Movie Info
Movie Name: Curse of the Puppet Master
Studio: Full Moon Entertainment
Genre(s): Horror/B-Movie
Release Date(s): May 26, 1998
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Hey, my acting isn’t my fault…I’m a robot!
Dr. Magrew (George Peck) has discovered Toulon’s puppets and is trying to recreate the experiment that gave them life. When he meets a talented young carver named Robert “Tank” Winsley (Josh Green) who seems to have the skill that Magrew needs. Asking Tank to move in with him and his daughter Jane (Emily Harrison), Dr. Magrew has a dark side and recreating Toulon’s experiment could be deadly.
Directed by David DeCoteau, Curse of the Puppet Master is a B-Movie horror film by Full Moon Entertainment. The movie is the sixth film in the Puppet Master series and follows Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter in 1994. The film like most of Full Moon’s films was released directly to video.
Full Moon movies are crap. The acting is horrible and they look really bad. The movies plots are often weak and they are totally low brow cheese…but I could watch them all day long. In college, Full Moon movies were the go to if I had nothing to do on a weekend. Curse of the Puppet Master came out near the end of college as Full Moon was already starting to wind down…and even Puppet Master is running out of ideas.
What’s up…I’m Robot Face
Almost none of the Puppet Master films flow together and this is true of Curse of the Puppet Master that didn’t continue any of the storylines and just handed off some of the puppets to a new owner. This alone would have been lazy writing, but the movie is filled with cliches and dull characters who are too stupid to see the evil plots of Magrew.
The cast cannot act. It isn’t a slam in that I don’t think they were really hired for their skills but more for their price, ability, and looks. It isn’t a movie that had the budget to really invest in Meryl Streep…but that being said, modern low budget found footage movies show that finding “real” actors is possible if you are willing to look…but I imagine that was also not of Full Moon’s plans.
Ok…I’ll concede that this thing is kind of freaky.
Visually, the movie is even lazier than previous entries. The puppets really don’t factor into the plot much (they do kill a couple people), but boring humans are the stars. The movie’s puppet scenes mostly reuse scenes from previous movies and get rid of the stop motion animation (though that human experiment puppet is pretty terrifying). The final puppet is also even worse than the Toulon headed puppet from the previous films.
Curse of Puppet Master is for Full Moon junkies and bad movie fans only. It does classify as “bad” by all definition. Despite the movie’s weakness, Full Moon continued to truck on with sequels. Curse of Puppet Master was followed by Retro Puppet Master in 1999.
Related Links:
Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991)
Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter (1994)
Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003)
Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010)
