Pinocchio's Revenge Review

The year is 1996 and Trimark pictures is making another last ditch effort in making a name for themselves in the horror genre, so they create a movie about Pinocchio. This piece of junk movie must have made a small splash because years later Lionsgate would purchase the dvd rights and send it out to people like me, who review movies for spare change. So guess what? Here is the puppet movie that I foreshadowed in Wednesday's post and it's not a traditional review, this movie made my brain hurt, and now it's hanging upside down. So join me, as I try to make sense of the horror movie Pinocchio's Revenge.

Here is a trailer for Pinocchio's Revenge:

The movie has a funny tagline, it is "Evil Comes with Strings Attached", now that's clever. However, a nice tagline isn't going to save the film from being terrible, and we see that first hand here. The movie really finds itself in a weird situation, and creates a dysfunctional horror film from the start.

We are introduced to a single parent, Public Defender who is trying to get a serial killer off due to the fact that he didn't commit the crime. However, he wants to die, and while I had my hypothesis at first, the movie never confirmed anything in regards to that story line. The story progresses with a puppet that is found amidst this trial, and it is introduced to the Lawyers home, where a little girl becomes quick friends with it.

There is a full hour or so where the puppet starts to kill people off, however, the camera and the director do not show you the puppets motions at all, making you think that it is just a scapegoat in another identity crisis movie. I hate those, by the way, and this movie plays with your head until you realize that it's nothing more than that.

There is not a whole lot of gore in this film, although there are a few "accidents" that never really kill anyone as much as they hurt them. This is terribly done and it's just a stupid way of prolonging the story. There is a sex scene, but it's the most tame, piece of junk sex scene in the world. With lots of slow motion and little to no nudity, it's just a time piece filler to exploit the scenario of single parent and neglect of a child, as the child hears her mom moaning...so weird.

The third act has Pinocchio, for lack of a better name, doing a lot of talking, with no movements of his mouth. The final act though, we get a full live action puppet going around trying to kill people. This is the worst animation and/or robotics ever made. This is a terrible scenario of film making and really makes me hate the film that much more.

The film explodes into the terrible zone with a scapegoat ending, making sure that you never see the puppet in the end, and all you see is the mother and daughter! The same type of thing happened in the Robert De Niro horror film Hide and Seek. This movie wasn't scary, and really was a waste of time. I don't really need to ask if it was scary, because it wasn't. It felt like a tv movie, complete with toned down gore and random crap.

This isn't the first time in pop culture that we have seen identity crisis or toys killing.

Remember The Evil Krusty Doll? Yeah that was an interesting take on the evil toy idea.



We reviewed the movie "Dolls" on this site which featured evil stuff. Oh and I posted a "Puppet Master" comic book scan in this site too. Of course there is also the following movie posters to illustrate the point of evil toys/dolls...as a little bonus for this review not being too serious.



Demonic Toys took a shot at Dollman in the above movie. Interesting, but terrible production values.



Dollman! Not half bad.



For those of you that are R.L. Stine fans, you might remember this popular series of books featuring an awesome Puppet/Dummy, easy reads, but awesome none the less.



Puppet Master II, one of my favorite little horror movies.



The writer of Saw made a very drawn out detective horror film, featuring puppets...it was strange.



Black Devil Doll! I haven't seen it yet, but I await a dvd version of this film.

Obviously, these are not all the doll/puppet films ever made, but it will give you the idea that these are not new kind of stories. They are rehashed and usually to terrible effect.

Oh yeah! Don't forget to check out my other reviews about movies that have this sort of "identity crisis" turn of events at the end of the movies:

Identity Review
The Prestige Review
High Tension Review

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