In my newest review for Wormwood Chronicles, I'm going to be looking at a new special edition double Blu-Ray release of "Puppetmaster III: Toulon's Revenge." Now, I have to admit that this edition features a 4K disc along with a standard Blu-Ray. I do not have a 4K player, so I'm going to be talking about the standard edition. Then again, I generally focus mostly on the actual movie itself, so it's not a big thing. 

This movie was originally released in 1991. It came from Full Moon Entertainment. I was a HUGE fan of Full Moon back in the day. I think I probably saw nearly every movie they put out for years. The thing is, I haven't seen most of the movies in decades, so while I have some familiarity, it's almost as if I'm coming in fresh with very little detail to my memory of the films. 

It may seem odd just reviewing a third movie in a series without having reviewed the ones that preceded it.  This one is actually a prequel, so in a manner of speaking it is the first movie even though two were released before it. 

Puppeteer Toulon is operating in Berlin in 1941. He does shows for children, but delivers anti-Nazi messages along with it. That arouses the interest of the Nazis, and they decide to arrest him. Nazi scientist Hess is interested in the fact that Toulon apparently has the ability to make his puppets come literally to life and wants him brought in alive. He has goals of reanimating dead soldiers, in a very Reanimator-like way. The serum Toulon uses even looks like the serum Herbert West uses in that movie series. 

With this setup, Toulon and his crew of living puppets are set against the Nazis. While it may sound like an action film, this is definitely a horror movie, but there is a revenge angle to it, and you are definitely on the side of the killers. 

One thing that really stood out for me was the special effects. The movement of the puppets seems so real. For some reason I was thinking that watching it after becoming accustomed to CGI films would make it seem really cheesy. That's not true at all. You will believe a puppet can walk kill and do much more. It all looks great. 

The movie is pretty bloody and can get nicely brutal at times. It's not a film that pulls a lot of punches. Overall, this is a movie that holds up remarkably well. There are a number of bonus features, too. For me the coolest of those is the commercial for Puppetmaster toys, but the Full Moon behind the scenes video was nostalgic for me. I remember that they used to do those all the time in the day, and I loved watching them. 

All in all, I really found this movie still relevant and essential even all those years later. Sure, it was a low-budget indie film, but it deserves to stand along-side big studio horror films. It's inventive and well done.