I have no clue what's going on - but who cares? "Phantasm II" kicks muy ass anyway.

Longtime readers of the blog know that a few weeks back, I reviewed the cult classic 1979 film Phantasm. Here's the short, short version: the movie rocked, and completely lived up to all the expectations that had been firmly implanted in my horror nerd brain for the better part of the 15 years that I'd wanted to see it. Well, lo and behold, this IS the horror genre, which means that we've also got a whole lotta sequels to slog through for completionist's sake. So we've come back to this: the return of the Horror Franchise Reviews. Here's hoping this one doesn't suck as much as nearly all of those did.

Just because I'm a nice guy, here's a link to my review of the original Phantasm. If you haven't seen that film and are reading this review, take my word for it and spend ten minutes reading what's in that link. These are some weird movies, and you'll need all the information you can get.

One last thing before we get started: this movie was released nine years after the first film, but still features the original director and writer in Don Coscarelli. It's always a good sign when a series has a steady creative voice. So huzzah to Phantasm II for that. Of course, it's also got the return of King Awesome Angus Scrimm as the villainous Tall Man. Double huzzah.

The movie opens directly after the first movie ends, with groovy, skullet-wearing Reggie (once again played by Bannister) playing some guitar and preparing to take Mike away from the town where all of this madness has just gone down. The Tall Man (again played by Scrimm) appears in Mike's mirror, smashes through it, and grabs him. Hearing the commotion, Reggie confronts the dwarves with hoods who serve as this movie's secondary villains, rescues Mike from their clutches, and blows up the house with a gas explosion. All things told, shits and giggles and a solid opening to Phantasm II.

We immediately warp ahead seven years. Mike (James LeGros filling in for A. Whitney Brown, which is strange since I understand Brown would return in the two later sequels) is now in a psychiatric facility, having been deemed criz-azy after explaining to the authorities that his family life was just destroyed by a stabbing-sphere wielding psychotic supernatural graveyard caretaker. Those Philistines. Anyway, Mike lies to his lead psychiatrist, gets out of the facility with humorous ease (seriously, it's literally a scene of "Yup, I was crazy and the whole thing was in my mind!" "OK then! You're free to go!"), and promptly goes back to his hometown cemetery and begins digging up graves, finding all of them empty. His old buddy Roger finds him there and begins driving him back home when Mike gets a vision that there is going to be a gas explosion. Golly gee, a few seconds later, Roger's whole house goes up in flames, killing his family in the process.

MEANWHILE...there's a whole separate plot thread (almost literally a thread, since it takes up little more than just a few lines of narration) in these opening passages involving Liz (Paula Irvine), a comely young blonde woman who has some sort of psychic bond with Mike. Apparently this has been going on for quite a while, too, since she has a scrapbook involving Mike's kiddie adventures, and since Mike's internal monologue during the scene where he talks himself out of psychiatric care mentions her several times. Anyway, what seems important about this character thus far is that her Grandfather is about to die, and when this happens, the Tall Man is coming for her.

See? Not even fifteen minutes into Phantasm II and I'm already thoroughly confused. Here's the thing you should probably know about the Phantasm series - none of it makes a lick of sense, and it throws about fifteen different things at you per minute, but holy fuck does it hold your attention. Not because what you're watching is so amazing or life-changing, but because you're afraid to miss about seven plot points if you turn away.

After losing his family and seeing Mike flip out immediately before the explosion happened, Reggie enlists with Mike in his quest to find and hunt down the Tall Man. That's another thing about the Phantasm series - it's got male protagonists, a rarity in and of itself in horror films. They may not be Dirty Harry-cool, but they're dudes. Said brave heroes stock up on weapons a la Terminator 2 and set out across the country attempting to pick up the Tall Man's trail, which winds up not being too difficult, since he leaves every town he visits a shell of its former self and minus the headstones in the cemetery. In one of these towns, our heroic pair make their way through a battle-damaged mausoleum, encountering an apparition of a naked young woman (YAY!) and a hallucination of Liz herself bound and gagged before a Freddy Krueger-ized version of the Tall Man's face erupts from faux-Liz's back and tells them "Come East if you dare!"

Back to Movie B, as Liz's Grandfather has just passed away, meaning we're about to come FULL CIRCLE on plot point #787 of this flick. Liz (and exactly five other people, including her grandmother) attend the funeral, where a whole bunch of junk that proves surprisingly hard to recap occurs. Bottom line: Liz (who strangely gets more attractive the more you look at her) finds an exhumed coffin in the Tall Man-ized church and is then attacked by the big guy in the flesh. While all of this is going on, the presiding Priest of the funeral Father Meyers (Kenneth Tigar) calls the dead grandfather a "sacrilege" and stabs the corpse multiple times, and he must have known what he was talking about, as a short time later the grandfather re-animates and takes off with Liz's grandmother. The Tall Man then psychically tells Liz to return to her family's house at night in order to rescue her grandmother.

Yeah, I don't get it, either.

Whoo, boy - official DVD timer says that we're not even a third of the way done with this movie? Jesus. This thing is going to be an endurance round of epic proportions - and I'm even LIKING the movie thus far. But MAN, does it ever throw a lot of junk your way. If the first movie was out there, this one is weirder than ten Belial Bradleys combined.

Alright, boys, Round Two of the strangeness is about to begin. After a long night of driving, Mike awakens to find that Reggie has picked up a hitch-hiker - a hot young chick named Alchemy (Samantha Phillips), who just so happens to resemble the nude apparition they saw back in the ghost town. Our new terrific trio (groan...I know) then head "East!!" just like Freddy-Tall Man said they should toward the town of Perigord, Oregon. Upon getting there, it's deserted just like all the other Tall Man-plagued towns, and they agree to stop at Alchemy's (who goes by "Chemy" for short) old family-owned bed and breakfast and crash for the night.

Liz goes to the mortuary and encounters the Tall Man, his mortician assistants (one of whom kinda looks like Christian Bale, and even though he doesn't speak exhibits about 1000% more charisma than Bale does in any film I've seen the guy in), and eventually Father Meyers, who winds up being killed by the Tall Man's awesome flying sphere weapons. One of the mysterious threads from this series is kinda-sorta explained when she runs across her grandmother, now turned into one of the Jawa-looking hooded dwarves known as "Lurkers." So apparently the Tall Man takes dead bodies and turns them into the armies of these little guys that populate the Phantasm movies. Fifty cool points, this movie series has answered one of its questions.

Running out of the mortuary, Liz falls into an open grave, which just so happens to be occupied by Mike, whom she immediately makes out with based on nothing more than their psychic dalliances. Yup, all of our protagonists are in the same town. Know what this means for yours truly? I might not bore the ever living hell out my readers (all six of them) for too much longer, because Movie A and Movie B have now merged. So here's to praying that this flick becomes a straightforward action-horror film from this point on.

Naw, I'm not that lucky.

Back at the Bed and Breakfast, our four remaining Good Guy characters agree to get some sleep and break into separate rooms made up of the two couples. Our man Reggie gets to mack it to Alchemy during this scene, so good for him. Soon enough, the Tall Man tricks our heroes and kidnaps Liz, and our two oh-so-cool male heroes drive off after his action hearse in hot pursuit (after Reggie gives Alchemy the macho "I'll find you someday if I'm able!" line). In a scene that puts anything in Dukes of Hazzard to shame, the Tall Man proves his driving mettle by running Mike and Reggie off the road. Almost an hour into the movie and we've got our first unintentionally hilarious scene. All in all, not too shabby for a movie with a $3 million budget and a script that bites off way more than that $3 million can chew.

We're now entering trimester three of Phantasm II, so time for this flick to speed up. Christian Bale-henchman takes the bound-and-gagged Liz to his crematorium, and to make a long story short, she manages to escape and kill him before he can push her into the furnace. Mike and Reggie arrive at the mortuary, and what follows is actually a very well-staged and well-sustained action sequence where the three characters have a final showdown with the Tall Man, his smart heat-seeking spheres, and his remaining henchman. At the conclusion of this chain of events, the Tall Man is killed via a heaping helping of tainted embalming fluid being pumped into his body, which causes him to melt in example #2 of this movie's fairly decent onset special effects (example #1 being the devil-Freddy-Tall Man thing that popped out of Liz's back in the hallucination I mentioned seemingly 87 paragraphs ago).

Alright, we are now entering one of the holiest of the holy scenes that Jon Lickness has ever witnessed - the ending of Phantasm II. Without hyperbole, it may be the greatest ending scene...ever. Get ready.

After Reggie sets fire to the mortuary, they are greeted at the back entrance by Alchemy driving a hearse. Reggie gets in the front with Alchemy while Mike and Liz pile in the back, and all signs are pointing toward the Wayne's World mega-happy ending. However, in a GIANT SWERVE, Alchemy tears a section of her scalp away exposing her brain, revealing herself to be...not human. If she was working with the Tall Man all along, why didn't she just kill them in the Bed and Breakfast? But I digress. She slams on the brakes, Reggie goes sailing out the window (but not before he screams like a woman in unintentionally hilarious scene/moment #2 - again, not too shabby for a film with this kind of budget), and the hearse drives away. In a move that mirrors the ending of the first film, the Tall Man bursts through the back of the hearse, grabbing Mike and Liz and pulling them through the door.

Roll end credits.

You know, when I first popped this DVD in, I expected a pretty half-hearted effort, and was genuinely surprised by what I got. While the budget is pretty modest in comparison with almost all mainstream releases, the $3 million afforded to this movie is pretty decent for a horror-suspense film; after the original film became a miniature cult smash, Universal gave Coscarelli a bit more faith for this sequel. While it's clearly done on the cheap, the director is definitely inventive enough with his money and creative enough with his themes that this movie is just all kinds of badass. The two male heroes just radiate coolness all around, which helps the film out immensely. Basically, everyone involved - from Angus Scrimm to the remainder of the cast to the film-makers to the effects crew - really puts it all out there, and it shows.

Secondly, it should have been more than apparent reading the meat portion of the review, but man, is this movie ever weird. It may be a bit more streamlined than the first film, but it's still off the charts in terms of its pure silliness. More than three hours into the Phantasm saga...I still have almost no clue as to what the frig is going on with this thing. And I mean that in the best way. It's done in a way that is almost MADDENING...I really, really want to know who the Tall Man really is, what his ultimate plan is with the hordes of stolen corpses and Lurkers, and what the source of his mystical powers are. And that whole strange "gate" thing that leads to his "home" dimension? What is THAT all about? Phantasm and Phantasm II have been two movies that pose tons of questions, and provide just enough of an answer so as to leave you wanting more.

Conclusion time - two movies in, and the Phantasm series is shaping up to be one of the classics. It's absolutely chock full of classic characters, with Scrimm's Tall Man ranking right up there with the great ones in the pantheon of horror movie villains and Mike and Reggie making cool foils. Plotwise, it keeps you entertained and WANTING to be there for the moments when certain aspects of the story will be made clear. While it might suffer just a BIT from familiary with the material, this is a sequel that raises the stakes and feels like a BIGGER film, which should be the goal of any sequel.

*** 1/2 out of ****, and Joe Bob says check this one out.