Plot
After his last demon was destroyed by
Rick and Toulon's puppets, the demon Sutek creates a puppet of himself to get revenge.
Rick's actions have also drawn the attention of the authorities and The Omega
Corporation, who want to get their hands on Toulon's puppets. Soon a three way
struggle is about to begin!
Review
Shot at the same time as the last sequel,
Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter is potentially even worse and more
pointless simply for the fact that at least in the last film there were numerous
miniature demons battling the puppets - here there is just one. Instead there
are more token human characters wandering aimlessly around the hotel looking for
the puppets (and looking to get killed too I might add). However I must add that
you need to see the previous film to understand what the heck is going on
here and that may even be a stretch.
I can see the attraction in the Puppet Master films -
little things hitting each other and blowing each other up is a fun concept,
especially when the puppets can look as good as these.
Again it's the puppets
that are the stars of the show and each show a lot more character and
personality than their human counterparts. Blade is always the highlight as he's
the leader of the gang but the likes of Jester and Pinhead get a bit more screen
time. And finally Torch makes an appearance (he was absent from the last part
for some reason) although he might as well not have bothered. Their movements
are limited and they don't actually do a lot of walking around on the camera,
instead preferring to stand still and growl or raise their arms. In fact you
rarely see their legs at all unless they are standing against a wall - perhaps
to avoid seeing the stage hand holding them up? It's a bit sad to see how the
special effects in the series have gradually declined. I mean the first was no
masterpiece but at least the puppets moved around. Now there's too many puppets,
too much animation to do and not enough budget to cover it all. I guess what
budget they had went into the ridiculous puppet Decapitron. As I said in the
review for the last film, it's a silly concept for the puppet given that Toulon
created the puppets in Nazi Germany. The film always picks up when the puppets
are on screen but dramatically reduces in quality when the humans take over. The
main characters return from the previous film and they're just as bad as they
were previously. One of the females just spends the entire film in a coma,
occasionally being involved in a dream sequence. And British actor Ian Ogilvy is
on hand as the token evil British guy who attempts to steal the puppets but gets
his comeuppance along with his cronies. The puppets stalking and killing humans
thing got old in the earlier films so why they decided to retread old ground is
anyone's guess.
The story is all over the place here with some big contradictions with the last
part. I can't really understand why they felt the need to spread this whole
demonic story across two films - one film would have been sufficient and, had
they combined budgets and put their creative energies into making one film
instead of two, then maybe the story could have worked. After all, we'd have had
more puppet action and maybe some better effects. But with the budget clearing
not scraping past Decapitron's fancy laser weapons, the rest of the film suffers
greatly. Sutek's demon lair is a terrible stage set and looks like it belongs on
some ropey 80s kids show. Even the hotel seems to consist of the same three
rooms and two corridors. At least the signature Puppet Master theme tune
is back which is still probably one of the series' positives.
Verdict
Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter
continues the self-destruction of the series with another weak entry. It's hard
to recommend this to even die-hard fans of the series but if you've seen
Puppet Master 4 then you'll no doubt have a burning desire to see the
resolution of the story. Or maybe not...
