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 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.

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.

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.

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.