Phantasm
To help remember the career of Angus Scrimm I decided to have a bit of a marathon of one of my favourite horror franchises.
Phantasm sees precocious Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) get tangled up in mysterious events at morningside cemetery after their friends death. They believe that it was an accident at first, in spite of the film starting with a scene showing him being murdered by a hot woman he was screwing that Alarmingly turns into the local undertaker. The Tall man (Angus Scrimm) seems pretty damned sinister and when Mike sees him removing a coffin single handedly he decides to investigate. Eventually his brother and their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) get involved and they discover that the undertaker is really not at all what he seems. The funeral home seems to be a front for inter-dimensional corpse smuggling, to a planet where the bodies are shrunk into dwarves who serve as muscle. The Tall man also has a pregtty nasty guard dog in the shape of a flying sphere that stabs peoples skulls and drills their brains out.
Its a tribute to Don Cosarelli as a writer/director that the above plot avoide becoming silly. Some of it feels a little disjointed at times perhaps but it all adds to the feeling the film creates of walking through a waking nightmare. It could be seen on one level as an attempt by Mike, a young boy in the prime of life, as an attempt to resolve the terror at realising sudden death may be around the corner and dealing with issues like grief and mortality. The film is pretty bloody but rarely gratuitous and for a low budget feature Coscarelli really pulls it off with what he has. Given that he was an independent film-maker as a teenager and this is his second film this is an incredible achievement that's still as entertaining as it ever was.
Phantasm 2
Given the initial success of Phantasm, Hollywood came a knocking. Given tinsletowns inability to leave well enough alone with what works they decided to re-cast Mike with James Le Gros. He's not a bad actor to be fair but A. Michael Baldwin is better and its the one thing in the film that really grates. The action takes place 10 years after the first and Mike is in the nut house. He's released after telling the shrink what he wants to hear and heads straight back to Morningside. Reggie, who in the opening has to blow his dwarf infested house up trying to save Mike seems to want to forget about it. Taking him home Reggie and Mike see Reggies family get blown to smithereens by the Tall man so they decide to head off for revenge. Mike has also been having dreams about a girl who might have some kind of psychic connection and may be in deep trouble with the Tall man. Aiming to save the girl as well our heroes tool up and head across county discovering lots of decimated small towns and it appears that the tall man is pulling a Wal mart and destroying each small town he settles in.
While the casting of James LeGros is occasionally off putting, the cretins managed to not re-cast Reggie or Angus so it still works. It's a fast paced, more contemporary horror than its predecessor with some winks to films like Evil dead (sam raimi's name turns up on a bag of ashes.) Its some fans favourite film and its easy to see why. Its also cut for an R-rating and being Hollywood they seem to have destroyed the cut footage. Ah well, the film still rocks!
Phantasm 3
Back squarely in the hands of Don Coscarelli, Phantasm 3 see's the return of A Michael Baldwin as Mike. Continuity from the previous films is somewhat f***ed from the previous film as we see the return of the 4 barrel shotgun but its all forgiven as Mike is retrieved then re-captured by The Tall man and Reggie must team up with a kid with a penchant for deadly traps and a nunchuck wielding ex-soldier to save him and kill the tall man. Reggie also gets assisted by Jody, who it turns out is one of the spheres. It seems the devices are powered by human brains. There's a nice line gore here that's intact and we get to learn more about what the Tall man is up to. It suffers in places from a diminished budget but it still works.
Phantasm 4
The one that divides the fans. This one was made on a shoestring budget mixing in a lot of deleted footage from the original Phantasm. The film has Mike heading out into the desert for a final confrontation with the Tall man and Reggie heading out to save him. The blending in of the deleted footage actually works quite well and manages to tie things from previous films together well. We also get more about the tall man's origins and we even see him cross the barrier for the first time and come back as something else. In a real head wrecking moment near the end we see him come through the barrier and retrieve the sphere from inside Mike that the tall man is seen clutching the first time he comes back through the gate suggesting that the Tall man's origins actually have something to do with mike himself and that the tall man's plans may not be operating in the logical progression we would assume. Its a shame the series suffered from decreasing budgets. The series is more consistently enjoyable than any of the other franchises and it would be nice to see more. However aside from Ravager sadly that now seems like it wont be possible/
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