Puppet Master: Every Movie Ranked From Worst To Best By IMDB Score

Both the Puppet Master franchise and the people who make it, Full Moon Pictures, have frequently come under fire for putting out terrible movies. But that doesn’t mean the films weren’t scary when we were kids. There’s one measure of objectivity when it comes to art, and that’s IMDb, which accumulates critic and audience reviews to rank movies, making a handy reference for when someone doesn’t wanna sift through whatever looks halfway interesting on the streaming services they’re subscribed to.

For those not familiar with the Puppet Master franchise, it can be summarized as a series in which puppets that have an Egyptian curse on them are forced to do the bidding of a diabolical Nazi (usually). It’s as fun and campy as it sounds.

13 Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003) – 3.0

There are a lot of issues with Puppet Master: The Legacy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s completely worthless. If you don’t feel like watching all of the Puppet Master movies, you can jump in here without watching anything that came before it.

The Legacy is not a reboot but a big highlight reel of all of the previous movies, showing a little bit of story and most of the “best” kills from the preceding movies. The framing device is Toulon’s grandson telling an assassin a short history of the puppets, making this a feature length flashback clip episode.

12 Retro Puppet Master (1999) – 4.0

Despite the pretty terrible reviews, this one least has something original to offer instead of just being a glorified clip show like The Legacy. This movie goes back in time, to Egypt in the early 20th century to show how the puppets were made, the curse that was placed on them, and then viewers meet Toulon when he first encountered the puppets at a puppet show.

All in all not great by a long shot, but also not the worst. Something worth noting is that Greg Sestero, best known for being Johnny’s best friend Mark from The Room, portrays the younger André Toulon here.

11 Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys (2004) – 4.0

This movie is pretty much the worst low-budget Freddy Vs. Jason style horror movie team-up crossover you can imagine. We see the puppets taking on the Demonic Toys, who are characters from a similar 1992 film.

The hijinks that ensues when they meet is pretty much exactly what you would expect from a crossover of this caliber, which means there’s not much worth writing home about. The conflict arises when a man wants to use Toulon’s formula to give birth to a race of murderous toys for release on Christmas into the homes of millions.

10 Puppet Master X: Axis Rising (2012) – 4.0

For some reason, this series loves to use the Nazi aesthetic, which isn’t the best look. Here, Nazi scientist Dr. Moebius gets his hands on one of the puppets and decides to synthesize an entire Nazi army of the newly created puppets.

This one is pretty standard Puppet Master fare but not in a particularly rewarding way — especially not for the tenth film in a horror franchise.

9 Puppet Master: Axis Termination (2017) – 4.0

This one is Dr. Mengele’s murderous experimental compound meets The Men Who Stare At Goats. Yes, really.

The puppets in this one aren’t Nazis and are more anti-heroes more than anything else, because the United States military is using them to go into a German lab to stop the development of more Nazi puppets. They also plan to put an end to the diabolical experiments that are happening there.

8 Curse Of The Puppet Master (1998) – 4.1

Curse Of The Puppet Master at least has an interesting plot, even though that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good when it comes to the Puppet Master franchise.

Here, a man is researching how one could put souls into puppets because of course he does. This movie reuses a ton of scenes of the puppets doing stuff, making this one a weird case of cinematic déjà vu. Whether that comes from budget constraints or this is just a hallmark of the series at this point is unknown.

7  Puppet Master: Axis Of Evil (2010) – 4.3

This is another one where the puppets aren’t the villains at all, but friends to the protagonist as he (Danny Coogan) does his best to stop a group of Nazis who assassinated Andre Toulon from destroying an American manufacturing plant.

Why exactly the Nazis want to destroy a manufacturing plant? That’s a mystery, but the film is set in World War II for once, so it checks out.

6 Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter (1994) – 5.1

A hallmark of bad horror franchises, any entry titled The Final Chapter that’s nowhere near close to being the final movie is a must. Puppet Master upholds this tradition with a movie that was shot back-to-back with Puppet Master 4, and it lack in time and quality shows.

In this one, an evil man has trapped himself inside one of the puppets a long time ago, and it’s up to our protagonist to put an end to his rampage with the help of the puppets.

5 Puppet Master 4 (1993) – 5.3

Finally, a little more past the halfway point between perfect and awful comes Puppet Master 4, a film more confusing than the already convoluted chronology of the entire series. For some reason, there are demons and they’re attacking the protagonists.

Once again, the puppets (for some reason) save the day rather than doing their best to murder everyone in sight in the most ridiculous and crude ways the writers could think up.

4 Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018) – 5.4

This one finally has someone you may recognize in it, and his performance might have been one of the only things that helped this movie get more than a 5.

Thomas Lennon (Lieutenant Jim Dangle from the hit Comedy Central show Reno 911!) stars as Edgar Easton, a man who attends a puppet convention to sell a family heirloom with his friend. Little did he know, puppets are indeed pretty creepy and a few at the auction are Toulon’s!

3 Puppet Master II (1990) – 5.5

Here’s another entry where Toulon f appears as often as you expect, since this entire franchise is more about him than anything else.

For whatever reason, the puppets are on the tail of some real-life Ghostbusters and they’re hungry for brain-fluid because why not? Toulon needs it for some sort of new thing he’s working on, but it might as well just be motivation for the puppets to commit murder.

2 Puppet Master (1989) – 5.7

The one that started it all, Puppet Master, is surprisingly not at the top of the list despite fans unanimously hailing it as the franchise’s best.

This one is about a group of old psychics, who is also dead. The plan was set in motion before he committed suicide after discovering Toulon’s puppets, who go after the psychics to get rid of them. Puppet Master was not even released in theaters since Charles Band, the creator of the series, decided it would make more money going direct-to-video. By all accounts, he was right.

1 Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991) – 6.0

The best one on the list is Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge. Since the Puppet Master series has always been a cult classic, it makes sense that it would have such a low score but that being said, this one does raise the bar considerably.

The third entry shows Toulon’s motivations for making the puppets kill people (although there’s nothing else they’d be suited to) when he’s outed as maybe not being so cool with what the Nazis are doing. They raid his house and kill his wife, and he swears his revenge.

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