A severe backwards step for the puppets in this mainly dull and tedious outing. Guy Rolfe, so fantastic as Andre Toulon in part three barely features this time and Richard Band's fantastical them tune appears with the puppets a fair few minutes in to the film. For the start of the movie we are introduced to the caretaker of Bodega Bay Inn (Gordon Currie) and some youth friends of his (many of the cast are Canadian and are all very good in unfortunately rather undemanding roles - Teresa Hill is quite yummy). Totems, minions of the Egyptian God Sutek want the secret of animation life back and the puppets (when they surface) act with a previously unseen cleverness to attempt to destroy the ugly and very computer game looking Totems. The Totems merely complicate the series and distract from the things that previously made the series so unique - they don't share the weird beauty of the puppets and thus don't really fit in. Top scene is Pinhead using a rag to clean blood from Tunnelers drill bit, classic and about the goriest this film goes. The fifth film was filmed concurrently with this one so expect similar sections of mediocre and a Toulon performance that seems to have been filmed in a different era (or even galaxy). Guy Rolfe deserved better and series fans certainly do. Grrrrrrr.
Review of Puppet Master 4
