The most important thing that I learned from Phantasm IV, is that being an ice cream man is a trade. Whatever you have to tell yourself,  Reggie.

Phantasm IV picks up at the end of part 3. Reggie was being held up in the air by dozens of spheres by the Tall Man. The Tall Man releases him, telling him that there is a final game to play. We get some flashbacks as Mike is driving somewhere and as Reggie is driving somewhere. Jody (Mike’s dead/alive/sphere brother) shows up and tells Reggie that he is going to get Mike. Reggie doesn’t want to have anything to do with this, and even tells Jody that he is done with the whole thing. In his defense, I would be tired of it too, having just come out of part 3. After an encounter with an undead cop, Reggie decides to take Jody’s advice and head south west. Mike ends up in Death Valley and wanders through time trying to find out where the Tall Man came from and how he can stop him. You’ll be happy to know that Reggie still manages to find a lone woman that he can try to bang, as he did in the other films.

So, the good thing about this movie, is that it has very little comic elements to it compared to the last one, and that right there is keeping it from being categorized as “crap.” It actually was somewhat reminiscent of the first. Part of this may be due to the fact that while making this film, apparently a large amount of unused footage from the first one was found. Thus the flashbacks and dream sequences were literally flashbacks. I really liked that. The action in this however was rather slow, and that coupled with the apparent inability of everyone in these movies to improve as actors caused me to be bored a lot. The writing was a lot better. One of my favorite lines in the film came from the Tall Man, “No you may not take your own life. That is my domain exclusively.” This film purposely ends on a vague note, leaving the viewer wondering if the entire series was a dream, a hallucination, did it really happen and did we just travel through various points in time? Whatever the answer is, that is up to you. This is where the use of the old footage from the first film was awesome. You sort of get lost with the characters as they dream (or whatever they are doing). I kind of almost wish that parts 2 and 3 never existed, and that the 1st and the 4th ones were the only ones that were made.

So at least the franchise did not end that badly. It redeemed itself somewhat. Apparently there was a 5th one that was in the works, but it may have been shelved. I think that was the better decision. This film wraps the series up very nicely, by letting you decide what the hell happened, not just in this installment, but in the series all together.

Yeah, this is a lousy piece of crap. I stared at the screen trying to figure out why in the hell this movie was made. Watching this franchise is sort of like watching a dandelion on a very windy day;  it starts out pretty enough, but eventually pieces of it keep flying off leaving an ugly thing in its place.

Phantasm III (which does not have the subtitle Lord of the Dead either time the title is shown) starts off with the same flashback to the first movie that was at the beginning of the second one. Only this time it includes parts from the second film, carefully leaving out James LeGros, who played Mike in the second. That is because A. Michael Baldwin has returned for the role (so has everyone else that were in the other 2). After the flashback we pick right up at the end of part 2. We see the Tall Man who was “killed” come out of the doorway to the other dimension and take his own dead body back there. There is a boring “showdown” in the graveyard with Reggie and the Tall Man. Mike ends up in the hospital where he has a dream about Jody, his brother that died in the first film. Jody apparently is now a sphere that can change from sphere to Jody and vice versa at will. Some piss poor acting goes by and the Tall Man takes Mike. Thus begins Reggie’s journey to get Mike back. Along the way, he picks up a kid named Tim and a woman that looks like Wesley Snipes. Her name is Rocky.

This movie was just really really bad. Not The Children bad, but not far from it. There were way too many “dream sequences” and I put that in quotes because I think they some weren’t dreams, just hallucinations induced by the Tall Man. A couple of times we hear, “Don’t believe everything you see,” implying that they are visions. The main thing that bothered me about this one is that there was a lot of comedy in it. Too much in fact. It was distracting. It was also shitty comedy that was not funny which ruined whatever Coscarelli was trying to do by inserting that much of it in the film. One thing that was hilarious, and I am not sure if it was intentionally funny, was a sign at a gas station. It listed several guns, which I assumed were sold there like, Baretta and Colt. At the bottom, it said “Q-Tips.”  Once again, not one person can act. There’s even those cheesey lines. Something about, “Don’t lose your head,” when someone’s head is cut off. Just nothing like the first one. Also some pretty poor writing. Tim brutally murders 2 people of this 3 person gang. After witnessing this and getting a gun, the third person still does not kill him. Rather he tells him to freeze or something, leaving himself wide open to be killed, which he promptly is.

This is not a good installment. I am glad that there is but one left, as I can’t say that I even liked watching it knowing that I could rip it apart later. The story is a bit worn this at this point, and frankly should have stopped at the first film.

So, in case you haven’t noticed, I have been on a cheesey horror kick lately. Since Jesusflix has the entire Phantasm franchise, I figured I might as well revisit that. While I would substitute “low budget, but decent” for “cheesey” in regard to the first Phantasm, I would apply the phrase, “utter disappointment” to the this installment.

Phantasm II has us watching Liz thumb through a journal, talking to herself in her head, about Mike, whom she has only seen in her dreams. While she is doing this, the film cuts away to the end of the first Phantasm, with Mike and Reggie relaxing after the ordeal that they have just gone through. The flashback reminds us that they decide to hit the road and get a fresh start. However, things go awry when the Tall Man attempts to take Mike and turn him in to a dwarf slave, but is thwarted by Reggie who ultimately blows the house up, but not with the Tall Man inside. We flash forward a bit, and Mike is being released from a mental institution, agreeing that he had imagined the entire events of the first film. Because he agrees to this, he is let go, but the very next time we see  him, he is in a cemetery digging up graves checking to see if there are bodies in them. There are not. You no doubt remember that the Tall Man takes dead bodies and turns them in to dwarf slaves.  Mike is convinced that this is still happening and eventually so is Reggie, and thus begins their journey to find the Tall Man and stop him, and also save this blonde girl (from the beginning) that keeps appearing in Mike’s dreams. They arm themselves with an arsenal of flamethrowers, chainsaws and a 4 barrel shotgun. As they travel though various towns, they can see that they have been ravished by the Tall Man and left in ruin.

My issues with this film are many, but researching it, I realize that it may not be entirely the filmmaker’s fault.  In the original, A. Michael Baldwin played Mike and Reggie Bannister played Reggie. For this film, Universal wanted the roles recast and made them audition for their own parts, but Don Coscarelli (Director, Writer, etc) wanted them for the sequel. I assume because they were cocks, Universal told Coscarelli that he could keep one of them but had to recast the other. He chose Reggie Bannister to stay, and James LeGros was cast as Mike. This did a couple of things: 1. Piss me off, especially since A. Michael Baldwin was in the rest of the sequels. 2. Made Reggie Bannister look like an even worse actor than he already was, because LeGros can act. Also, there were to be no dream sequences and Mike was to have a love interest. All that being said, I do understand that these limitations may have resulted in a final product that Coscarelli had not envisioned. But there was some other wacky shit going on. The pace was UNBEARABLY slow. In addition to that, I found the passing of time confusing at one point. Mike and Reggie are driving all over the place and at the same time, the movie will cut to a funeral taking place. Lines like “We have been on the road for a long time,” are uttered and I swear I saw it change from day to night, but the same funeral service is going on. This seems to be less of a horror film and more of a “let’s show off the huge budget we were given” film. I mean, there are 3 major explosions in this, and a lot of flamethrower and chainsaw action. It is a far cry from the indie spirit of the first one, which I preferred. One random thing I found hilarious, was that Liz shrieked when a rat runs by. However, she remained silent, and did not even look that upset after watching one sphere slice an ear off and drain a priest’s blood, or when a man cut his own hand off.  There was also little dumb stuff, like the Tall Man walking by Reggie who was hiding (and not very well) and not seeing him, yet he is able to sneak up on people all the time, and Mike saying he was 19 when he clearly looks 26. It was just not very good. Even the sphere deaths were not as cool. I will say, however, that Angus Scrimm was just as good if not better as the Tall Man the second time around.

This installment is really not good at all, which is unfortunate. Coscarelli obviously loved making these movies and the first one was quite good. If memory serves, the franchise keeps going downhill, which I will either confirm or retract in later reviews. Right now however, I suggest skipping this so as not to sully the memory of the first.

Phantasm is bad ass and piss poor at the same time. But it is a good kind of piss poor.

Jody and Mike are brothers who have lost their parents. Mike is younger, 13. Not wanting to be alone, he follows his brother everywhere. Mike follows Jody to a funeral of his friend Tommy, and sees the funeral director, who is simply called the Tall Man, pick up Tommy’s coffin by himself and put it back in the hearse rather than bury it. This suspicious activity, coupled with odd visions and noises, start to freak Mike out, and in standard horror movie fashion, his brother doesn’t believe that these things are actually happening. Well, until Mike shows him a severed finger in a box. The two (along with Reggie, an ice cream man) discover that the Tall Man is taking bodies, bringing them back to life as dwarf slaves, and taking them to another planet. The gateway to this planet is in a room in the mortuary and is between 2 sliver poles. Yeah that’s right. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

This film actually is pretty good for the most part.  The main plot of the movie really is not discovered until late in the film and it does a pretty good job of not foreshadowing anything. It is certainly not the usual horror plot that you have become used to. The movie starts out in a rather jarring fashion by just throwing the title at you with menacing music before anything happens. There is a death less than 2 minutes in to the film. Right away you get the impression that this will be a freight train of horror. Sadly you get a train wreck of obligatory and boring exposition. It drags for a bit, but it does make the randomness of the events to follow that much more interesting. There are some parts of this movie that did make me jump a bit. Considering this movie is 30 years old, that is pretty impressive. I would be remiss if I did not mention the sweetest part of the film: the sphere. You see, the Tall Man, (Angus Scrimm) employs this metal sphere with blades and a drill in it to kill intruders. We get to see it kill a man in probably one of the best movie deaths ever. The sphere sticks itself in to this one fella’s forehead, and as the drill bores a hole in him, it spews his blood out the back of it like a fire hose spewing water. The man falls to his death and promptly pisses himself and the floor. Oddly enough, this is one of the worst edit jobs, as the gallons of blood seem to have disappeared after he hits the ground. This scene apparently warranted an X rating, but an L.A. Times Critic talked the MPAA down to R. The acting is pretty bad, but you don’t really mind it. The movie is so bizarre, you kind of pay more attention to the story. Angus Scrimm actually does a pretty good job of creeping you out as the Tall Man. Don Coscarelli wrote,  directed, edited and was even cinemeaographer of this thing. He also wrote and directed all of it’s sequels, which also, is bad ass.

If you have not seen this film, which is largely considered to be classic, give it a watch. It is certainly not without it’s flaws, but it ultimately outweighs those flaws with it’s successes. It certainly surpasses a lot of garbage that has been released in the 30 years that have gone by.