| Puppet
Master was the film that put Full Moon Entertainment
-- Charles Band's independent exploitation film company
-- on the map. It was successful on its release (especially
for an independent horror film) and spawned seven sequels
in due course. Mainstream audiences may even have heard
of it.
In
many ways Puppet Master is the archetypal Full
Moon horror film: existing at the cheap end of the production
scale, colourful and absurd in approach, narrowly contained
in terms of setting, and featuring monsters, in-your-face
gore and breast-focused nudity. Of course not all Full
Moon productions would prove to be as entertaining as
this one. But there is a distinctive quality to the
B-grade fun of Full Moon at its best that appeals to
many horror fans, and in this respect Puppet Master
is a prime example.
The
plot evolves from a back-story concerning famous puppet
master Andre Toulon (Hickey), who, in a big, fancy hotel
at Bodega Bay toward the end of the War, hides his animated
puppets and shoots himself minutes before Nazi agents
arrive to wrest his 'secret of life' from him. In the
present, a motley group of acquaintances turn up at
the hotel. It is being renovated by the attractive widow
of the previous owner, who had summoned them before
he karked it. Why? Well, therein lies the rub. Needless
to say, there is a nefarious conspiracy bubbling away
underneath events and the end result of the group's
arrival is murderous puppets, bloody death and dire
revelations.
Puppet
Master is actually much less straightforward than
many films of its ilk and it manages to generate some
stylishness in unravelling its body-count plot. I liked
the puppet-cam opening sequence, for instance. The puppets,
of course, are the highlight. These were the stop-motion
work of Dave Allen, whose proto-Harryhausen effects
are more than workable and turn an ordinary horror fantasy
into something more special. Even Leech Woman -- whose
particular talent makes little sense in terms of puppetry
(she vomits up over-sized leeches) and who, as a killer,
is hindered by the fact that leeches kill very very
slooooowly -- is quite an unnerving creation. That grotesquely
stretching face on an otherwise glamour-fem puppet body!
Our
first sight of Pinhead (no relation to the demon from
Hellraiser) is an effective one, as his over-sized
hands pull him from an occupied coffin -- and his pounding
attack, especially in the lift, carries some impact
(no pun intended). I found the Jester effective, too,
though he does little except to unsettle the atmosphere
with his rotating face and thus provide a sort of mute
commentary on events. And of course Tunneler drills
nice bloody holes in the forehead. But the best is Blade,
who is characterised in a more complex way to the others,
becoming, subtly, more than merely a special effect.
He does indeed seem to come alive.
There
are problems with the film. Sometimes, for example,
it moves too slowly, concentrating on a drawn-out anticipation
of violence for its effect. The narrative seems to stall
from time to time and some of the characters' reactions
are dubious, if convenient. But overall, this is a good
film and a worthy start to a series designed to be a
sort of comicbook horror serial, with a gradually developing
background and exploration of franchise possibility.
Though it may not be the pinnacle of its genre, if you
like "Evil Doll" movies, this is worth a look.
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PUPPET MASTER |
