Puppet Master: The Legacy

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.

I'm thrown for a loop trying to think of how to write a review for Charles Band's 2003 film "Puppet Master: The Legacy." I actually, honestly cannot think of a way to summarize it. I grew up watching copies of the earlier "Puppet Master" movies behind my parent's backs (they didn't approve of the gore until I was a teenager), so when I recently got the "Puppet Master" box-set as a nostalgic gift from my father, I popped this one in, thinking it would be an interesting film.

Oh... my... god.

Words cannot describe this movie.

"Puppet Master: The Legacy" is essentially a 15-minute long short film, that is padded with about an hour of footage from the previous films, as a character explains the plot of the series to another person. Yup, that's right... this is the horror movie equivalent of a sitcom clip-show. You know? Those lame episodes where the producers would run out of money and just string together a series of clips from prior episodes, with a lame bookend scene of the characters recalling the old clips? This movie is one of those!

And what makes it even sadder- the "story" that is used to string together the clips is one of the most poorly written, insanely plotted and hilariously cheaply-shot "plots" I've ever seen.

The abundance of old footage actually serves two purposes, to actually be fair. One- for the reason I stated above, to give the producers fodder to release a new DVD of this awful clip-show, and Two- to try and fix a few continuity problems that existed within the series. This film does this by making the overall plot even MORE confused and convoluted (so now the first film is technically the third film, and the second film is technically the eighth film?), and by flat-out disrespecting characters and ideas from previous entries. (Including a moment where the main character from the fourth and fifth film is killed by a single line of dialog- our villain says: "Oh, I uh... killed him." and that's it. So disrespectful to the fans.)

The plot of the new footage is this- a man named Eric Weiss (unknown actor who we'll never hear from again) is captured by some rogue agent chick named Maclain (unknown actress who we'll never hear from again) who forces him to tell her the story of the puppets from the movies. That's it. It's stupid.

The kicker is that the new footage doesn't even try to LOOK good. It's some of the laziest, cheapest footage I've ever seen. It looks like it was filmed on an 80's VHS camcorder, the lighting is abysmal, there is no real set-decoration or design to speak of, and the acting is hilariously bad.

As a fan of the series, this film just felt like a cheap, cash-grabbing insult. This is a 1 out of 10, plain and simple. (Yet somehow isn't as bad as the pain-inducing "Puppet Master VS Demonic Toys." Saw that once about five years ago, and it still makes me angry.)

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.

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.

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