Phantasm (film) thread - and sequels

I saw the first years ago and loved it, I am now beginning my foray into the sequels. so far Phantasm II has me hooked. i'll report back post end of film. same w/ sequels.

any other fans, feel free to talk about your love or hate for this series.

Angus Scrimm is a menace.

I saw the second one in the theater when I was in Jr High and loved it. Later on I saw the original on a grimy vhs tape and it works really well despite the ultra low budget. I’m curious about the sequels but never expected much from them. Looking forward to your reports!

love this franchise, love a continuous storyline ruled by dream logic. iv is my personal favorite bc it goes full hallucinating in the desert. have fun getting there

should note that ravager, the fifth one, kinda sucks ass but i don't hate the ideas in the script

The second one always felt to me a bit like Evil Dead 2, a sequel that is essentially really just a funnier, bigger budgeted remake. I suppose the same could be said of Texas Chainsaw 2.

I will say that lil' druids were definitely on the mind in this general era. Phantasm, Star Wars, Joy Division's "Atmosphere" video, Neil Young's "Rust Never Sleeps" concert film ...

"You think when you die, you go to Heaven? You come to US!"

badass

Flight of the Navigator-style lobotomy. awesome.

these Jawas are evil little fuckers but horribly inept

Reggie's getting some.

lol the label on the baggie is addressed to Mr Sam Raimi

CHAINSAW FIGHT

your reminder that every hitchhiker knows how to hotwire a car in under 30 seconds

verdict: 10 coffins

now that the 'secret' from the first film is known, this is the big action sequel. but loved all of the imagery, the deserted, slaughtered ghost towns, and the goofiness, like the chainsaw castration. so many great set pieces - the abandoned bed and breakfast, the Perigord funeral home, the Chekhov's severed hand.

and once again, a killer ending.

Was going through some imdb credits recently and found this, which would be nice to see actually come to life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVXythYFNfI

https://www.facebook.com/WomenofPhantasm/

took a short break to LOL at Tom Brady, now Phantasm 3 time. this was straight to video, right?

aight here we go

population 973 0

Reggie ogling scavenger's butt

fucking Paul Wall and C-list Steve Buscemi committing crimes

oof. big dropoff from II to III. decent overall, but hurt a lot by the cornball humor, and the relative lack of atmosphere due to it. II managed to be funny without being 90s sitcom, but every time the Three Stooges showed up, either in living or zombie form, I rolled my eyes. and making Reggie more of a creepy lecher was ick.

but I did like bringing the original Mike back. feel like it's setting up a (hopefully) better movie to come.

My only regret in life is that my Phantasm box set is the regular one not the one packaged in a silver kill sphere

Got a bit obsessed with this franchise over lockdown.

first one is so great,

dual guitar Musical interlude.
Stright up Dunesteal of the hand in box scene.
"you play a good game...Boy!"
introduction of lil' druids

Drops off after 2, but thats the same as almost any 80s horror franchise.

my sister and i got this from the video rental store w/o knowing anything abt it in the late 80s -- had a cool-sounding name i guess -- and then watched it hooting and hollering and wtf-ing

the first one, i've never seen the others, she may have

watched this for the first time when i was down with covid a few months ago and it completely blew my mind. just acquired the 2nd one recently and am very excited to get to it soon, espec now knowing it gets the Neanderthal seal of approval

I think you'll enjoy it a lot.

My experience with the original was that it was playing at the local arthouse theatre one weekend, and I'd never seen it, so I bought a ticket. and fuck, it was the worst audience ever - large pockets of people loudly laughing at all of the weird bits, like this was Rifftrax or something. like, I mean, there is funny shit in it, but it seemed more like mockery. going to guess that was the portion of the audience who were dragged there by other people.

didn't ruin the movie for me but it was weaksauce.

3 is a bit of a dip after 2, but i still enjoy it, even though you can feel the phantasm-as-explosive-action-franchise petering out. and yeah reggie is a weird creep by 3 but i've never not taken that as one of the many ways the series undercuts or broadly satirizes action hero tropes. it also results in some really funny scenes in 4

4 is the one!!! i look forward you to losing your mind during it neanderthal

BOYYYYY

the only guy who can stop the transdimensional mortician from enslaving the human race is a horny ice cream man

I've always had a soft spot for the first one but never managed to see any of the others. I remembered it as being daft and weird but on a rewatch realised it's actually genuinely good as well.

inevitable phantasm ii joke:

my friends: “the phantasm series is silly”

me: “NO! IT’S NOT!”

if you want a good lol you can always youtube the mortuary scene in phantasm 3 (or you can watch phantasm 3 if you have time for it i guess)

i think these movies have a lot of cool creepy sets, some manage to be really creepy when fully lit (like the mortuaries) which is always an accomplishment. i’m no horror movie expert but the uhhh creative ways the silvery orbs kill people always seemed to me to be a clear precursor to things like the cube movies. the reference upthread to evil dead seems like a good comparison too, at least as far as how these movies manage their silliness

Love this thread- these movies are such a guilty pleasure for me!

no guilt to the intense pleasure they give me

- reggie talking about women

Lol

I about cheered when Rocky handcuffed him to the bed and then just went to sleep

JEBEDIAH MORNINGSIDE

4 a huge step up from 3. surprised to see it's one of the worst received ones, I suspect it's the low budget, but personally, I already love apocalyptic/lone warrior films as it is, so setting the shit in the desert totally worked for me. and most of the cornball shit from 3 was gone, save for the motel scene, which wasn't too bad.

enjoyed the expansion of the mythos but that it didn't answer too much.

and holy hell how many fucking cars explode in this franchise lmao

the incorporation of deleted scenes from the first movie is exquisitely done

yeah, this wasn't Silent Night Deadly Night 2, it really did work.

fairly sad entry in the series. I'm sure the Republicans are blaming all of the cities disappearing on 'corporate tax rates' and that's why nobody else seems to notice outside their circle.

Yegods, Ravager looks like it was shot on a cell phone.

I think the problem with cheaply made movies nowadays is that even on shitty equipment, the picture is homogenously clean, so you don't get much of a gritty look unless you do it intentionally. So your low budget film winds up looking like a YouTube video whereas the movie you recorded on your shitty camcorder in 1983 has a unique camp quality.

Also Dawn looks AND sounds like my friend Shannon to the point where I almost msged her to ask if she did this movie lol.

Ok on I go

Geddy Mike

well it significantly improved after the clunky beginning, and I actually enjoyed Ravager! any of the action scenes involving shooting spheres looked completely awful, but dimly lit scenes that were more atmospheric looked fine.

Scrimm turns in a fantastic performance for a dude who was 87 when it was shot. managed the look, physicality, and voice with ease.

a few other things:

I was kinda disappointed at the whole generic "he unleashed a plague, and now he owns our planet" bit, it seemed out of a generic post-apocalyptic video game from 2003, and I never really thought that was the Tall Man's aim anyway, as opposed to enslaving dead souls. but being that Jody's alive, who knows how 'real' that was anyway

bringing back Lady in Lavender was pointless fan service

*the scene at the hospital at the end is incredibly moving

*obviously we're not meant to suss everything out and I'm fine with that. I view it all through the lens of Tall Man was a Civil War era scientist who played with transdimensional fire and became a monster and Reggie and Mike had the unfortunate luck of encountering the Tall Man and were doomed to live the rest of their lives as an incomprehensible nightmare, with memories that can't be trusted, and nothing to hold onto, drawing meaning only from their fight against Tall Man

a search of my FB timeline revealed that I actually owned Phantasm on DVD for FIVE YEARS without ever watching it, lost it during a movie, and wound up seeing it on a big screen anyway. totally me thing to do. no clue as to why I never watched it. back then I usually watched dvds the moment they arrived from Amazon.

*during a move

I've seen the first four. I've heard the director had some elements forced on him in the second film and I'd be shocked if he had complete freedom with the third film, because it has some of the dumbest stuff that smacks of its era in a bad way.

Scrimm is pretty good in Mindwarp, the film is just okay.

I just rewatched 1 & 2. 2 was kinda crap, does it get better or worse?

mostly worse

Definitely worse.

I know there's a huge amount of fandom around these but I really don't care for them much. There's a couple of decent scenes in the first one and it's at least a genuine attempt to expand the universe once we start ripping off Sleep album artwork, but I'd rather watch Puppet Master if I'm going to invest in a stretched-thin-to-breaking multi-sequel concept series and probably, I don't know, Chopping Mall or something like that rather than the first one.

lost it during a movie

the tall man is standing behind you right now

I feel like the series and director had unrealized potential but I'm not really interested in other hands doing it.

Quite interested in his autobiography
https://thebedlamfiles.com/nonfiction/true-indie/

not sure it's worth me starting a whole thread for Bubba Ho-Tep tbh

Can fold in here as a multipurpose Coscarelli thread

dagnabbit i was looking forward to seeing giamatti as col. tom parker & hoping bubba nosferatu would serve as an ersatz for matthew barney the purple dinosaur's unviewable river of poo. i guess i'll just have to watch lexx with my anubis head on.
again

You could just use the Bubba Ho-Tep thread