There’s a built-in weakness with the PHANTASM series. A big part of the PHANTASM appeal is the reveal of the crazy fuckin weird ass shit (or CFWAS) that’s goin down, and not really being able to comprehend it all. So in the course of each sequel they end up having to do two things that are sort of problematic:

1. explain more things, making it less mysterious and
2. pile on more CFWAS, stretching the credibility more and more to where it’s not quite as easy to swallow.

So you got those things, but otherwise this is a very enjoyable and unexpectedly adventurous sequel. It picks up right where part 2 left off, except suddenly James LeGros has morphed back into A. Michael Baldwin, the original star of PHANTASM. And now I sort of get it, because he does not look like a movie hero, he looks like some dude. But the same some dude from the original, so it’s good to have him back.

So Reggie and Michael continue their driving around from ghost town to ghost town, picking off evil dwarves with weapons like the four-barrelled-shotgun I forgot to mention Reggie had in the last one. But then Michael is hospitalized by a car accident and the ghost of Michael’s dead brother Jody shows up (also played by the original actor, also looking like just some dude) and then he morphs into one of the silver balls but helps Michael to understand some things about what’s going on (for example, after the Tall Man shrinks bodies down into dwarves he removes their tiny brains and puts them inside the silver balls). And the Tall Man convinces Michael to walk into the light with him and he disappears, so Reggie is on his own. (more…)

Like

Unlike

PHANTASM OBLIVION

get it, OBLIVION, and it’s part 4
If there are any Romans out there I think you’ll get the joke. Little numeral humor there on the part of the Phantasmers

I hate to be a tattle tale but PHANTASM part 4 here is a total fuckin cheater. If you saw part 3 you may remember the ending: Reggie is pinned against a wall by a swarm of metal balls. He tells the little HOME ALONE kid Tim to leave, that they’ve lost. But the kid won’t leave. Then I guess a dwarf might’ve jumped out and grabbed him or something, I don’t remember for sure. But the point is he was there.

When part 4 picks up right there, suddenly there is no kid. He’s not shown, he’s not mentioned. Reggie doesn’t look for him, say anything about him, mourn him if he’s dead. I guess the kid probaly had acne scars and a mustache by this time and it would’ve been hard to pass him off as the same kid in the same time period. So they just erased him.

I’m sure there are some people who like part 4 better than part 3, because it’s a little less goofy. No nunchakas, flipping pink hearses or throat-slitting pink frisbees. This is the one that realizes nobody is watching these movies who’s not kind of a nerd, and they just say “fuck it” and just throw ten tons of PHANTASM nerdery onto the screen. What will happen to Mike, but who is the Tall Man anyway, and where do the balls come from, and whatever happened to all those deleted scenes from part one, and as a side note could we please have some time travel to complicate this fucker? Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good stuff in here, but by now the plot has gotten so complicated and incoherent that it seems kind of weird to have to sum it all up and then continue and try to add to it. (more…)

Like

Unlike

PHANTASM II: LORD OF BALLS

There’s actually not a subtitle on this one, I made that up. Anyway this is the first sequel, made 11 years later with the backing of Universal Studios. It’s the year after EVIL DEAD 2 but it’s the same kind of thing Universal did later with ARMY OF DARKNESS, taking a cult movie and its director, putting a little more money behind it and hoping to trick mainstream audiences into thinking they care. Nobody knows why they did it, but we’re kind of glad they did.

The advantage of the Universal money is that they have some pretty good special effects. The disadvantage is that they have to ditch the original star, A. Michael Baldwin (a rogue Baldwin brother not related to Alec Baldwin), and replace him with James LeGros of DRUGSTORE COWBOY. You know, for that guaranteed James LeGros demographic who will just go to any James LeGros movie over and over again, and get all of their friends to come, just to watch James LeGros. It’s like the old Hollywood saying goes, don’t ever make a movie that doesn’t star James LeGros. Trivia: no movie has ever made a profit without James LeGros, and vice versa.

YOUNG HIP UNIVERSAL EXECUTIVE: Yeah, so it’s the sequel to this low budget movie from 1979, it’s a weird movie but it has kind of a following, people really were creeped out by this old man who says “BOY!” and by this metal ball. We got the old guy returning, and it’s a little more action oriented than the first one, we have three different huge fiery explosions, and some really good effects, some weird monsters tearing out of people, and… (more…)

Like

Unlike

PHANTASM stands alone in American horror – even of 1979 – because of its emphasis on the fuckin weird. Many horror movies are about the fear of a dude with a knife or ax. That makes sense. We know his immediate goal and why it threatens us. Or sometimes it’s supernatural, or it’s a monster. That brings in the fear of the unknown, but we still sort of know most of the time. It’s gonna bite us.

But PHANTASM creeps us out by giving us a bad guy our minds aren’t used to wrapping around: a mean old man at a funeral home who is unusually strong, bleeds yellow, his body parts can turn into bugs, he commands deadly flying metal orbs, and he steals bodies from graveyards and crushes them into weird little dwarves in Jawa robes who do his bidding. It’s a scheme we have seen in less than 50 movies in the entire history of cinema up until this point so it isn’t worn out yet.

It doesn’t hurt that the hero, Mike, is a kid, a loner orphan who spies on his cool older brother Jody because he (correctly) suspects he’s gonna ditch him again. He accidentally sees some of the weird shit going on in the funeral home but when he tries to tell his brother it has the feel of the kids who, to make life more interesting, start saying that their neighbor is a witch or the house at the end of the street is haunted. So you can’t blame Jody for not believing him. But this movie, although completely deadpan and never outwardly comedic, has a hilarious way of dealing with that. First Jody suggests what Mike saw was “probably just a gopher in heat.” Later he asks “Are you sure it wasn’t that retarded kid Timmy up the street?” Then Mike gets chased by the Tall Man, slams a door on his hand, and slices off his fingers. The fingers are alive though and try to crawl away like worms, but he catches one in a box and brings it to his brother. Jody peeks into the box. Is it still in there? Is it still alive? Yes, it wiggles around. He shuts the box. “Okay, I believe you.” (more…)

Like

Unlike