Powerful

Lack of good storyline.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

I had been forewarned that some of the later sequels in this series were not good, but this is the worst so far. I'm watching them all in sequential order. The first six were fine, but this one was obviously written by someone who never watched the previous entries, or just did not care.We are introduced to a young Andre Toulon and Ilsa in 1944, even though in the third movie they were much older in 1941 and Ilsa died! The actor playing young Andre Toulon is just a bad actor, there's no denying it. The puppets are better than him. And that he looks like a teen aged, pre-broken nose, baby-faced Owen Wilson is too distracting.At approximately the 30 minute mark, a dead person is shown to be blinking in the shot! Just careless film making! Bad sequelship, bad acting and badly made, it's simply thrown together without any care for the finished product or the fans. This doesn't bode too well for the next batch of sequels I must endure, does it?

Retro Puppet Master (1999) * (out of 4) The seventh film in the series is actually a prequel to PUPPET MASTER III if anyone actually cares. The film starts off in 1944 just after the end of part three as Andre Toulon (Guy Rolfe; in his final time playing the part) begins to tell how he gained the power of the puppets. We then flashback to 1902 when the young Andre (Greg Sestero) is working Paris and gets a visit from someone with a 3,000 year old Egyptian secret. This is the perfect example where one really doesn't know if they should praise a production for trying to be something special or bash it for being dumb enough to think it could be something special. The film takes the series into a new direction in many ways but the biggest difference is that the film takes place in the early 1900s and we pretty much get a costume drama with just a few horror elements thrown in. The drama aspect of the story deals with not only how Andre got his powers but there's a love story thrown in and countless other subplots. Now, you could admire the film for trying to do this but who on Earth was Full Moon trying to fool? Not for a single frame can the low-budget film make one feel as if we're watching some high production or watching a film that is trying to tell a decent story. For the life of me I can't figure out what they were trying to do with this film. I think I'm being fair when I say that the previous films were no classics but they at least delivers some good horror elements. That's not the case here because not only do we get "drama" but the horror elements are so watered down that the film managed to get a PG-13 rating. Okay, so the studio thinks fans wanted a drama AND watered down violence? Again, I'm simply confused at what they were trying to do here unless they thought they could just overlook the fans and try to deliver this into some sort of art-house crowd. If they thought that then they're really crazy! Rolfe is pretty good in his scenes but sadly he's not used very much. Sestero is pretty bland in his part and never brings any life or energy to the film. The rest of the supporting players aren't all that memorable but I'm sure they could argue that the screenplay just didn't give them anything to do. The biggest problem with this movie is how deadly dull it is. I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say that there's not a single bit of energy to be found in any of the scenes and there's really no point in watching it.

Retro Puppet Master starts in Kolewige during 1944 where puppet master Andre Toulon (Guy Rolfe) & his living puppets plan to escape Germany, hold up in an Inn puppet master Toulon reminisces about his early life & the point at which he learned the secret of giving life to dead objects way back in 1902 in Paris when his younger self (Greg Sestero) ran the Theate Magique. He describes the fateful night when he met a 3000 year old Egyptian sorcerer named Afzel (Jack Donner) & the eventual love of hi life the young & beautiful Ilsa (Brigitta Dau). He tells the story of how Afzel passed the gift of life to himself & gave life to his own wooden puppets that were part of the Theatre Magique show. However the gift of life was also a curse as the ancient God Sutek whom the secret was stolen from in the first place by Afzel wants it back & everyone who has learnt it dead...As of late I have been on a bit of a Puppet Master bender as being a big fan of the first three I decided to watch the rest of the franchise & as such I have seen Puppet Master 4 (1993), Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter (1994), Curse of the Puppet Master (1998) & now Retro Puppet Master in the space of a couple of weeks & boy was it tough to get through them all, especially this one as it's the worse of the series so far. Retro Puppet Master feels like a cross between Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991) with it's period setting & Puppet Master 4 & Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter with Sutek trying to kill everyone associated with his stolen life giving secret. There's not much continuity here either, again there's none of the green serum featured in the earlier films & despite Andre Toulon committing suicide in 1939 at the start of the original Puppetmaster (1989) he is seen alive & well during 1944 in this. The majority of the story is told as a flashback & concentrates on Andre Toulon himself rather than the puppets, the film focuses on his relationship with Ilsa & him learning the secret of life & it's all rather dull & tedious stuff to be honest. Even at only 80 odd minutes Retro Puppet Master feels long & padded with no real pace & the no central concept as the plot never really settles down & generally hops around a lot. Then of course there's the baffling decision to totally redesign the puppets which I found incredible, I mean why would the makers take the one basic thing that made the Puppet Master films so memorable & completely do away with it? The puppets are seen briefly at the start & the end but otherwise we get these rubbishy looking wooden caricatures that are nowhere near as cool as their modern re-workings. It's never even explained why these puppets were used rather than the ones all Puppet Master fans have come to love although one suspects that Full Moon was hoping to make yet another sequel which dealt with that very question.If a poor story & a complete lack of our favourite puppets wasn't bad enough Full Moon decided to go with a PG-13 rating for this making Retro Puppet Master the only Puppet Master film not rated 'R' in the US (obviously other countries have their own film ratings systems) & therefore there's not a single drop of blood in the entire film, the puppets don't kill anyone, there's no swearing & no nudity either. This is tamer than tame kids stuff all the way. Besides the puppets themselves being rubbish the special effect are the wost of the series too, there's no stop motion animation at all in this one, no CGI computer effects (surely in 1999 CGI was cheap enough?) & all the effects are of the stiff rod puppet type effects. I mean whenever you see a puppet 'walk' the camera is always positioned above it's wait so it's legs don't have to be shown & there's obviously some production assistant just pushing the thing along, that's as complex & state of the art as the special effects get.The one positive thing that Retro Puppet Master does have going for it is that it looks rather nice, the period production design, costumes & props are actually quite impressive & it's a fairly handsome film to watch at times. Apparently filmed in Bucharest in Romania which doubles up quite nicely for turn of the last century Paris. The acting here is awful & maybe the worst of the series.Retro Puppet Master is more or less the final Puppet Master film as the next one Puppet Master: The Legacy (2004) basically edits together footage from the previous seven films & it's a pretty crappy way to round the series off which started so well with three excellent & distinctive little killer puppet flicks. Don't bother with this, just watch one of the first three again & just remember the good times... The killer puppets would return in the terrible spin-off flick Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004).

This son of a son of a sequel was terrible to say the least. You would think that production would be better 10 years after the original was released, however Retro Puppet Master was not directed by or written by the original writers and contained poor story, lack of any emmontional connection to any characters, and dragged out slowly scene to scene. No build up of strong plot, very weak climax, you will find yourself slowly getting antsy throughout the movie, if you can sit through the whole reel. I never could understand why a horror movie continues making sequels after the release of their "final chapter." I hardly suggest watching this flick, but if you must I wouldn't recommend making anyone else sit through it with you.