In the
underworld of
Hell, a demon lord named
Sutekh sends forth a trio of diminutive servants called the
Totems, magically controlled by his
netherworld minions, to kill those who possess the
secret of animation, including the
magic André Toulon used to give his puppets life. It transpires also that a team of researchers working on the development of
artificial intelligence are close to discovering Toulon's secret. Sutekh sends one of the Totems as a package to two of the researchers involved, Dr. Piper and Dr. Baker of the Phoenix Division, who are taken by surprise, killed and stripped of their souls by the foul creature. One of the researchers, a talented young man named Rick Myers, is working as a caretaker at the
Bodega Bay Inn and has also been using it for a place to conduct his experiments on the A.I. project. The same night Drs. Piper and Baker are
murdered, Rick's friends Suzie, Lauren, and Cameron come to visit him. At dinner, Lauren, who is a psychic, finds Blade (who had been discovered earlier by Rick inside the house and is still animate) and then Toulon's old trunk, with the puppets, Toulons diary and some vials with the
life-giving formula inside. Out of curiosity, Rick and his friends use the fluid on the puppets, and one by one they awaken; next to Blade, they find Pinhead, Six Shooter, Tunneler and Jester. (Torch, who joins the puppet cast in the sequel, makes no appearance here.) Fascinated by the puppets' spontaneous reactions, and believing that the formula is the answer to the running AI projects, Rick wants to see how smart they are by playing a laser tag game with Pinhead and Tunneler. Cameron, who is competing with Rick for success, tries to use the formula's secret for his personal gain, and he and Lauren decide to use a
strange gameboard found in the trunk to try and
contact Toulon for its exact composition, whose recipe was not recorded in the diary. But the glowing pyramid icon which goes with the board is a conduit between the mortal world and the underworld; Sutekh uses the link to send two of his Totems to attack. Cameron and Lauren attempt to flee by car, but Cameron is ambushed by one of the Totems inside his car and killed, while Lauren manages to get back into the hotel. When Rick goes after Cameron, the Totem attacks him as well, but he manages to escape. Back inside the inn, the third Totem, sent in earlier by package, is also on the prowl. The puppets, intent on protecting Rick, search the hotel and soon manage to kill one of the Totems in the kitchen and, through its supervision link, its controller in the underworld. Then Toulon's spirit, who has been appearing around the hotel all night, tells the puppets to animate the Decapitron. Under Rick and Suzie's astonished eyes, the puppets move up to Rick's room, retrieve a box which contains yet another puppet with a soft plastic head, and revive it with the formula and a lightning strike. The two remaining Totems attack to disrupt the process, but one is electrocuted when Six Shooter uses a wire as a
lariat to divert some of the lightning's power into it. Decapitron briefly awakens, and his head morphs into the likeness of Toulon, who explains to Rick the origin and the secret of the life-giving formula. The vial, however, turns out to be missing; immediately suspecting Cameron, Rick goes back to search his body, where he does indeed find the vial. Meanwhile, the last Totem corners the panicked Lauren and prepares to drain her life away when Suzie interferes and douses it with
acid. Toulon speaks through Lauren, urging Rick to animate Decapitron to destroy the Totem, and Rick uses his computer to divert power from his generator into Decapitron, bringing him to life. As the Totem attacks, Decapitron exchanges his plastic head for an
electron-bolt launching system and destroys the creature. Afterwards, Toulon speaks to Rick yet again, surrendering custody of his puppets and the formula to him and promising his help in times of need. ==Cast==