Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45764 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-03-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Original recording remastered, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Running time: 90 minutes

On the DVD
Digitally Re-Mastered
Videozone (Behind the Scenes)
Interactive menus

Synopsis
The Puppetmaster Andre Toulon (Greg Sestero) battles supernatural forces in order to rescue loved ones. ~ All Movie Guide

DVD Menu

• Disc #1 -- Retro Puppet Master
  • Play Movie
  • Chapters
  • Video Zone
  • Merchandise
    • Toys
  • Website
  • Trailer

Customer Reviews

Bad attempt at revitalizing the saga
I personally think the series should have ended at Puppetmaster III. Unfortunately, I'm not the people in charge of the films, so we get things like this.

When it opened up with the aging Toulon (THE puppetmaster, in my opinion) and his friends, I had high hopes. However, he's not here to act he's here to tell a story about his younger days. You see, a long time ago a bunch of white people pretending to be Arabs stole the secret to revitalizing life from Sutek (who, if I remember my Egyptian lore, was banished to another world and has no powers any way). Sutek gets mad and revives three mummies to catch the Egyptian that stole it.

These mummies are perhaps the craziest part of this movie. For one, they annoyingly repeat each other's sentences. For another, they act and look like the Agents from the first Matrix (even with one leader mummy, the "Agent Smith" of the Undead). Also, they're not that scary. They kill you by basically pointing at you. This means no gore and no real excitement. Any way, back to the puppets:

Toulon originally was head of a puppet troupe entertaining the wealthy of 19th century Paris. The Egyptian comes and teaches Toulon the secret of revitalization. This isn't all that great - the mummies come to the theater and kill off all of Toulon's friends looking for the Egyptian. Toulon finds them and puts their souls into the puppets. The mummies come and attack Toulon, but thankfully Toulon has the puppets to help. Actually, the puppets aren't all that great. One of them just kinda nips a mummy in the ankle and then gets kicked away. And that was your fight scene for the entire movie.

Things just kinda happen from there...the love interest gets kidnapped from the Swiss Embassy, Toulon saves her, and then the movie up and ends. Like the reviewer before me said, the film suggests a sequal. Toulon looks to his puppets and says, "that is another story for another day."

All I had to think of was, "NO GOD! NOOOOO!!!"

This film had a lot of potential (leaving those stupid teenagers getting attacked by demons and going back to Toulon's story) but unfortunately it gets marred by bad scripts and acting. I might also add the special affects in this are HORRIBLE. How horrible? In one scene, you can see the hand holding one of the puppets! No I don't mean if you look hard you see a finger, I mean you can actually see a full-fledged, identifiable hand lifting a puppet up! Did the editor want to kill the movie? What would it have cost them to refilm that part? $2? Maybe a quarter?

JULIAN JAYNES WOULD HAVE LOVED IT
I hadn't heard of the 'Puppet Master' series at all when this came on the SFI channel recently. 'Retro' has craftsmanship from the very start, with good acting and well-done scene-setting. Nonetheless I was startled at the high quality of the depiction of the evil followers of Zutek, a forgotten god of Ancient Egyptian times. They spoke and comported themselves exactly like the 'Bicameral Man' of Julian Jaynes book 'Origin of Consciousness..'. When Zutek spoke to them, the hypnotic power of that voice was excellently rendered. I don't know if the producers had read Jaynes, but the highly expert way they did the villains is typical of the entire movie. The puppets themselves, mere pieces of painted wood bobbing up and down, became powerful beings just via a few grunts and some very effectively rythmic music. This is one of the few movies I wanted to see again right away, and to own on DVD.

Retro Piece Of...
This film is really not even worth the time it took to write this review, however, it has been written to prevent some poor individual from actually having to see what I saw. It has bad accents, bad dialogue, laughable costumes, wretched effects and minute amounts of violence. The dolls, retro or not, just plain [...stink]. The dark clad villians are even worse. I usually enjoy Full Moon videos but this is one that should have never been given the green light.