Puppet Master 4

Director - Jeff Burr (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings)
Starring - Gordon Currie (Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Forever Knight), Chandra West (White Noise, Highlander), and Ash Adams (Lionheart, A Nightmare on Elm St.)
Release Date - 1993
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "When bad puppets turn good"
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

   Now back to the Puppet Master series!  After a small break from the Puppet Master series I watched a Troma flick from Tromatic Thursdays and a fantastic indie horror anthology that really impressed.  After checking these two films out I decided to pick up where I left off.  The last Puppet Master film I reviewed was part 3 which was my favorite of the series so far.  I doubted any of the installments would beat it but I went into part 4 with an open mind.  Puppet Master 4 and 5 was filmed back to back and released around 6 months apart.

   


     The film follows Rick who is a researcher and is tasked with finding artificial intelligence in robots.  He is watching over the hotel from the previous films and finds a puppet when his girlfriend and two friends visit.  One of the visits has psychic abilities and they find the trunk belonging to Toulon.  She warns them not to open it but they do anyway and release the other puppets trapped inside.  What they don't know is that the demon who is control of the power that gives the puppets life wants his secret back.  He sends a group of his totems to kill everyone and get the puppets.  Now the puppets and the totem must battle or everyone in the hotel will die.
   
     I didn't know what to expect from this installment but I hoped it was as awesome as the third film.  Sadly, it wasn't but it was still highly entertaining.  The acting in this one is solid.  The cast doesn't really stand out like the third film but they work great together creating that fun Full Moon vibe.  The story for this one is more like the first Puppet Master film in terms of it being centered around the puppets instead of the Nazis.  The film makes little mention of the Nazis unlock the previous installments.  Instead it focuses on the puppets and how they came to be.  The introduction of the demonic presence that created the secrets to bring them to life was great but it was underutilized.  There is so much more that could have been done with that storyline than what we got.  Finally, the film has several on screen deaths.  The kills are great and the effects look awesome but what really caught my attention was the cheesy visual effects.  In films with this kind of budget I expect horrible visual effects but this film made it fun.