Crew
Director – Jeff Burr, Screenplay – Doug Aarniokoski, Steve E. Carr, Jo Duffy, Todd Henschell & Keith Payson, Producer – Charles Band, Photography – Adolfo Bartoli, Music – Richard Band, Optical/Digital Effects – Motion Opticals, Puppet Effects Supervisor – David Allen, Makeup Effects/Mechanical Effects – AlchemyFX (Supervisor – Michael S. Deak), Production Design – Milo. Production Company – Full Moon Entertainment.
Cast
Gordon Currie (Rick Myers), Chandra West (Susie), Jason Adams (Cameron), Teresa Hill (Lauren), Felton Perry (Dr Carl Baker), Stacie Randall (Dr Leslie Piper), Guy Rolfe (Andre Toulon)
Plot
The Ancient Egyptian god Sutekh seeks to regain the secrets of animating puppets that have been stolen from it. Sutekh sends a killer doll to the laboratory of robotics researcher Leslie Piper, killing her. The current caretaker for the Bodega Bay hotel is Rick Myers, who is also an assistant on Leslie’s robotics research project. He is now joined by his girlfriend Susie and other friends. Together they find a trunk that contains the puppets. Rick is able to bring the puppets back to life after injecting them with the serum also found in the trunk. However, doing so alerts Sutekh and the killer doll arrives at the hotel.
Puppetmaster (1989) was the single biggest success for Charles Band and his Full Moon Productions. Band spun it out into a series of sequels with Puppet Master II (1990), Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991), Puppet Master V: The Final Chapter (1995), Curse of the Puppet Master (1998), Retro Puppetmaster (1999), the compilation film Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003), Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys (2004), Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010), Puppet Master X: Axis Rising (2012), Puppet Master: Axis Termination (2017) and Puppet Master: Doktor Death (2022), as well as the spinoff Blade: The Iron Cross (2020).
As the title says, Puppet Master 4 was the fourth film in the series. The previous film had established the backhistory of Andre Toulon and his dealings with the Nazis that would feature throughout the series. This returns to the present and gives us Canadian actor Gordon Currie as the new caretaker of the Bodega Bay Inn who revives the puppets. The major switch this time is that the puppets are not malevolent creations but act as essentially cute supporting characters who help defend the hotel against a more malevolent nemesis. Added to the mythology this time is the not very well explained threat of the Ancient Egyptian god Sutekh (also known as Set) who created the formula in the first place.
Certainly, Puppet Master 4 gets off to a wild seeming start. There is a new puppet, The Totem, that looks like a cross between a Giger alien and an Aztec god; the stop-motion animated figure of the god Sutekh with glowing red eyes; and Gordon Currie having laser duels with his homemade robots. All of which sets up an intriguingly different mix.
As is often the case with Full Moon productions, Puppet Master 4 has a brief runtime (79 minutes). This brings us to another regular Full Moon problem where the film is structured wrong as a script. Frequently in their films, it almost feels as though the climax is a weak set-piece that is an afterthought to the build-up. Here it takes nearly half the film before the puppets are revived and go back into action. And even when they do, we get lame scenes where they and Gordon Currie play games of laser tag.
As is often the case in Full Moon’s films, the puppets are immobile are not up to much. Stripped of the malevolence they had in the earlier films, they are nothing much more than supporting characters and do very little before the climactic showdown, which simply involves them coming together to blast away the evil killer robot. Nor does the addition of robots to the mix add anything. The Totem however is a wonderfully malevolent new creation. The film also raises the nemesis of Sutekh but expends too little to explain things regarding it and The Totem.
Director Jeff Burr made a fine debut with From a Whisper to a Scream/The Offering (1987) and then went onto make numerous other genre films including Stepfather 2 (1989), Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), Puppetmaster V: The Final Chapter (1994), Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994), Night of the Scarecrow (1995), Johnny Mysto, Boy Wizard (1997), Spoiler (1998), The Werewolf Reborn (1998), The Boy with X-Ray Eyes (1999), Phantom Town (1999), Straight Into Darkness (2005), Devil’s Den (2006), Mil Mascaras vs the Aztec Mummy (2007), Resurrection (2010) and Gun of the Black Sun (2011).
Trailer here