David Schmoeller directed and co-wrote the 1989 horror flick Puppet Master. In the film, Irene Miracle, Matt Roe, and Kathryn O'Reilly play psychics who are targeted by a former colleague who uses puppets controlled by an Egyptian curse.In the end, Band came to the conclusion that a direct-to-video release of Puppet Master (1989) on October 12th, 1989, would be more financially successful than a theatrical release of the film. Puppetmaster was originally scheduled for distribution in theaters during the summer of 1989, before it was released on home video in September of that same year.
It gained a cult following and became a franchise.
At 1939, an ancient puppeteer called André Toulon is putting the final touches on his newest puppet, Jester, before bringing it to life in Bodega Bay Inn, California.Two Nazi agents enter and make straight for Toulon's chamber, while Kahn, another live puppet, issues a warning.
Toulon carefully sets all of the living puppets inside of a chest, and then conceals the chest behind a compartment in the wall. Toulon hangs himself as Nazi soldiers tear through the door of the room they are in.
Professor Alex Whitaker is "contacted" by Neil Gallagher in the present day through a nightmare involving Neil and leeches, Dana Hadley via a premonition of her own death, and psychic researchers Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford via unclear ways. Neil lives at the Bodega Bay Inn where Dana has found Toulon's "hiding spot," so they plan a rendezvous there.
When they arrive, they discover that Neil not only has a wife, Megan, but that he has also committed suicide, leaving instructions for Megan to follow when the others arrive.
She leaves them with the body to pay their respects, and Dana uses a long pin to confirm that Neil is really dead.
The psychics get strange Neil visions while settling down. Dana riles Megan over dinner, leading her to leave, and Pinhead creeps out of Neil's coffin. Megan is accompanied by Alex, and he shares with her some of their history together. It is possible for Carissa, a psychologist, Dana, a clairvoyant who can discover objects and people, and Alex, a guy who has the power to view the future in his dreams, to perceive the emotional history of an item just by touching it.
Neil was doing research on alchemy and, with the assistance of Frank, learned that the Ancient Egyptians had devised a mechanism for reanimating lifeless figurines, a capability also discovered by André Toulon, the last real alchemist.
Dana and the others thought Neil had abandoned them and grabbed whatever Neil was looking for for himself due to Neil's lack of contact with the group for some time, and they are now going to take it and settle the score.
That night, Pinhead attacks Theresa with a poker, fulfilling Dana's fate. Megan faints after seeing Gallagher's corpse on a chair; Alex helps her as the others return it to the coffin.
Blade walks on to Carissa and Frank's rooms after finding defensive charms on Alex and Dana's chambers, where they are having extremely noisy sex and upsetting Alex and Dana's sleep. Tunneler and Leech Woman, two additional puppets, show up.
As Carissa and Frank investigate the disturbance coming from under the bed, Tunneler kills Carissa by drilling her with a drill, and Leech Woman regurgitates leeches onto Frank as he is strapped to the bed and drained of blood. Frank is eventually killed. When Dana comes back to her room after taking a walk, she discovers the dead body of Gallagher there. Pinhead then attacks Dana, breaking her leg as a consequence of the attack.
She eventually kicks Pinhead off of her and makes her way to the elevator, where she is assaulted by Blade, who slices off her neck, fulfilling the prophesy she was told.
Alex has more nightmares, and Megan ultimately wakes him up to show him Toulon's notebook and inform him that Neil discovered Toulon's secret to reanimation. Alex continues to suffer from nightmares.
Alex sees Neil and they race downstairs to escape, but discover Dana, Frank, and Carissa dead at the table with Neil.
He says that, while committing suicide, he utilized Toulon's secrets to reanimate himself in an attempt to become immortal. He discloses that he murdered Megan's parents and displays hatred with the puppets, brutally tossing Jester, now content to experiment with human puppets. The other puppets see this and descend upon Neil; Tunneler removes Neil's legs, Blade holds him down, Leech Woman regurgitates a leech into his mouth, and Pinhead ultimately snaps his neck. The following day, after seeing Alex depart, Megan summons Dana's pet dog Leroy to life as she ascends the stairs.
The actors in Puppet Master were very good at what they did. André Toulon was played by William Hickey.
Alex Whitaker, the primary protagonist of the film, was played by Paul Le Mat, an anthropology professor at Yale University with the power to see into the future. Dana Hadley, played by Irene Miracle, is a small-time carnival psychic who specializes in fortune reading and finding lost/missing items.
Jimmie F. Skaggs played Neil Gallagher, the film's major antagonist and Puppet Master who kills his former friends and coworkers using puppets. Megan Gallagher, Neil's wife, was portrayed by Robin Frates. Her parents owned and ran the Bodega Bay, which she inherited when they died and where she met Neil for the first time.
Matt Roe, a specialist in sexual psychic readings, portrayed Frank Forrester in the ABC film "Psychic Readings." Kathryn O'Reilly, a psychometrist at Pensa Research Inc. (PRI) and Frank's spouse, played the role of Carissa Stamford, a psychic who commonly sees victims of prior sexual trauma or couples having sex and who is able to recreate the emotional history of any object by touching it. Theresa Mews Small was the Gallaghers' housekeeper. Barbara Crampton portrayed a carnival lady. Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Shredder Khan, and Gengie are the names given to the killer puppets.
Paramount Home Video released Puppet Master (1989) on VHS on September 30, 1989. The film was initially released on DVD by Full Moon Home Video on June 13, 2000. Following the March 2008 release of The Puppet Master by Wizard Entertainment, a Blu-ray was released in July 2010 by Wizard. A remastered DVD was released concurrently by Full Moon Features.
Although Echo Bridge Home Entertainment released "Killjoy and Puppet Master: 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 limited to 3,000 copies with the first 300 signed and numbered by Charles Band. The film has a 43 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on seven reviews, with a weighted average rating of 4/10. It was described negatively by TV Guide as "a useless take on the killer-doll theme."
The mood, music, and set designs were praised by a website, however the performances, poor storyline, and first act were condemned.
Puppetmaster (1989) 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.
Despite its flaws, Puppet Master (1989) is one of the most entertaining "killer toy" horror films, according to Wes from another website.
The film's cult status spawned a multi-decade sequel series in the wake of its triumph. It was followed by five further sequels, including Puppet Master II in 1990, Puppet Master 4 in 1993, Puppetmaster (1989) 5 in 1994, and Puppet Master (1989): The Legacy in 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, function as prequels (1999). The first installment in a ramshackle prequel trilogy, Puppetmaster (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 was published in 2020 as a spin-off centering on the puppet Blade. 2022 is the planned release date for another film, this one focusing on Doktor Death (from Retro). Puppetmaster vs. Demonic Toys debuted on Sci-Fi in 2004.In September of 2021, Full Moon made the announcement that they will be releasing an official Puppet Master (1989) video game in collaboration with the independent gaming company known as October Games. The game is expected to be available for purchase on the Steam platform sometime before the end of 2022.
Band announced a 3-D remake of the original film in March 2009. Puppet Master (1989) click here trivia
Pinhead's fists during the punching sequences are really the fists of stuntwoman Cindy Sorensen, who wore fingerless gloves and a sweater sleeve to make it look like it was Pinhead's fist.
Cindy struggled to keep her head down the whole time she was holding the Pinhead puppet on her shoulders and throwing pretend blows.
Leech Woman's mouth is composed of foam latex, which gives the mouth the appearance of being more flexible when she "coughs" up a leech. A simple camera cut gives the appearance that a whole leech bursts out of Leech Woman's mouth. The motel at Bodega Bay was a tiny, about the size of a refrigerator. When the filmmakers discovered the ideal spot, they suspended the model in the air and employed permutations of force perspective to make the hotel look as if it were truly there.
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 a 1999 interview with horror website The Terror Trap, film director David Schmoeller said that he was not interested in continuing Full Moon's most successful series, the Puppetmaster (1989), since it would have revealed someone other than Full Moon CEO Charles Band as its inventor. When the first "Puppet Master (1989)" film was released on DVD, Schmoeller was never invited to offer a director's commentary. He also said in the same interview that Charles Band owed him residuals. David Schmoeller's favorite actor, Klaus Kinski, inspired the puppet Blade.
A six-armed Ninja with firearms was one of Band's early puppets. Although this puppet did not appear in the film, it served as inspiration for the puppet Six-Shooter, who first appeared in Puppetmaster III: Toulon's Revenge (1991).
Originally set to hit cinemas in the summer of 1989 and home video in September, the film was moved back to October 12, 1989 as a direct-to-video release after producer Charles Band indicated in an interview that he would earn more money in the DTV market than he would in the theatrical market.
The director of the first movie, Band, was going to remake the movie in 2010, according to the original idea. The concept was scrapped as a result of the bad response, and the Puppet Master (1989) Axis of Evil strategy was developed in its place. The majority of the soundtrack for this film comes from The Tourist Trap (1979), a film with similar themes on which director David Schmoeller and producer Band previously cooperated. It is primarily synthetic versions of Pino Donaggio's music.
Charles Band says that he got the idea for the title Puppetmaster (1989) from his early days working for Empire Pictures. In 1984, he worked on a movie called The Dungeonmaster (also known as Ragewar). He said that many fans told him they loved that title.He has always been interested by little dolls/figurines that come to life, and when he intended to produce a film on living puppets, he recalled the good response to The Dungeonmaster. He named the film Puppet Master after it.
Blade is the only character whose attire does not change throughout the flicks. Blade is the only puppet to have been on all of the covers of the VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray versions of the Puppetmaster movies.
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.