In the end, Charles Band determined that a direct-to-video release on October 12th, 1989, would be more financially successful than a theatrical release of Puppet Master (1989), which was originally scheduled for theatrical distribution in the summer of 1989 before being released on home video in September of that year. It attracted a big number of fans and has since grown a sizable cult following in addition to spawning a franchise.
André Toulon is putting the final touches on his newest puppet, Jester, in 1939 at the Bodega Bay Inn in California.Toulon is warned by Kahn, another live puppet, that two Nazi agents have arrived and are making their way to his chamber.
Toulon hides all of the animated puppets in a wall panel compartment by placing them in a chest. As the Nazis knock on the door, Toulon commits suicide.
In the present day, Neil Gallagher "contacts" four psychics who were previously acquaintances: Professor Alex Whitaker through a nightmare involving Neil and leeches, Dana Hadley through a premonition of her own death, and psychic researchers Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford through unspecified means.
Dana has also discovered Toulon's "hiding location" and informs the others, setting up a rendezvous with Neil at the Bodega Bay Inn. They arrive to discover Neil has a wife, Megan, and has murdered himself, leaving instructions for her. She leaves them with the body to pay her respects, and Dana stabs a long pin into Neil's corpse to confirm his death.
As the psychics begin to relax into their chambers, they begin to get images of Neil that are both puzzling and disorienting. As Dana and the rest of the family sit down to supper, a second animated doll, Pinhead, creeps out of Neil's coffin after Dana purposefully riles Megan. Alex follows Megan and tells her about what happened between them and her husband. Carissa, who is a psychometrist, can see the emotional history of any object just by touching it. Dana can tell fortunes and find things and people, and Alex can see the future in his dreams.
With Frank's aid, Neil found that Ancient Egyptians could reanimate lifeless statues, a skill previously revealed by the last genuine alchemist, André Toulon. But since Neil had not been in communication with them for some time, Dana and the others believed that he had abandoned them and taken whatever he was searching for for himself, so they are there to settle the score. While Theresa, the housekeeper, was tending to the fire later that night, Pinhead stabbed her with a poker, thereby bringing Dana's tragic end to a conclusion. Megan faints after discovering Gallagher's corpse on a chair; Alex attends to her as the others return the body to the coffin.
After Blade finds protective spells in Alex and Dana's rooms, he goes to Carissa and Frank's, where they are having very loud sex and keeping Alex and Dana from sleeping. Tunneler and Leech Woman, two more puppets, walk in. Upon investigating the commotion coming from beneath the bed, Carissa is fatally drilled by Tunneler, and Leech Woman regurgitates leeches onto Frank, who is bound to the bed and drained of blood. Gallagher's corpse is found by Dana in her room when she returns from a stroll; Pinhead attacks and fractures her leg as a result.
She eventually succeeds in kicking Pinhead off of her and making it to the elevator, where she is ambushed by Blade, who ultimately fulfills the prophesy that was given to her by slitting her throat with his blade.
Alex is roused from his dreams by Megan, who then reveals to him that Toulon's notebook is in her possession and tells him that Neil has uncovered Toulon's secret to reanimation. Alex sees Neil and rushes downstairs to flee, only to discover Dana, Frank, and Carissa's corpses seated around the dining table with the freshly revived Neil.
He says that, although he did commit himself, he utilized Toulon's secrets to resurrect himself and become immortal.
He admits to having murdered Megan's parents and shows his contempt for the puppets by brutally discarding Jester. He is now content to have human puppets with whom to experiment. After seeing what happened, the other puppets converge on Neil and begin to attack him. Tunneler removes Neil's legs, and Blade holds him down as Leech Woman regurgitates a leech into his mouth. Finally, Pinhead snaps Neil's neck. The next day, Megan bids farewell to Alex, and as she makes her way up the stairs, she gives life to Dana's pet dog, Leroy.
The actors in Puppet Master were very good at what they did. André Toulon was played by William Hickey. Alex Whitaker, the film's protagonist, is an anthropology professor at Yale University who can look into the future and see what could be.
Dana Hadley, the character that Irene Miracle portrays, is a small-time carnival psychic who specializes in fortune telling and retrieving lost or missing items.
Jimmie F. Skaggs played Neil Gallagher, the film's major antagonist and Puppetmaster (1989) who kills his former friends and coworkers using puppets. Megan Gallagher, Neil's wife, inherited the Bodega Bay from her parents and met Neil there. Frank Forrester, played by actor Matt Roe, is a psychic researcher at Pensa Research Inc (PRI) and Carissa's companion in sexual psychic readings. Carissa Stamford, portrayed by Kathryn O'Reilly, is a psychometrist with Pensa Research Inc (PRI) and Frank's partner. She often gets visions from former sexual trauma victims or couples in intimate relationships, and she can reconstruct the emotional history of any item by touch. Theresa, the Gallaghers' housekeeper, was Mews Small. At the carnival, Barbara Crampton portrayed a lady.
Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Shredder Khan, and Gengie are the killer puppets' names.
Paramount Home Video released Puppet Master on VHS on September 30, 1989.
On June 13, 2000, Full Moon Home Video was the first video retailer to offer the movie in DVD format.
Wizard Entertainment published The Puppetmaster in March 2008, followed by a Blu-ray release in July 2010. A remastered DVD was also published by Full Moon Features at the same time. Although Echo Bridge Home Entertainment released "Killjoy and Puppetmaster: The Complete Collections" in 2014 with the Killjoy series, both series have subsequently spawned additional installments in their own ongoing storylines since then. Full Moon released a Blu-ray and a limited-edition vintage VHS compilation on April 10, 2018, with the latter restricted to just 3,000 copies with the first 300 signed and numbered by Charles Band.
The film has a weighted average rating of 4/10 on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 43 percent acceptance rating based on seven reviews.
In its review, TV Guide referred to it as "an ineffective variation on the killer-doll premise," calling it "useless." The atmosphere, the music, and the set design were lauded, but the performances, the bad script, and the first act were severely criticized.
Puppet Master isn't what I would call a terrific picture, but its heart is in the right place, and I've always been a tremendous fan of the evil doll subgenre of horror, which makes the film's inadequacies readily tolerable, according to the conclusion of the review.
According to Wes, who writes on a different website, Puppetmaster is, despite its flaws, one of the most entertaining films in the "killer toy" subgenre of horror movies.
The cult hit spawned a decades-long series. Five sequels followed: Puppetmaster (1989) II (1990), Puppetmaster 4 (1993), Puppetmaster 5: The Final Chapter (1994), and Curse of the Puppetmaster (1989) (1998). (2003).
Both the third picture, which was released in 1991 and was named Toulon's Revenge, and the fourth film, which was dubbed Retro Puppet Master (1989), function as prequels (1999). The first installment in a ramshackle prequel trilogy, Puppet Master (1989): Axis of Evil, was released in 2010, and was followed by Axis Rising (2012) and Axis Termination (2014). (2017). odahsrecked Blade: The Iron Cross, a spin-off starring the puppet Blade, premiered in 2020. Another film, Doktor Death (from Retro), will be released in 2022. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel broadcasted Puppet Master (1989) vs. Demonic Toys, a crossover with another Full Moon property, Demonic Toys.
Full Moon announced a collaboration with indie gaming developer "October Games" in September 2021, with the goal of releasing an official Puppetmaster game on the Steam store by the end of 2022.
It was reported in March 2009 that Band planned to recreate the original picture in 3-D.
Puppetmaster (1989) facts. Cindy Sorensen, a dwarf stuntwoman, donned fingerless gloves and a sweater sleeve to simulate Pinhead's fists in the film's hitting sequences, but it was her hands that were utilized. Cindy had a difficult obstacle when she was required to keep her head down the whole time while also holding the Pinhead puppet on her shoulders and throwing fake punches at the same time. Leech Woman's mouth is made of foam latex, which makes it look like it moves more when she "coughs" up a leech.
Only three-quarters of the leech mechanism emerges from the puppet, and then a simple camera cut produces the appearance that the full leech emerges from the mouth of Leech Woman. Miniature: The Bodega Bay motel resembled a refrigerator in size. As soon as filmmakers had chosen a suitable setting, they employed force perspective to make their model hotel look as though it were standing in the real world. To operate the Blade puppet, five puppeteers were required. The movie was based on Dolls, an earlier film by Charles Band about toys that kill (1986). In an interview conducted in 1999 by the horror website The Terror Trap, film director David Schmoeller stated that he was not involved with the continuation of Full Moon's most successful franchise, the Puppetmaster (1989), due to the fact that doing so would have revealed the identity of the franchise's creator as someone other than Full Moon CEO Charles Band. When the first "Puppet Master (1989)" film was released on DVD, Schmoeller was never asked to record a director's commentary. He also said in the same interview that Band owes him residuals.
David Schmoeller drew inspiration for the puppet Blade from one of his all-time favorite actors, Klaus Kinski. One of the first puppets conceived by Band was a six-armed, armed Ninja. This puppet did not appear in the film, but it inspired the puppet Six-Shooter, who debuted in Puppetmaster III: Toulon's Revenge (1991).
The film was originally scheduled to be released in theaters in the summer of 1989 and on home video in September 1989. However, it was pushed to October 12, 1989 as a direct-to-video release after producer Band stated in an interview that he would make more money in the DTV field than in the theatrical market.
In 2010, the original film's creator Band planned to recreate it. Due to opposition, the project was shelved, and Puppetmaster Axis of Evil was born in its place. Much of the soundtrack for this film is made up of synthesized versions of Pino Donaggio's music from The Tourist Trap (1979), a film with similar themes on which director David Schmoeller and producer Charles Band previously collaborated.
Puppet Master's origins may be traced back to Charles Band's time working for Empire Pictures. His film The Dungeonmaster (aka Ragewar), which he worked on in 1984, had numerous admirers come up to him and tell him how much they enjoyed the name.
When he intended to produce a movie about living puppets, he recalled how much great response he got from The Dungeonmaster and it original source sparked the idea for the movie. He has always been captivated by the idea of small dolls or miniatures coming to life. He therefore opted to simply title the film Puppetmaster (1989).
Blade is the only character in the franchise whose costume does not vary from film to film.
Blade is the sole puppet to appear on the VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray covers of the Puppetmaster (1989) Films. Despite the fact that the puppet Blade lacks lungs (or any other internal organs), he breathes hard and sounds out of breath while sprinting at the start of the film. Additionally, additional puppets may be heard panting, groaning, and moaning throughout the video. Despite this, none of them can genuinely communicate.