything we've seen for the series up until the present, attempting to retcon the franchise into a cohesive storyline which is the only apparent purpose of this one. Including the information about the backstory of the franchise to tell the origins of what happened before, placing everything in its state of the franchise by zipping around to the various films. However, not only is that obvious about the film is simply clips due to the transparent quality of the source material of the clips which dips in and out of quality so obvious that there's never any doubt where the material came from and is set up so clumsily that it never escapes the obvious usage of these scenes. There was quite an odd tone to this one as well due to the different types of films being covered which not only gives this quite a cheap look but also wildly chaotic and disjointed tone that really doesn't make much sense as there's no real connection to how this one goes back and forth between any of the films, and with a lame final stinger it makes no sense as for what the legacy actually is since everything is wrapped up in such a lame manner. Despite it being constant puppet action and a fast-paced story, overall there's little need to watch this one at all.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

This is a 70 or 80 min clip show depending on what version you got. There are hardly any new material and just of a man remembering the old movies.

The result is a complete mess of clips without proper story line. The whole point of this movie must be to get some fast money from the fans of the series without making any effort.

There is just nothing here for anyone. I you have watched or planed to watch the other movies in the series. Skip this one. I you never seem a Puppet Master movie go see another one.

I would recommend Puppet master or Puppet Master 3 - Toulon's Revenge as a starting point for this series.

Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003)

1/2 (out of 4)

Ultra-cheap eighth entry in the series starts off with a woman taking Eric Weiss (the boy from PUPPET MASTER III) hostage and demanding him to tell her the secrets of the puppets. From this point on we start a whole string of flash backs to earlier films in the series with constant "looks" at the present time as the woman becomes more and more demanding. It turns out that SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 2 isn't the cheapest horror film ever made. No, that honor goes to this installment, which runs 74-minutes and being generous I'd say that at least sixty-minutes are nothing more than clips from the previous seven movies. Die-hard fans might enjoy seeing a cut down version of the previous movies with a few new scenes added in but to me this is about as cheap as you can get and I really see no reason to applaud the cheapness of a film like this. The only reason I could see this film being important is for those people who aren't really interested in the series but want to see what "story" all of the movies told. Instead of seeing the previous seven movies you could just watch this thing and get the general idea of what the series was about. Unlike watching the previous seven movies in order, this one here would at least allow you to see the "story" in chronological order. Since the series jumped around so much none of them were in order so the clips here are as followed: RETRO, PM3, PM, PM2, PM4, PM5 and then CURSE. The new footage isn't all that well shot but the two actors aren't that bad. THE LEGACY is an ultra-cheap film that's only purpose was to milk an already dead series. With that said, two more films would follow so I'm guessing this at least made the company some money.