The horror movie Puppetmaster was released in 1989 and was directed by David Schmoeller. The screenplay for the movie was written by Charles Band and Kenneth J. Hall.Irene Miracle, Matt Roe and Kathryn O'Reilly feature as psychics who are plotted against by a former colleague using puppets controlled by an Egyptian spell in the film. Originally slated for a summer 1989 theatrical release, followed by a September 1990 home video release, Puppet Master (1989) was finally shifted to a direct-to-video release on October 12, 1989, since Charles Band believed this would be more lucrative than the theatrical market.
The series has spawned various spin-offs as a consequence of its success.
André Toulon is putting the final touches on his newest puppet, Jester, in 1939 at the Bodega Bay Inn in California.
Two Nazi agents come and make straight for Toulon's chamber, while another live puppet, Kahn, cautions him. Toulon puts all of the animated puppets in a chest and hides it in a wall panel recess. As the Nazis knock on the door, Toulon takes his own life.
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. Neil lives near the Bodega Bay Inn, where Dana discovered Toulon's "hiding location," so they decide to meet there. They are startled to 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 gives them the body so they can pay their respects, and Dana sticks a long pin into Neil's body to make sure he is dead.
As the psychics are getting settled in their rooms, they see different, confusing images of Neil. That night at dinner, Dana purposely upsets Megan, which makes her leave the table, and Pinhead, another animated doll, crawls 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 studying alchemy when he found, with Frank's aid, that the Ancient Egyptians had devised a means of reanimating lifeless figurines, a power that André Toulon, the last genuine alchemist, had also discovered. Dana and the others concluded Neil had abandoned them and grabbed whatever Neil was looking for for himself due to his lack of contact with the group for some time, and they are now going to take it and settle the score. That night, Dana's fate is fulfilled when Theresa, the housekeeper, responds to the fire and is struck with a poker by Pinhead. Gallagher's body moved to a chair, where Megan found it. This made her pass out, so Alex took care of her while the others put the body back in the casket.
After discovering that Alex and Dana's rooms are secured by magic, Blade proceeds to Carissa and Frank's, where they are having an extremely loud sex session that is bothering Alex and Dana. As a third puppet, Underground and Leech Woman appear. Carissa is fatally drilled by Tunneler while exploring the noise under the bed, and Leech Woman regurgitates leeches onto Frank, who is chained to the bed and drained of blood. Dana discovers Gallagher's body in her room after returning from a walk; Pinhead assaults her and breaks her leg as a consequence.
Pinhead pursues her, strangling and punching her until she manages to kick him off and crawl to the elevator, only to have her throat sliced by Blade, completing her fate.
Alex has more nightmares, and Megan finally wakes him up by showing him Toulon's diary and telling him that Neil found Toulon's secret to coming back to life. Alex sees Neil and rushes downstairs to flee, only to discover Dana, Frank, and Carissa's corpses seated around the dining table, followed by the freshly revived Neil. His reason for his apparent suicide is that he used Toulon's secrets to reanimate himself in an effort to become immortal, but that he really committed himself. He says he murdered Megan's parents and displays hatred for the puppets, forcefully discarding Jester. Tunneler cuts off Neil's legs, Blade holds him down, Leech Woman regurgitates a leech into his mouth, and Pinhead breaks his neck. The following day, Megan sees Alex off and brings Dana's pet dog Leroy to life. The cast of Puppetmaster (1989) was quite excellent. William Hickey gave life to the role of André Toulon in this production.
Alex Whitaker, the film's primary protagonist and a professor of anthropology at Yale University who has the capacity to dream of events that have not yet occurred, was represented by Paul Le Mat in the film.
Dana Hadley, played by Irene Miracle, is a small-time carnival psychic who specializes in fortune reading and finding lost or misplaced items.
Neil Gallagher, played by actor original blog Jimmie F. Skaggs, is the film's principal antagonist, serving as the eponymous Puppetmaster, arranging the murders of his former friends and coworkers at the hands of the lifelike puppets. Megan Gallagher, Neil's wife, inherited the Bodega Bay from her parents and met Neil there.
Frank Forrester was played by actor Matt Roe. He was a psychic researcher for Pensa Research Inc. (PRI) and Carissa's partner. Together, they were experts 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 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 of the killer puppets. Puppet Master (1989) was released on VHS on September 30, 1989, by Paramount Home Video. On June 13, 2000, Full Moon Home Video was the first to put the movie on DVD.
Following a March 2008 release by Wizard Entertainment under the title The Puppet Master, Wizard released a Blu-ray in July 2010. Full Moon Features also issued a remastered DVD at the same time.
Despite the fact that both the Killjoy series and the Puppet Master (1989) series have subsequently generated further installments, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment published "Killjoy and Puppetmaster (1989): The Complete Collections" in 2014 with the Killjoy series. On April 10, 2018, Full Moon released a Blu-ray and a limited-edition vintage VHS compilation, with the first 300 autographed by Charles Band.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 43 percent approval rating based on seven reviews, with a weighted average rating of 4/10. A bad review was published in TV Guide, and they referred to it as "a useless variant on the killer-doll genre." A website gave the film a 3/5 rating, praising the mood, music, and set designs but criticizing the performances, narrative, and opening act. Although Puppet Master (1989) isn't a great film, its heart is in the right place, and I've always loved demonic dolls in horror films, so the flaws are easily overlooked. Despite its limitations, Puppetmaster (1989) emerges as one of the more pleasant of the 'killer toy' type horror flicks, according to Wes from another website.
The film's status as a cult classic sparked a series that would last for decades. Puppet Master II (1990), Puppetmaster 4 (1993), Puppetmaster 5: The Final Chapter (1994), Curse of the Puppetmaster (1998), and Puppetmaster (1989): The Legacy (2000) were the five sequels (2003). Similar to Retro Puppet Master, the 1991 film Toulon's Revenge also serves as a prequel (1999). After the release of Puppetmaster: Axis of Evil in 2010, Axis Rising in 2012, and Axis Termination in 2013, a prequel trilogy in a more loose sense got underway (2017). odahsrecked Blade: The Iron Cross, a spin-off focused on the puppet Blade, was published in 2020. Another film, about Doktor Death (from Retro), is due out in 2022.
In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel presented Puppet Master (1989) vs. Demonic Toys, a crossover with fellow Full Moon series Demonic Toys.
Full Moon established a cooperation with 'October Games' to develop an official Puppet Master (1989) game on Steam in late 2022.
It was reported in March 2009 that Charles Band planned to recreate the original picture in 3-D.
Interesting information on the Man Behind the Puppets Pinhead's fists in the punching sequences are really those of dwarf stunt woman Cindy Sorensen, who had to wear the same fingerless gloves and sweater sleeve to make it seem 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 her a more flexible appearance 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.
The motel at Bodega Bay was a scaled-down version that was about the size of a refrigerator when it was finished. When the filmmakers had selected a site that was just right, they suspended the model in the air and employed a variety of different combinations of force and perspective to make the hotel look as if it was truly there.
Five puppeteers were needed to control the Blade puppet. The film was inspired by Charles Band's previous film about deadly dolls, Dolls (1986).
In an interview conducted in 1999 by the horror movie website The Terror Trap, director David Schmoeller revealed the reason he was not involved with the rest of the Puppetmaster series, other than receiving a character credit, was because he feared it would reveal that someone other than Full Moon CEO Band was responsible for the creation of Full Moon's most successful franchise. In the interview, Schmoeller made the admission.
When the original "Puppetmaster" DVD came out, Schmoeller was never asked to contribute a director's commentary. In the same interview, he also said that Charles Band still owed him residual payments. The puppet Blade is modeled on Klaus Kinski, one of David Schmoeller's favorite performers.
Band drew a six-armed Ninja with weaponry as one of the first puppets he created. The puppet Six-Shooter, who makes his debut in Puppetmaster III: Toulon's Revenge, was inspired by this puppet, which didn't make the movie (1991). It was initially planned to be released into theaters in the summer of 1989 and onto home video in September 1989; however, it was then pushed to 12 October 1989 as a direct-to-video release, as the producer Charles Band had stated in an interview that he would make more money in the DTV field than he would in the theatrical market. This caused the release date to be pushed back to 12 October 1989. The original film's creator, Band, planned to recreate it in 2010. Due to reaction, the project was discarded, and Puppet Master (1989) Axis of Evil was born instead. A lot of this movie's soundtrack is made up of synthesizer arrangements of Pino Donaggio's music from 1979's The Tourist Trap, which has similar themes and is directed by David Schmoeller and produced by Charles Band.
The beginnings of Puppet Master may be traced back to Charles Band's tenure at Empire Pictures. Many fans approached him after seeing The Dungeonmaster (aka Ragewar), on which he worked in 1984, and told him how much they liked the moniker.
When he decided to develop a film on live puppets, he recalled how much great feedback he had gotten from The Dungeonmaster, which he had always been captivated with.
He liked the name so much that he decided to base the movie around it. Blade's costume never changes from movie to movie.
Blade is the only puppet that has appeared on all of the Puppetmaster Movies' VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray covers.
The puppet Blade, who lacks lungs and other internal organs, exhales forcefully and sounds out of breath while sprinting at the opening of the film. The gasping, sighing, and moaning of the other puppets can also be heard throughout the film. Despite their inability to converse vocally.