After six previous entries that’s cast the eponymous puppets as both villains, saviours of humanity and devious wildcards that’ll turn on their titular master in a hot minute, what else was there for Full Moon Features to do will horror’s premier doll team? The answer was something both wholly unexpected and yet predictably bizarre for a studio that stubbonly wasn’t going to let their biggest (metaphorically speaking) stars gather dust: why not have them be told a story in flashback, that flashes back further into the rapidly changing Andre Toulon story to reveal that he actually had a previous cadre of puppets before his current, iconic batch.
To the more cynical of you, this could probably sound like a blatant attempt to add a whole new range of faces to the established gang, possibly in the hope of scoring more action figure potential – and you’d most likely be right. But can this band of “retro” puppets manage to bring the pain just as well as the classic crew?
The year is 1944 and while the continuity still manages to deliver vicious body blows to the plot of the second film, we find that this latest adventure still manages to remain true to the events of the Nazi-killing Puppet Master III. In the wake of that movie, we find Toulon taking a break from fleeing the German army on his way to Switzerland by deciding to regale his puppet comrades with stories of his youth and how he came upon the mystical secret of life in the first place. While I can’t imagine the notoriously fickle likes of Jester, Leech Woman and the gang enjoying the news that they were actually the second wave of puppets Toulon created, they hunker down and listen to his tale from 1902.
Back then, the idealistic puppeteer was touring his puppet show around the likes of Paris, but unbeknownst to him, magical forces are building in Cairo when a 3,000 year-old sorcerer named Afzel flees to France after stealing the secret of life from the evil, Egyptian God, Sutekh, and soon runs into Toulon as he and his troupe put on a puppet show of Dante’s Divine Comedy. However, Sutekh has revived three Egyptian mummies to extend his reach on earth and after dressing them like three, 19th century Agent Smiths from The Matrix, he sends them out to do his deadly bidding.
Soon Toulon finds himself up to his photogenic cheekbones in mystical hullabaloo as Afzel passes on his knowledge of imbuing dead matter with life and transferring human souls into other vessels to give them eternal life. It’s a good thing too, because after numerous attacks upon his friends, Afzel and the woman he has fallen in love with, Elsa, Toulon is going to need all the backup he can find. Meet the old guard: Retro Pinhead, Retro Blade, Retro Six-Shooter, Cyclops, Dr. Death and Drill Sergeant.
Despite the fact that this was the third of four Puppet Master movies helmed by David DeCoteau, it seemed that change was in the air over at Full Moon central. For a start, this is the first Puppet Master not to feature a score by franchise regular Richard Band and it’s also apparently is the first of the series to be rated PG-13, which is something of a surprise considering how playful and goody parts 4 and 5 were. However, once again we’re fully in prequel territory here as the franchise takes yet another crack at rewriting it’s past for probably no other reason than Charle Band having old-ass looking castles to film in. Anyway, in regards to these new/old faces, I’m not entirely sure that the term “retro” should be so readily thrown around when it comes to these latter additions to the ever-expanding puppet cast; I mean, if the admittedly janky continuity is to be believed, the classic puppets we all know were actually created in 1941, so it’s not like Blade, Pinhead and the gang were particularly the new kids on the block when they first showed up to take down the Third Reich.
If I’m being fair, on paper Retro Puppet Master actually sounds pretty entertaining, shifting the focus to Toulon as a young man as he first obtains the mystical means to take a dry run at his lethal little friends. It’s pure prequel manna from heaven as a baby-faced puppet master-to-be (played by The Room’s Greg Sestero, no less) meets his ultimately doomed true love, Elsa, and eventually learns the skills to animate these retro versions of the franchise’s main players. However, in practice, Retro Puppet Master turns out quite differently thanks to the rather bold choice of director DeCoteau to make the whole thing as dreary as ass thanks to the movie having virtually no pace whatsoever.
The main issue is that due to its prequel nature, not only are the main draws (the puppets) strictly relegated to bookend status, but due to the origin story nature of the story, the retro gang don’t really get much of a chance to shine until the final third. That means we’re stuck in a sluggish melodrama where Greg Sestero and his creaky accent lead us through a boring fantasy plot that doesn’t even have the promice of some low budget gore to carry us through. In some ways, it’s a cheaper variation of the puppets vs. evil Egyptian God plot from parts 4 and 5 that keeps the pissed-off deity off-screen and instead replaces clawing and biting Totems with three droning “Mummys” in dark glasses, shitty Halloween makeup and wobbly CGI magic.
For someone who has marshalled some Puppet Masters before and would go on to do so once more with Puppet Master: Axis Of Evil (yet another WWII prequel), it seems that DeCoteau has finally hit his limit of wrangling little wooden figures and bad European accents, and as the rating precludes him from littering the film with gory kills or his usual succession of shirtless himbos, the director seems to have lost interest.
As a result, it’s fairly bold to cram a film with performances more wooden than the puppets themselves, but even when the new lineup have a chance to show the original guys who’s boss, they prove to be uglier, slower, crappier replacements. Some of them don’t even do anything (Drill Sergeant and Cyclops, I’m looking at you) while others are one-trick ponys (both Dr. Death and Retro Blade just stab people with surpisingly little effect), but while the concept that they all hold the souls of Toulon’s murdered friends is pretty neat, they’re just a shadow compared to the gold standard of Puppet Master teams.
While there’s a decent idea hidden here and there (Retro Blade carving a tattoo in Toulon’s arm to protect him from evil magic is a new one on me), Retro Puppet Master fails to find anything new by digging further into the past. But when used as a prefix, retro can also mean backward – which is the exact direction this franchise seems to be heading.
🌟
We Have Issues 