Retro Puppet Master (1999)

Plot Outline: It's 1892 and Sutekh is after a 3,000 year old Egyptian sorcerer's secret of life. Sutekh resurrects three mummified former high priests and sends them out to kill the sorcerer and get the secret formula. The pursuit takes them to Paris, where the sorcerer gives the secret of life to a young puppet master named Andre Toulon before he is killed. At first Toulon has no idea what is going on but when he's threatened by the mummies, he has only one way to protect himself - use the formula on his array of puppets and bring them to life.

The Review: This is one of the worst of the series and that takes some beating considering the previous instalment Curse of the Puppet Master was so shocking. It looks like a really bad TV movie at times. It's got little in the way of production values and an obvious low budget hampers proceedings greatly. This is the seventh Puppet Master film and come on, the only person anyone actually watches these is to see the puppets come to life and kill people. With a slim running time of around 70 minutes, you don't get any puppet action until the final third so you've got to sit through the rest of this mess before hand. It is very badly acted and it was unwise to hire such young, immature actors to play the lead roles. They seem to be auditioning for the roles instead of actually playing them. The special effects aren't great either and look like some computer student did them at home. Finally the puppets do show up later on. It was nice to see what the puppets looked like originally (Tunneller still looks great) as well as some different puppets: Dr Death and Cyclops. But they aren't on screen long enough to save this mess from downright sucking. If you're going to deprive the sole reason this series has lasted so long, why bother making one in the first place?

Final Verdict: Is this the worst 7th installment of a film series? Definitely so. Stick to the first 3 Puppet Master films for a great time.

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