Due to financial problems, Charles Band temporarily shut down Full Moon Features in 2002 and rebranded as Shadow Entertainment. Having made a deal with Twentieth Century Fox Home Video, Band tried staying afloat despite the market dying out. Thankfully, he still held the rights to the Puppet Master series, but he had to make sense of the continuity. Much like the Friday the 13th series, the timeline of the movies was all over the place and became confusing. He brought back C. Courtney Joyner, writer of Puppet Master III, to pen a script for a soft reset. Joyner used the pseudonym Gene Yarbrough, while Band went by his Head of the Family credit, Robert Talbot. Fans would have to wait four years for this entry, and what they got was a huge disappointment. In 2003, Puppet Master: The Legacy hit video store shelves across the country.
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Synopsis
Rogue agent Maclain (Kate Orsini) searches for André Toulon’s secret of resurrecting the dead for a mysterious client. Her search takes her to the Bodega Bay Inn, where she finds Eric Weiss (Jacob Witkin) working on the puppets. It turns out that Weiss knew Toulon before his death and swore never to reveal his secrets. When Maclain threatens his life, Weiss plays a recording left by Toulon explaining how he acquired the magic. Some stock footage later, Weiss reveals that his real name is Peter Hertz, the boy Toulon saved from Nazi Germany. The two begin arguing over whether Toulon was good or evil and whether the puppets justified their killings. Maclain soon learns more than she ever expected, including the war with Sutek and how Toulon’s secrets keep getting discovered. Soon enough, they’ll find just what kind of a legacy has been left by the Puppet Master.
Review
Admittedly, Full Moon Features was never going to produce a film that would get an Oscar nomination, let alone win. They always maintained at least some level of quality and were generally fun B-movies that knew what they were. With Puppet Master: The Legacy, the company has hit an all-time low for the franchise and Full Moon themselves. At 80 minutes in length, about 15 minutes is original footage, with the remaining 65 being stock footage. It’s on par with Silent Night Deadly Night 2‘s use of stock footage, but at least that was more even. With Legacy, there will be two minutes of original footage followed by ten minutes of clips from the other movies. It feels less like a full-length feature, and more a glorified clip show trying to pass off as a movie. I understand why they did it, but that doesn’t make it less lazy.
To give them some credit, the filmmakers tried to make sense of the series’ continuity being all over the place. Unfortunately, they leave you with more questions than answers and make the timeline even more confusing. For instance, Rick Meyers, the lead from Puppet Master 4, was killed off-screen after the events of Puppet Master 5. Also, we learn that the puppets hired Maclain to kill Weiss, the new puppet master, which raises tons of questions. If that was their endgame, why didn’t the puppets kill Weiss themselves when they had the chance? Also, how were the puppets able to talk to Maclain when none of them had voices? After the ending, there’s a message thanking all the people who worked over the years on this franchise. Overall, they may have had good intentions, but Puppet Master: The Legacy feels like desperation more than a celebration.
Buy Puppet Master: The Legacy from Amazon: https://amzn.to/38HOne4.
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