It was very popular, and since then, it has gained a big cult following and turned into a franchise.
In 1939, at the Bodega Bay Inn in California, an elderly puppeteer called André Toulon is finishing up his newest puppet, Jester, before bringing it to life.Two Nazi agents come and go to Toulon's chamber, while another live puppet, Kahn, cautions him.
Toulon hides all of the animated puppets in a wall panel compartment by placing them in a chest. As the Nazis knock on the door, Toulon commits suicide. In the present day, Neil Gallagher "contacts" four psychics who live far away from each other. All five of them used to know each other: Professor Alex Whitaker had a dream about Neil and leeches, Dana Hadley had a vision of her own death, and psychic researchers Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford were "contacted" by Neil in some way that wasn't clear.
Dana reveals Toulon's "hiding location" to the others and arranges a rendezvous at Neil's Bodega Bay Inn.
They are startled to learn that Neil not only has a wife, Megan, but that he has also committed himself, leaving instructions for Megan to follow when the others arrive.
She then leaves them with the body so that they may pay their respects, and Dana punctures Neil's body with a long pin in order to confirm that he has passed away. While the psychics are getting comfortable into their quarters, they get a variety of unusual and often puzzling images of Neil. That evening, over dinner, Dana purposefully riles up Megan, which results in Megan getting up and leaving the table, which then allows Pinhead, another animated doll, to emerge from Neil's coffin. Alex pursues Megan and informs her about their relationship with her husband. Carissa, a psychometrist, can perceive an object's emotional past just by touching it, Dana can tell fortunes and find goods and people, and Alex himself can predict the future in his dreams.
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. However, since Neil had not spoken with them in a long time, Dana and the others assumed he had abandoned them and taken whatever he was searching for for himself, and they have here to take it and settle the score.
The housekeeper, Theresa, is attacked with a poker by Pinhead while tending to the fire that night, completing Dana's destiny.
Megan faints after seeing Gallagher's corpse on a chair; Alex attends to her as the others return the body to the coffin. 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 commotion coming from beneath the bed, Tunneler murders her by drilling into her face, while Leech Woman regurgitates leeches onto Frank, who is bound to the bed, draining his blood. Dana discovers Gallagher's corpse in her room after returning from a stroll, and she is assaulted by Pinhead, who fractures her leg.
Pinhead pursues her, strangling and punching her until she manages to kick him off and crawl to the elevator, only to have her neck sliced by Blade, completing her fate.
Alex has further nightmares and is ultimately awoken by Megan, who gives him Toulon's notebook and informs him that Neil has discovered Toulon's reanimation secret. In their haste to flee, Alex sees Neil, and they arrive to discover Dana, Frank, and Carissa's corpses huddled around a dining room table with the just revived Neil. He adds that, although he did commit himself, he utilized Toulon's secrets to resurrect himself in order to achieve immortality.
He admits that he murdered Megan's parents and displays disdain for the puppets, forcefully tossing Jester away, content to experiment with human puppets. When the other puppets see this, they attack Neil: Tunneler removes his legs, Blade pins him, Leech Woman regurgitates a leech into his mouth, and Pinhead eventually breaks his neck. Megan sees Alex go the following day and brings Dana's pet dog Leroy to life as she ascends the stairs. Puppet Master (1989)'s cast was exceptional. André Toulon was portrayed by William Hickey.
Paul Le Mat played Alex Whitaker, a Yale anthropology professor who can dream of the future. As Dana Hadley, Irene Miracle portrays an amateur fortune teller who specializes in finding lost/missing items.
Jimmie F. Skaggs played Neil Gallagher, the film's major antagonist and Puppetmaster (1989) who kills his former friends and coworkers using puppets. When her parents passed away, she acquired the Bodega Bay that had been owned and managed by her parents and was the place where she and Neil had their first date. The role of Megan Gallagher was played by actress Robin Frates. Frank Forrester, a psychic researcher with Pensa Research Inc (PRI) and Carissa's partner, was played by actor Matt Roe. They specialize in sexual psychic readings. Carissa Stamford, portrayed by Kathryn O'Reilly, is a psychometrist with Pensa Research Inc (PRI) and Frank's partner. She often gets visions from former sexual trauma victims or couples in intimate relationships, but she can reconstruct the emotional history of any item by touch. Theresa, the Gallaghers' housekeeper, was Mews Small. At the carnival, Barbara Crampton portrayed a lady. Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, Leech Woman, Shredder Khan, and Gengie are the names given to the killer puppets. Paramount Home Video released Puppet Master (1989) on VHS on September 30, 1989.Full Moon Home Video released the film on DVD for the first time on June 13th, 2000. Wizard Entertainment published The Puppet Master (1989) in March 2008, followed by a Blu-ray release in July 2010. A remastered DVD was also published by Full Moon Features at the same time. Although Echo Bridge Home Entertainment released "Killjoy and Puppet Master (1989): The Complete Collections" in 2014 with the Killjoy series, both series have subsequently spawned additional installments in their own ongoing storylines since then.
On April 10, 2018, Full Moon released a Blu-ray and a limited-edition vintage VHS compilation, with the first 300 autographed by Band.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 43 percent approval rating based on seven reviews, with an average rating of four out of ten.
In its review, TV Guide called it "a worthless twist on the killer-doll motif." A website rated it 3/5, praising the mood, music, and set designs but criticizing the performances, narrative, and first blog post act. Puppet Master isn't what I would call a terrific picture, but its heart is in the right place, and I've always been a tremendous fan of the evil doll subgenre of horror, which makes the film's inadequacies readily tolerable, according to the conclusion of the review. Despite its flaws, Wes from another website claims that Puppetmaster is one of the most enjoyable "killer toy" horror films. The popularity of the movie inside a subculture served as the impetus for the creation of a series that would last for decades. The film was so successful that it spawned a total of five sequels: Puppetmaster II (1990), Puppetmaster (1989) 4 (1993), Puppetmaster 5: The Final Chapter (1994), and Curse of the Puppetmaster (1989) (1998). (2003). Toulon's Revenge (1991), like Retro Puppet Master, acts as a prequel (1999). After Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010) and Axis Rising (2012) and Axis Termination (2013), a loose prequel trilogy has begun (2017). odahsrecked Blade: The Iron Cross, a spin-off centering on the puppet Blade, was published in 2020. Another film, Doktor Death (from Retro), is expected to be released in 2022. In 2004, the Sci-Fi Channel presented Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, a crossover with fellow Full Moon series Demonic Toys.
Full Moon announced a collaboration with indie gaming developer "October Games" in September 2021, with the goal of releasing an official Puppetmaster (1989) game on the Steam store by the end of 2022.
Band made the announcement in March 2009 that they will be remaking the first film in 3-D.
Interesting information about the Puppet Master (1989) Pinhead's fists in the punching sequences are really those of dwarf stunt woman Cindy Sorensen, who had to wear the same fingerless gloves and sweater sleeve to make it seem like it was Pinhead's fist. The most challenging element of those sequences, according to Cindy, was keeping her head ducked the whole time while carrying the Pinhead puppet on her shoulders and throwing fake punches. When Leech Woman "coughs" up a leech, her mouth is constructed of foam latex, which makes the mouth look more flexible.
Despite the fact that only three quarters of the leech mechanism is visible, a simple camera cut gives the appearance that a whole leech emerges from Leech Woman's lips.
The motel at Bodega Bay was a tiny, about the size of a refrigerator. When the filmmakers discovered the ideal spot, they suspended the model in the air and employed permutations of force perspective to make the hotel look as if it were truly there. The Blade puppet could only be operated by a team of five skilled puppeteers. The movie was inspired by Band's Dolls (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 Full Moon's most famous franchise. When the first "Puppet Master (1989)" movie was released on DVD, Schmoeller was never even asked to participate in a director's commentary for the film in any capacity. In the same interview, he also said that Charles Band owed him residuals even though they had stopped paying him.
David Schmoeller's favorite actor, Klaus Kinski, inspired the puppet Blade.
One of the first puppets conceived by Charles Band was a six-armed, armed Ninja. This puppet did not appear in the film, but it inspired the puppet Six-Shooter, who debuted in Puppetmaster (1989) III: Toulon's Revenge (1991).
Film producer Charles Band indicated in an interview that he would earn more money in the direct-to-video market than he would make in the theatrical market when the film was originally scheduled for release during the summer of 1989 and on home video in September 1989.
It was planned that Band, the original film's director, would re-create the movie in 2010. Because of the unfavorable reaction, the plan was shelved, and Puppet Master Axis of Evil was created instead. The Tourist Trap (1979), a film with similar themes on which director David Schmoeller and producer Charles Band previously collaborated, provided the bulk of the soundtrack for this film, which is mostly synthesized versions of Pino Donaggio's music. Charles Band's version of how he came up with the term Puppetmaster involves his early days at Empire Pictures. In 1984, he worked on the film The Dungeonmaster (also known as Ragewar) and said that many fans approached him to tell him how much they enjoyed the title. He's always been interested in how small dolls or figures can come to life, and when he wanted to make a movie about puppets that come to life, he remembered how well people liked The Dungeonmaster. After that, he just chose the title Puppetmaster for the film. Blade is the only character who wears the same outfit in every movie. Blade is the sole puppet to feature on the Puppet Master Movies' VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray covers. At the start of the film, the puppet Blade, who lacks lungs and other internal organs, exhales loudly and sounds out of breath. In addition, the other puppets' panting, groaning, and moaning can be heard throughout the picture. Even though they are all unable to communicate verbally.