Originally planned for a summer 1989 theatrical release before being released on home video the following September, Puppet Master was rushed to a direct-to-video release on October 12, 1989, because Charles Band believed it would be more financially successful than a theatrical release.
As a direct consequence of how well it has been received, the series has expanded to include a number of spin-offs. In 1939, at the Bodega Bay Inn in California, André Toulon, a seasoned puppeteer, is putting the finishing touches on his newest creation, Jester.
Kahn, another real puppet, warns the Nazi operatives to keep their distance as they enter the room and head toward Toulon's chamber.
Toulon stores the puppets in a chest and conceals it behind a wall panel compartment. Toulon commits suicide as the Nazis breach the door.
Contact was made with Professor Alex Whitaker by Neil Gallagher in the form of a nightmare in which both Neil and leeches appeared. "Contact" was also made with Dana Hadley by means of an impending death premonition. "Contact" was made with Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford by means of an unknown method. Dana reveals Toulon's "hiding location" to the others and arranges a rendezvous at Neil's Bodega Bay Inn.
When they arrived, they learned that Neil had a wife named Megan and that he had also committed suicide, leaving behind instructions for Megan to carry out in the event that other people showed there. Dana stabs Neil's corpse with a long pin to confirm that 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 capability that was also discovered by André Toulon, the last real alchemist. But Neil hadn't talked to them in a while, so Dana and the others thought he had left them and taken whatever he was looking for for himself. They are there to take it and make up for it.
That night, Theresa, the housekeeper, goes to the fire and is assaulted with a poker by Pinhead, therefore fulfilling Dana's fate. 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.
Blade investigates Alex and Dana's bedroom for protection charms before moving on to Carissa and Frank's, who are having extremely noisy sex and upsetting Alex and Dana's sleep. Tunneler and Leech Woman, two additional puppets, join the scene.
When Carissa investigates a disturbance coming from beneath the bed, the Tunneler murders her by drilling into her face, and the Leech Woman kills Frank by regurgitating leeches onto him while he is chained to the bed so that the leeches may suck his blood. After returning from a stroll, Dana discovers the dead corpse of Gallagher in her room, and Pinhead then attacks her, breaking her leg in the process. 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 has more nightmares until he is awakened by Megan, who gives him Toulon's notebook and informs him that Neil has discovered 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 while he did end his own life, he used Toulon's secrets in order to reanimate himself in an endeavor to live forever and become an immortal.
He admits that he murdered Megan's parents and displays hatred for the puppets, brutally dumping Jester, now content to experiment with human puppets. When the other puppets see this, they attack Neil; Tunneler cuts off his legs, Blade holds him down, Leech Woman regurgitates a leech into his mouth, and Pinhead eventually breaks his neck. Megan sees Alex off the following day, and as she ascends the stairs, she brings Dana's toy dog Leroy to life.
Puppet Master's cast was exceptional. André Toulon was portrayed by William Hickey.
Alex Whitaker, the film's primary protagonist, 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.
Neil Gallagher, the film's antagonist and namesake Puppetmaster (1989), is responsible for the killings of many of the film's former colleagues and friends at the hands of the live-action puppets, as performed by Jimmie F. Skaggs.Megan Gallagher, Neil's wife, inherited the Bodega Bay from her parents and met Neil there.
Matt Roe played Frank Forrester, a psychic researcher for PRI who specialized in sexual psychic readings with Carissa. Carissa Stamford, a psychometrist with Pensa Research Inc (PRI) and Frank's spouse, often gets visions from former sexual trauma victims or couples being intimate together, but she can rebuild the emotional history of any item via touch.
Theresa, this is Mews Small, who used to work as a cleaner for the Gallaghers. Barbara Crampton had a part in the carnival.
The names of the murderous puppets that are used in the show are Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Shredder Khan, and Gengie.
On September 30, 1989, Puppetmaster (1989) was made available for purchase on VHS by Paramount Home Video. On June 13th, 2000, Full Moon Home Video released the film on DVD for the first time. Following the March 2008 release of The Puppetmaster by Wizard Entertainment, a Blu-ray was released in July 2010. Full Moon Features also issued a remastered DVD at the same time.
Along with the Killjoy series, Echo Bridge Home Entertainment published the "Killjoy and Puppetmaster (1989): The Complete Collections" in 2014, however both series have since spawned new sequels. Full Moon issued limited-edition Blu-ray and VHS sets on April 10, 2018, with the latter limited to 3,000 copies and the first 300 signed by Charles Band. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a 4/10 average rating based on seven reviews, which means that only 43% of people liked it.
In its review, TV Guide referred to it as "an ineffective variation on the killer-doll premise," calling it "useless." The ambiance, music, and set design were all acclaimed, but the performances, bad script, and first act received harsh criticism.
Although Puppetmaster 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.
Puppetmaster (1989) appears as one of the more entertaining of the 'killer toy' type horror flicks. Despite its limitations, Puppet Master (1989) emerges as one of the more enjoyable of the films in this subgenre. — Wes, via another website
The popularity as a cult picture prompted the creation of a franchise that would span decades. The film was followed by five sequels: Puppetmaster (1989) II (1990), Puppetmaster 4 (1993), Puppet Master (1989) 5: The Final Chapter (1994), Curse of the Puppet Master (1989) (1998), and Puppetmaster: The Legacy (2000). (2003).
Similar to Retro Puppetmaster (1989), the 1991 film Toulon's Revenge also serves as a prequel (1999). After the release of Puppetmaster (1989): 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 centered on the puppet Blade, was shown to audiences in the year 2020. In the year 2022, a further movie will be released; this one will be about Doktor Death (from Retro). It aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2004 as a crossover between Puppetmaster (1989) and Demonic Toys.
As of September of 2021, Full Moon has announced a cooperation with indie gaming company "October Games" in order to deliver an official Puppet Master game on the Steam store before the end 2022.
A 3-D remake of the original film was announced in March 2009 by Charles Band.
Fascinating facts about the Puppet Master Pinhead's hands in the punching sequences are really the fists of dwarf stuntwoman Cindy Sorensen, who had to wear the same fingerless gloves and sweater sleeve to make it seem like it was Pinhead's fist.
Cindy said that the most challenging aspect of these sequences was keeping her head down while holding the Pinhead puppet on her shoulders and while throwing fake blows.
Leech Woman's foam latex mouth seems flexible as she "coughs" up a leech. Only three-quarters of the leech mechanism emerges from the puppet, and a original blog simple camera cut gives the impression that a complete leech emerges from Leech Woman's mouth.
The hotel in Bodega Bay was made to look like a dollhouse. It was about the size of a refrigerator. When the filmmakers found the perfect spot, they hung the model in the air and used force perspective to make it look like the hotel was really there. Five puppeteers were needed to operate the Blade puppet.
The previous film by Charles Band titled Dolls, which was about murderous toys, served as the film's inspiration (1986).
Director David Schmoeller admitted in a 1999 interview with horror movie website The Terror Trap that he was not involved with the rest of the Puppet Master series, aside from a character credit, because it would reveal someone other than Full Moon CEO Charles Band was responsible for the creation of the company's biggest franchise.
Schmoeller was never requested to give a director's commentary to the original "Puppetmaster (1989)" DVD. He also said in the same interview that Charles Band owed him residual payments. David Schmoeller modelled Blade on one of his favorite performers, Klaus Kinski.
Band drew a six-armed Ninja with firearms in his early sketches of puppets. In Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge, the idea for the puppet Six-Shooter is found in this puppet (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 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. In 2010, creator Band planned to rework the original film. Due to unfavorable feedback, the concept was abandoned and replaced with Puppet Master Axis of Evil. The majority of this film's soundtrack consists of synthesizer versions of Pino Donaggio's music from 1979's The Tourist Trap, a film with comparable themes on which director David Schmoeller and producer Charles Band had 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 made the decision to construct a film based on live puppets, he remembered how much positive feedback he had received from The Dungeonmaster, a film that he had always been attracted by. As a result, he wanted to create a film based on live puppets.He named the film Puppetmaster after it.
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. Blade, a puppet without lungs or other internal organs, runs hard and sounds out of breath near the opening of the film.
In addition, during the whole of the movie, the sounds of the other puppets breathing heavily, groaning, and moaning can be heard. Despite this, none of them are able to genuinely communicate verbally.