Curse of the Puppet Master

Context & Trivia

The sixth entry in the franchise marks a definitive technical turning point: for the first time in the series, the puppets were animated exclusively through rods and strings, with no stop-motion of any kind. David W. Allen, who had shaped the puppets' movement style across previous installments, had departed Full Moon Entertainment before production began and passed away in 1999, effectively closing that chapter of the franchise's craft history. The absence shows — the puppets' screen time shrank considerably, and the production leaned on recycled footage from earlier entries to fill the gap. Matthew Jason Walsh voiced all the puppet characters. The lineup includes Blade, Pinhead, Leech Woman, Jester, Tunneler, and Six-Shooter — Leech Woman returns without explanation despite having been burned in a prior film, and Six-Shooter reappears after his own destruction — while Torch and Decapitron are absent. Shot in eight days on a budget of $200,000–$250,000, the film also holds a quiet piece of puppet history: a female puppet named Bombshell was designed and built for this production, then cut before release, waiting until Puppet Master X: Axis Rising to finally reach the screen.