Though Full Moon Features’ Puppet Master can be considered a classic of the horror genre, it has lost a lot of its shine over the years. The film is still enjoyable – what is not to love about puppets animated by reincarnated souls that go around killing people – but it is more memorable for said puppets than anything else. The basic premise and the story still hold up, though it too has its faults with the dialogue being cheesy at times and the picture being a little overlong but as far as movies about puppets go, it was not all that bad.

The story concerns a puppet master who has discovered the means of reincarnation and he uses it to bring his creatures to life which is where the biggest question of the film rears its head. The puppet master, Toulon, kills himself before his work falls into the hands of the Nazis, but years later, a man named Neil has done just that. So it is that Toulon’s puppets now come to serve Neil and under his bidding, start to kill off all of his colleagues.

What one has to ultimately wonder about the movie is why did Toulon create such fearsome puppets? Blade has a knife and a hook for a hand while Leech Woman barfs up leeches and Tunneler has a drill on his head. Though Toulon seems like a nice old man and quite harmless enough, the fact that he was able to dream up these concepts in the first place and then bring them to life afterwards, speaks volumes as to his possible sanity. What possible use could a doll that spits up leeches be? Another question that makes its way into your consciousness almost immediately is just how did somebody else find out that Toulon had discovered how to raise the dead? While this film was ultimately a fun exercise, a much more interesting movie would have been one that showed the origins of Toulon and his previous exploits and what his reasonings might have been to create such monstrous beings.

At the end of the day, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, the puppets themselves making you feel uneasy more than afraid. There is a bit of blood to be had, perhaps not as much as most would think and it would have made for a much stronger film if there had been a little more gore to accentuate just how deadly these creatures could be. Overall there were a few faults, but the animation was decent and the film was never boring which was great. The movie was so successful as far as home video releases go in fact, that it did manage to spawn nine official sequels and one unofficial. So for those who may have felt a little dissatisfied story-wise, Blade and the rest of the puppets would soon return in many new adventures.

3 out of 5