I'll just start right off the bat by saying I have no idea how this spawned so many sequels or became as famous/successful as it did. I found it incredibly mediocre and repulsing at times. I love the idea of the killer puppets, but the execution was awful. It takes like two thirds of the movie to explain what is actually going on in the film long after the puppets have already started killing people. And there is just so much about this movie that makes no sense, for example supposedly the original creator of the puppets did not intend them to be used as dangerous weapons, but if that's the case why make them with knives for hands and drill bits for heads? Plus like many movies made during the 80s the characters (the puppets) have catchy nicknames like Blade, Pinhead and Tunneler, as if these characters were designed with the purpose of selling toys based off of the film, but this is a very violent film and not a kids movie (an illogical but common trend in the 80s). Also the twist didn't make a whole lot of sense to me (Spoiler Alert) how did the bad guy come back after he died? The answer was he used the ancient Egyptian spell he the puppet master used to bring the dolls to life sure, but how could say the spell to revive himself once he was dead? Unless he said it before he died which shouldn't work cause he wasn't inanimate at the time. Also I noticed several continuity errors and such in the film, and I can understand some people may like these movies for being "so bad they're good" but this first one didn't
even reach that level of bad for me. It just sat at the level between good and bad reserved for the horribly mediocre film which tries to take itself seriously and be good but misses the mark. That being said I didn't hate it, but it wasn't good enough for me to like it either, though I must admit at first the plot with the psychics being in search of these puppets and psychically linked to each other did intrigue me, but it didn't develop or explain itself enough. My favorite thing about the movie was seeing veteran character actor William Hickey (MouseHunt, The Producers, Little Big Man, Prizi's Honor) cast as the Puppet Master. So I give it a 2.5/5. The full movie is available to stream (as well as all of it's 8 sequels) free on Hulu, and you can watch the trailer below:
