Puppet Master 4 (1993)

Interesting facts

Puppet Master 4 is a 1993 direct-to-video horror film written by Charles Band among others, and directed by Jeff Burr. It is the fourth film in the Puppet Master franchise and stars Gordon Currie as a young prodigy who, along with his friends, played by Chandra West, Jason Adams and Teresa Hill, are attacked by demons; the animated puppets of André Toulon serve to protect the group, similar to the role they played in the prequel Toulon's Revenge, rather than terrorize, as they had in the first and second films.

Production

In 1992, executive producer Charles Band announced an upcoming film in the Puppet Master series, titled Puppet Master 4, despite not having a script for said film. The film was to be a crossover with the Demonic Toys series, with the puppets, depicted as protagonists, battling the toys, set for release in the fall of 1992. The project never materialized, and Demonic Toys instead crossed over with Dollman in Dollman vs. Demonic Toys in 1993.

Puppet Master 4 and Puppet Master 5 were shot back-to-back in Culver City and Pasadena in California in February 1993. The two films had very little pre-production due to a tight schedule. The set for Hell was designed by Milo Needles.

Actors and actresses cast for the films included Gordon Currie, Chandra West, Ash Adams, Teresa Hill, Felton Perry, Guy Rolfe, Michael Shamus Wiles, Dan Zukovic, and Jake McKinnon. When Rolfe arrived on set, he refused to leave his hotel room and participate in the film. Band paid him the entire amount of his paycheck in cash for his role as André Toulon by sliding it under the door.

The puppet effects and stop motion animation were supervised by David W. Allen, coordinated by Chris Endicott, and done by themselves, Randall Cook, Connie Angland, Anthony Allen Barlow, Joseph Grossberg, Jurgen Heimann, David Miner Jr., Mark Rappaport, Kirk Skodis, Holly Speriglio, Scott Woodard, and Brett B. White at David Allen Productions. Dennis Gordon's original designs for the Totems were intended to resemble tribal warriors.

The makeup effects were done by Wayne Toth, Christl Colven, Michael Deak, and Palah Sandling at Alchemy FX. Toth stated that the script vaguely described Sutekh as "the king of the fourth dimension who controls the secrets of the puppets". He decided to come up with a design that "looked kind of evil and royal-looking", and made the character tall.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.