Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Puppetmaster


PUPPETMASTER-1989-A prologue set in Nazi Germany reveals that an old puppet maker named Toulon (William Hickey) hides some interesting looking puppets (one walks around in a trench coat with a hook and knife for hands) from The Gestapo and kills himself. 

Years later, group of psychics investigate the death of a guy named Neil Gallagher (Jimmie Skaggs) who killed himself. His wife Meghan seems to think he's dead but not so “dream psychic” Alex (Paul LeMat) who has dreams of Gallagher acting nutty. The group is terrorized by the resurrected puppets including the hook hand trench coat guy and his pals: one with a very small head but huge human hands, one with a drill for a head, a female that upchucks leeches, a kind of jester with a spinning face). After three of the psychics are killed Alex and Meghan discover the truth. It turns out Gallagher did kill himself but came back to life by using Toulon's secret Egyptian rites of the afterlife and wants to live forever. But after he's mean to the puppets they revolt and kill him good. 

This fun (although a little slow story wise) low budget horror movie from Charles Band's Empire Pictures spawned several sequels and even a crossover with another series (DEMONIC TOYS) but I like this one the best. 

Director David Schmoeller had already made two whacked out features: TOURIST TRAP (with Chuck Connors as a psycho) and CRAWLSPACE (with Klaus Kinski as a psycho).

Thanks for reading!

1 comment:

The Bloody Pit of Horror said...

The first three of these are worth a look but damn does this series get completely awful after that.