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I had fond memories of this movie from 1989 and was going to include it in the video vault until I watched it again. What was I thinking? This film is absolutely crap!!!

From the IMDB: "Puppet maker Andre Toulon shoots himself at the Bodega Bay Inn before his Secret of Life can be stolen by the Nazis. 50 years later in 1989 the secret is discovered by Neil Gallagher. Soon he sends messages to his psychic friends Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford who arrive to find his wife Megan who claims Neil to be dead. As the night goes by, the murderous puppets are awakened and unleased on the group, only for them to discover that evil comes in all sizes."

It appears that this film has a cult following (presumably made up of people my age who saw it through a drunken haze back when they were in their late teens too!). In comparison with a lot of other killer doll movies which came out at the same time this is still awful but I remember it being heavily promoted by Blockbuster... which is why we all watched it. What suckers we were!

The tagline for this film is "This is not child's play!". Obviously "Child's Play" is a far superior story and pretty much set a precedent the previous year anyway.

"Puppetmaster" is a Charles Band film and that pretty much tells you all you need to know. I think the only decent film that Full Moon ever made was "Phantoms" (aka Meridien) and that was only because Sherilyn Fenn got nudie in it.

It is badly directed, the acting is average, there are huge plot holes where things are not explained at all, and the stop-motion puppet effects are really dated now.

The worst thing about it is the pacing though. It takes absolutely ages to get going. The first 10 minutes of the puppets getting hidden away are a complete waste of film and the nothing else happens of any importance until almost three-quarters of an hour later. When anything does happen, the scenes are so drawn out that it all just becomes boring.

It's not very gory, isn't scary at all, and there's only one nudie bit. Kathryn O'Reilly (I think that's her name!) plays a sexy blonde and she's probably the only good reason for watching this at all. Barbara Crampton is in this film too for a few seconds but to see her getting sexy you need to watch "From Beyond" instead.

The puppets themselves were nicely thought out but are completely wasted: "Blade" is barely seen in action, "Pinhead" just likes to strangle and punch women in the face, "Tunneler" has a drill coming out of his head but doesn't really get to do a lot with it except kill the only pretty woman in the whole thing(!), "Leech woman" takes ages to spew out leeches from her mouth (and provides the ruination of the film's only sex scene!), and "Jester" looks worried a lot but just doesn't kill anybody!!!

It doesn't even have a proper ending... obviously leading to the half dozen even crappier sequels.

My rating? 1 out of 10. I wouldn't waste my time watching this again.