Puppet Master: The Legacy

The problem with Legacy isn't the fact that it the majority of it shows all the past movies with a very small subplot. The problem is that it was horribly edited and with a better storyline could have meshed the current situation with Peter and the previous story lines so much better. I'm actually kind of a fan of the idea to playback all the memories but the wrong scenes were shown and it didn't flow. It's not a good movie at all, the eighty percent of old scenes were boring and the new twenty percent were highlighted with a couple of horrible acting and more questions than answers. The lady agent is just horrendous and her story is completely far-fetched and laughable. I'd stay away from the movie or else just fast forward through the past events and check out the terribly cheesy plot that comes in and trickles out every so often. Since this is chronologically the last movie in the series I'm looking forward to the possibility of a franchise rejuvenation in the near future.

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

I'm currently going through the entire Puppet Master franchise and watching every single movie. Unfortunately that meant I had to watch this lazy "movie."

It is about 70 minutes of clips from the previous 7 movies with about 5-6 minutes of the new "plot" which is just Peter and some police agent sitting in a cellar where the puppets are stored. I fast-forwarded through 95% of the movie and I'm not even exaggerating. I don't know who green lit this but it's clear it was nothing more than a cash grab to profit off the name.

The "legacy" is being lazy and using previously filmed material from actual good movies. Did the producer for this movie sit on his couch while compiling the clips? I am literally begging you to skip this.

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.

I am being honest when I say that I enjoy the Puppet Master films. They have and always will hold a place in my imagination. But this crock of a movie is certainly NOT the zenith of this series. In fact, if Puppet Master 3 was the zenith, then this film is the nadir. First note that I did not put a note above saying that this review contains spoilers. In fact, it does not contain spoilers. But that is not because I want to guard you from having your experience ruined. It is because there is literally nothing to spoil about this "movie". I used quotations because The Legacy isn't really a movie, per se, but a series of clips of stock footage from previous films framed by 25 minutes of new footage to form a pointless new story. I am a forgiving critic, usually able to appreciate the effort put into a movie, but this one has no effort to speak of. It is a celluloid, parasitic byproduct designed to leech money from fans. If this were a TV special on SYFY channel, I could forgive it, because it does recap the series with some competence for those who are too lethargic to watch the real movies. But if you're one of those sloths, then I pity you, because this Puppet Master is not seeing the series at its best. This is seeing schlock money-grubbing at its worst. I hope I don't have to say such unkind words of these puppets again.