Ah, the search for Toulon’s formula, this is what accounts for plot with “Puppet Master Legacy.” It’s not uncommon for horror films to feature clips from their earlier films, but the Puppet Master series has made it ridiculous by saving money through obvious manners. One is showing the puppets but only in their docile form, and two is padding the film with about as much filler as possible. This filler is clips from the past movies that the director uses to compensate for lack of fresh footage of the puppets. This method would later be included in the rank “Axis of Evil.”
A better portion of this film is comprised of footage from “Retro Puppet Master,” perhaps one of the final movies from the series to include live puppets and then from there it’s strictly nothing but a clip show for fans of the series. Which is no shock why the last two films of the series aren’t included on the DVD set considering they’re mainly just amalgamations of clips from the movie and nothing more than that. The rest is padding of the unlikeliest kind that attempts to build a story from the fresh footage that features a young assassin on the verge of discovering Toulon’s sacred puppet formula.
What she encounters are merely stories of the fantastic puppets while the puppets literally dangle in the foreground so as to remind us that we’re watching a movie from the series, but that’s about all we’re going to get in terms of puppet action. The rest is fairly uneventful as the best scenes from the best sequels are played and for seventy minutes we’re treated to reasons why a reboot is entirely necessary. Only a half hour of the film is actual new footage, while the rest is archive footage from Full Moon’s label. The footage we actually see has nothing but plot holes and glaring inconsistencies when applied to the series lore.
For example, If Six-Shooter was built and alive during World War II, where is he during the first two movies of the series? And what is the secret organization ordering the new character around to kill the puppets? What do they have to gain by it? Nevertheless it’s a fairly nonsensical compilation of Puppet Master clips and nothing more. I wish we could have a new movie with new puppets that featured a brand new narrative revolving around Toulon’s formula and his unholy creations. Sadly, “The Legacy” is one in a line of Puppet Master sequels that opt to just recollect the past films rather than, oh, give us something new. What a shame.