Puppetmaster
Is Charles Band the worst horror filmmaker of all time? In many ways, that would appear to be the case, as even though his films sometimes have intriguing concepts, the overall execution always shows him to have an almost infantile predilection for heavy doses of cheese and corn into the finished product, with little attention paid to mood, atmosphere, or (most importantly) scares. One need only look at this 1989 release, the first (and best known) of the films from Bandās Full Moon production company, an outfit which (literally) churned out one bad, stupid, horror film after another in its prime. Admittedly, the production values are better than average, and it does employ some real actors (a rarity for the company) including Oscar Nominee William Hickey and 70s Icon Paul LeMat, but Bandās insistence on making the tone of the piece almost goofy kiddie fodder despite R-rated elements like gore and nudity take any real impact out of the material, despite a fascinating opening and closing scene. The story begins in 1939, when original Puppet Master Andre Toulon (Hickey), on the verge of being killed by Nazi hitmen, blows his own brains out instead, apparently putting an end to his career of creating puppets that with a little incantation, come to life on their own and can serve all kinds of little purposes. While Hickey is mesmerizing in his brief appearance, already the filmās emphasis on POV shots of the puppets running around the hotel heās staying at out in the open (and everyone apparently being too blind to notice) wears on the viewer early. Cut to 50 years later, when a group of psychics receive a sort of homing beam signal from one of their own to gather at the same hotel on the California coast, only to find out that heās dead and has left behind a mousy little wife to boot. Soon the psychics, which include LeMatās Yale professor who has precognitive dreams, a self-proclaimed āWhite Witchā, and a couple who seem to care more about sex than psychic research, soon find themselves under attack from Toulonās puppets, and they (including a housekeeper who seems to have embraced helium as part of her daily diet) soon start getting picked off one by one by such creations as a muscle bound puppet with a tiny head, a puppet with a power drill atop its cranium, a female type who vomits leeches upon her victims, and an intrepid little guy with sharp blades in place of his hands. As to be expected, whenever the puppets are not on screen, the pace is quite interminable, with lame acting and character development, though Irene Miracle in the role of the witch does bring some needed sex appeal to the mix, and the score by Charlesā brother Richard Band (including the catchy title theme) is certainly proactive in making the film seem better than it actually is, but itās Bandās creative choices to go for the obvious cornball approach that sinks the film, with a major plot hole involving the filmās main villain (how could he have brought himself back to life if he was already dead?!) One could point to the measured success of this film and the fact that to this day Band goes right back to making another sequel every chance he gets to say that it does have a following, but with the creepy potential that this premise had, one can only wonder what it would have been if a true 80s horror master like Craven, Carpenter, or Cronenberg had tackled it, instead of a guy whom when you look up the word āschlockā in the dictionary (or maybe āhackā) youād see a picture of his smiling faceā¦
5/10