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| Puppet Master 4 | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Jeff Burr |
| Written by | Charles Band Steven E. Carr Todd Henschell Keith S. Payson Jo Duffy Douglas Aarniokoski |
| Produced by | Charles Band |
| Starring | Gordon Currie Chandra West Jason Adams Teresa Hill Felton Perry Stacie Randall Guy Rolfe |
| Cinematography | Adolfo Bartoli |
| Edited by | Mark S. Manos Margaret-Anne Smith |
| Music by | Richard Band |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Paramount Home Video |
Release date |
|
Running time | 79 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Puppet Master 4 (also known asPuppet Master 4: The Demon) is a 1993direct-to-videohorror film written byCharles Band among others, and directed byJeff Burr. It is the fourth film in thePuppet Master franchise and starsGordon Currie as a young prodigy who, along with his friends, played byChandra West, Jason Adams andTeresa Hill, are attacked by demons; the animatedpuppets ofAndre Toulon (Guy Rolfe) serve to protect the group, similar to the role they played in theprequelToulon's Revenge, rather than terrorize, as they had in thefirst andsecond films.
Puppet Master 4, as well as thesecond,third, andfifth installments, were only available inDVD format through aFull Moon Features box set that has since been discontinued. However, in 2007, Full Moon reacquired the rights to the first five films, and the boxset has since been reissued and is available directly from the studio, as well as through several online retailers.
In theunderworld ofHell, a demon lord namedSutekh sends forth a trio of diminutive servants called theTotems, magically controlled by hisnetherworld minions, to kill those who possess thesecret of animation, including themagicAndré Toulon used to give his puppets life. It transpires also that a team of researchers working on the development ofartificial intelligence are close to discovering Toulon's secret. Sutekh sends one of the Totems as a package to two of the researchers involved, Dr. Piper and Dr. Baker of thePhoenix Division, who are taken by surprise, killed and stripped of their souls by the foul creature.
One of the researchers, a talented young man named Rick Myers, is working as a caretaker at theBodega Bay Inn and has also been using it for a place to conduct his experiments on the A.I. project. The same night Drs. Piper and Baker aremurdered, Rick's friends Suzie, Lauren, and Cameron come to visit him. At dinner, Lauren, who is a psychic, finds Blade (who had been discovered earlier by Rick inside the house and is still animate) and then Toulon's old trunk, with the puppets, Toulons diary and some vials with thelife-giving formula inside. Out of curiosity, Rick and his friends use the fluid on the puppets, and one by one they awaken; next to Blade, they find Pinhead, Six Shooter, Tunneler and Jester. (Torch, who joins the puppet cast in the sequel, makes no appearance here.)
Fascinated by the puppets' spontaneous reactions, and believing that the formula is the answer to the running AI projects, Rick wants to see how smart they are by playing a laser tag game with Pinhead and Tunneler. Cameron, who is competing with Rick for success, tries to use the formula's secret for his personal gain, and he and Lauren decide to use astrange gameboard found in the trunk to try andcontact Toulon for its exact composition, whose recipe was not recorded in the diary. But the glowing pyramid icon which goes with the board is a conduit between the mortal world and the underworld; Sutekh uses the link to send two of his Totems to attack. Cameron and Lauren attempt to flee by car, but Cameron is ambushed by one of the Totems inside his car and killed, while Lauren manages to get back into the hotel. When Rick goes after Cameron, the Totem attacks him as well, but he manages to escape.
Back inside the inn, the third Totem, sent in earlier by package, is also on the prowl. The puppets, intent on protecting Rick, search the hotel and soon manage to kill one of the Totems in the kitchen and, through its supervision link, its controller in the underworld. Then Toulon's spirit, who has been appearing around the hotel all night, tells the puppets to animate the Decapitron. Under Rick and Suzie's astonished eyes, the puppets move up to Rick's room, retrieve a box which contains yet another puppet with a soft plastic head, and revive it with the formula and a lightning strike. The two remaining Totems attack to disrupt the process, but one is electrocuted when Six Shooter uses a wire as alariat to divert some of the lightning's power into it. Decapitron briefly awakens, and his head morphs into the likeness of Toulon, who explains to Rick the origin and the secret of the life-giving formula. The vial, however, turns out to be missing; immediately suspecting Cameron, Rick goes back to search his body, where he does indeed find the vial.
Meanwhile, the last Totem corners the panicked Lauren and prepares to drain her life away when Suzie interferes and douses it withacid. Toulon speaks through Lauren, urging Rick to animate Decapitron to destroy the Totem, and Rick uses his computer to divert power from his generator into Decapitron, bringing him to life. As the Totem attacks, Decapitron exchanges his plastic head for anelectron-bolt launching system and destroys the creature. Afterwards, Toulon speaks to Rick yet again, surrendering custody of his puppets and the formula to him and promising his help in times of need.
Screen Rant rankedPuppet Master 4 as "a little more past the halfway point between perfect and awful", calling it "more confusing than the already convoluted chronology of the entire series".[1]Billboard magazine pointed out that while "[depicting] the once-fearsome puppets as good guys" made them less frightening, "the artfully designed remain uncannily creepy".[2]
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