Sex, murder, and rock and roll: Dario Argento presents "Four Flies on Grey Velvet"!!

Bold blanket statement time - this is the most detailed review of Four Flies on Grey Velvet that you will find...anywhere on the internet. Or at least the most detailed of anything that you'll be able to find by typing "Four Flies on Grey Velvet review" into Google and looking for about five minutes like I did. Until something bigger is on the first three search pages, I'm declaring myself the champion.

For those of you who have followed my reviews for an extended period of time (all three of you), you're likely aware that I hold filmmaker Dario Argento in a pretty high regard, to the point where I've reviewed more than a few of his more well-known flicks and bored everyone who will listen about the awesomeness that is "the Italian Alfred Hitchcock" (media nickname, not mine). The dog-and-pony show that we're looking at today is Argento's third film as a director, having been released in 1971 during the height of the "giallo" genre's popularity.

It's also one of the rarest movies in his catalogue; a few years back when I went on my Argento buying splurge, I was able to find most of his films for somewhere between $4-$6 a pop. This one cost me 17 cool ones for the cheapest copy they had on Amazon. According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, this flick didn't even GET a DVD release until 2009 for whatever reason - made all the more odd since the two movies that precede it in Argento's career (Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Cat O' Nine Tails, which make up a series of nonconnected giallos known as the "Animals trilogy" - clever, I know) are readily buyable.

Finally, before we get this show on the road, BOOO-URNS to Mya Communication for being LAZY BASTARDS and not doing subtitles for this DVD, forcing my hard-of-hearing ass to crank the volume up to 100 just to barely make out what the actors are saying. It's made all the more ridiculous that the DVD contains subs for the "director's cut" scenes (which total about thirty freakin' seconds). So why couldn't they do it for the rest of the movie? Who knows. At any rate, the Horror Nerd's hearing ain't the greatest anymore, and any DVD without subs is a major annoyance.

That bit of bitching aside...THE MOVIE!!!

The movie starts out with an extended (maybe a bit too extended) opening title sequence that introduces us to our main character, Roberto (Michael Brandon, who all things considered is pretty bland in this role). Roberto, like a lot of early Argento protagonists, is kind of a surrogate for the director himself, and is a drummer in a groovy early '70s rock band as we're treated to one of their jams throughout the credits. In fact, this opening sequence kind of plays out like Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" music video, as it shows Roberto constantly being hounded and shadowed by a mysterious man wearing all black.

Moving RIGHT ALONG...apparently this has been going on for quite some time, since Roberto is quite annoyed by this dude's presence at his band's rehearsal. He follows him away from the studio space, eventually winding up at a dark, shadowy (lots of shadowy things in this movie) old theatre. After the usual bit of "why are you following me?" merryment, the dark man pulls out a knife, and in a dodgily choreographed fight scene Roberto winds up accidentally killing his would-be stalker. While all of this is going on, there's yet ANOTHER mysterious guy present...

Most of Argento's non-supernatural films follow a pretty cut-and-dried formula - everyman hero with a somewhat artistic job finds himself wrapped up in a murder investigation while badass killer wearing either (a) mask, or (b) black gloves, goes about murdering the holy hell out of people. And...yeah. Take it from Dario Argento, kids - all-white puppet masks are creepy. At any rate, this guy just happens to be hanging out in the loft of the theatre and witnesses the murder, conveniently snapping several photos of the incident, as well. This is the lynchpin event that sets your movie in motion.

Roberto goes home to his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer), who constantly seems to have a revolving door of random partygoers floating through their house. After kicking all of these random miscriants out (and believe me, they're pretty random - two of them are writers/journalists - not sure which - who constantly blather on about which one has the more sickening war atrocity story; nice, light party talk, ya know), Roberto is randomly attacked by the blackmailer, who kindly informs him that he won't kill him yet before departing. The next morning, we get our heartwrenching scene where Roberto reveals to his wife that he has killed a man.

Soon enough, photographs begin showing up at Roberto's abode, and three guesses as to just what they contain. Yup, it seems that the kid-masked killer is now hell-bent on fucking up Roberto's shit, and a noticeably freaked Roberto and Nina head outside the big city for some all-star backup. Said cleanup hitter is a private investigator friend named Godfrey (Bud Spenser), and it's thanks to this character that we get one of the most downright strange dialogue exchanges in movie history. I'm not going to describe the whole thing, but first Godfrey derides that his name isn't God Almighty, then proceeds to introduce his friends to his pet parakeet named Jerkoff. I swear I'm not making this up. The point of this scene is so that Godfrey can recommend them to ANOTHER private investigator, pointing them in the direction of a man named Arrosio.

Meanwhile, while all of this (fascinating, I'm sure) exposition is going on, the blackmailer has already begun going to work, sending some sort of incriminating evidence to the helpful maid (Jesus - from what we ever see of him, Roberto is just some low-level musician, and he has a MAID?? I'm in the wrong field). This sets up a park murder scene that is actually very skillfully laid out. Everybody has to give it up for Argento in this regard - when it's time for money scenes, this guy knows how to get it done, and the shrieking soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (a frequent Argento collaborator) really sets the dreadful mood well. A+++ for this sequence, even though it involves a character who was given a grand total of 54 seconds of screen time before being involved in this murder scene.

Roberto finds his way to the office of Arrosio, a flamingly gay investigator played by Jean-Pierre Marielle and easily my favorite character in this movie. Now, a lot of the other reviews of this movie deride Argento for including such a flagrant stereotype in the film. Truth be told, almost all of the other characters in this movie are Jinder Mahal-esque levels of bland. At least Arrosio breaks the monotony. What more do you need to know? Roberto has an investigator working for him, and the killer is still out there. Let's move on.

It should be clear by this point that this movie meanders a lot, but whenever an Argento movie starts to drag, he seems to know the precise moment to spring another murder scene on the audience, as Roberto's agent/friend/what-have-you bites the dust in short order. It isn't that creative of a sequence, so it's not worth recapping in detail. Again, we'd only known this guy for about two minutes before his death, so the impact is lessened considerably. Hilariously enough, Roberto and Nina manage to keep their social life afloat, throwing another party attended by both gory-story obsessed writers as well as Nina's cousin Dalia (the impossibly attractive Francine Racette).

After another very incriminating note and series of photos arrive at the house, Nina finally decides to leave, fearing for her own safety as well as for Roberto's future (since, if he goes to the police, he likely goes to prison for the accidental murder of the stalker and all). Dalia stays behind to watch after Roberto, which results in the hot cousin offering to run him a bath and give him a massage. Since Nina rocks the androgynous Annie Lennox look and is, in general, a shrewish bitch, this sequence leads to...

Yeah. Sex scene. It's one of the most disjointed and unintentionally hilarious sex scenes of all time in the realm of slasher/giallo gratuitous nudity sequence, but Francine Racette is indeed very good to look at. Amazingly enough, she's been married to DONALD SUTHERLAND of all people for the past thirty years. Proof that there's hope for everyone.

From this point on, the movie becomes a bit more interesting and even speeds up its very deliberate pace. First of all, Arrosio is fairly successful in tracking down the blackmailer (although we the audience aren't clued in on the various people he talks to during a handy-dandy musical montage), leading to his death scene, which is very cringe-worthy if you're a wuss like me and cannot stand the sight of a needle entering a body. In a way, I dug the arc of Arrosio's character in this movie - a detective who has never solved a case, and as he lays in a toilet stall dying from whatever the insane killer has injected him with, he seems oddly satisfied that he has finally been right in his profession. Good stuff.

In short order, the movie gives us its true ace in the hole - the stalk-and-slash death of Dalia. While the movie started off pretty emotionally hollow, the death of the red-hot Dalia - a nice girl all things considered, but nonetheless the cause of Roberto's infidelity - hits the audience in the gut with plenty of force. The dread in this scene is actually pretty intense, as the killer first shuts the lights off and seems to cut off all exits for Dalia, leading to a very Hitchcockian series of camera shots as he moves in for the kill.

Wrapping things up, the movie enters its final act, as Roberto buys a gun with plans on waiting around his house for the killer to show up and utilizing some Charles Bronson-style justice. Seems like a sound enough plan to me. Only, since this is a horror film, none of the stuff like this ever goes to plan, leading to another admittedly tense scene leading up to our killer's reveal. And the streak that I'm almost ashamed of continued, as I'm presently zero-for-life in attempting to guess Dario Argento mystery killers, despite the fact that I should have seen this one coming a MILE away.

While I enjoyed this flick, it has more than its fair share of problems. For starters, this movie takes a LONG time to hit any sort of stride, and much of the first hour of it is terminally boring. It dilly-dallies to an almost criminal level, particularly during the never-ending scenes involving the various party scenes and the godawful stuff involving Godfrey. In addition to that, the character of Roberto may very well be the most dislikable of any Argento protagonist. This is partially by design, as a big part of the mystery killer's motivation involves how much of a douchebag he is, but most Argento films give us a colorful and engaging lead to follow around while he goes about building tension and atmosphere.

That build isn't quite as effective for this go-round, especially compared to the earlier "Animals" film Bird With the Crystal Plumage (for the record, I still have yet to check out Cat O' Nine Tails). While many giallo films are about anything but plot, Four Flies on Grey Velvet might very well contain too much plot for its own good. Too many characters are introduced, too many dialogue scenes go absolutely nowhere, and some of the most out there character and dialogue sequences in movie history are given to us as the killer goes about setting up the master plan.

Now for what this movie does right...namely, pretty much everything past the halfway point. While it seemed extremely out of place at the time, the sex scene between Roberto and Dalia is the point that this movie begins to turn the corner and sees Argento as a screenwriter finding the groove that he would turn into his next movie, the almost universally praised Deep Red. As usual, the camerawork in the movie is exceptional, as this movie more than Bird With the Crystal Plumage sees Argento practicing several techniques that would become trademarks later on, including an early example of the "bullet time" gunshot and a phenomenal film-ending super-slow-mo car crash. When it comes to visual style, ol' Dario is almost second to none. For fans of moody film music, the score by Morricone does a fantastic job setting the psychosexual themes of the film, and during the various chase and murder scenes, you'll find yourself tense even if what surrounds these scenes is anything but.

So, in conclusion, Four Flies on Grey Velvet is an early work by a guy who hadn't quite mastered his craft yet. And...it shows. If you dig a little deeper, however, you'll find more than a few glimmers of style, a couple masterful murder sequences and that unmistakable Italian horror movie atmosphere.

*** out of ****. Recommended if you're a fan of Italian giallo thrillers or if you're an Argento completionist, not recommended if you're neither.

"Texas Chainsaw Part Who the Hell Cares," starring MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY and RENEE ZELLWEGER

You know, if you're a serious horror fan, it's quite a commitment. I wouldn't even want to see the sum total of everything I've spent on this hobby over the years, from DVD's to VHS tapes to convention tickets to posters to memorabilia. This is where horror is different from other genres; you don't see your average fan of, say, romantic comedy movies lining their walls with images of their favorite characters and scouring the web for spoilers on upcoming releases. More than any monetary expenditure, however, is the expense of time - the TIME we spend watching movies, attending conventions, and discussing cheesy '80s slasher flicks with fellow fans on the internet.

And I spent my 2011 Christmas night watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Yup. Fortunately for everyone, I don't have a big, boring nostalgia trip to take you on first, because this was my first viewing, so let's just warp right ahead to the Wikipedia research phase.

TCM: The Next Generation was originally released in 1994, written and directed by Kim Henkel (who co-wrote the original film with Tobe Hooper). Much like the original film, it had a microscopic budget (in this case $600,000, lower than the thid film in the franchise and MUCH lower than the second) and was filmed to be as authentic as possible. Namely, in the most remote, backwoods sections of Texas. Originally titled Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the movie hit the film festival circuit, promptly flamed out, and sat around for three years until its two main stars became huge Hollywood properties. More on them later. Eventually, the producers cut the movie down by nine minutes and were finally able to release it theatrically in its current incarnation, which is what we're about to look at.

While nobody would confuse the setup of any TCM movie as being particularly realistic with the exception of the first one, this one is...a pretty big stretch. We're immediately introduced to Heather (Lisa Marie Newmyer) and Barry (Tyler Shea Cone), two arguing beefcake-y teenagers at their HIGH SCHOOL PROM (holy Christ) who make their way into a car and continue arguing while they speed away from the prom. After they get a respectable distance away from the school, they discover that another couple is stowing away in their back seat, for reasons that might have been explained but I won't bother to because I wasn't paying particularly close attention. Oh, and Jenny, the female of this second couple, is played by Renee Zellweger.

Now, she became a big star after this movie came out and all, but personally I've just never seen what the big deal is with her. I've seen her in maybe six or seven movies, and really don't remember her for much of anything, other than almost having sex with Rex Manning and winning the Oscar for one of the worst performances ever on film. AIN'T NO MAN BETTER THAN ME. If anyone wants proof that the Weinsteins bribe the goddamn Oscar committee, Miss Zellweger's Oscar is the smoking gun. At any rate, she's your star victim of this film, so enjoy her Randy Orton-like charisma for the film's duration. Or don't.

There's something else I should point out about the film that I gleamed from the opening ten minutes. Rob Zombie did a reboot of the Halloween series that was heavily criticized for being too hick-influenced, completely lacking in subtlety, and beating its nonstop parade of profane dialogue down the audience's throats. Because Zombie's relative strengths appear to be grittiness and making the audience uncomfortable, it's been pointed out that he would have been much better suited for a TCM remake. Well, here's your Rob Zombie Texas Chainsaw movie, since Barry's dialogue contains no less than 15 uses of the word "fuck" in the introduction alone. And guess what? It sucks. Lesson learned for the day - Rob Zombie sucks. Even when he's not technically directing movies.

Well, the introduction comes to an end when our fearsome foursome (the fourth one, by the way, is named Sean, is Jenny/Zellweger's boyfriend, and is played by John Harrison) have to take a detour, go down an expectedly middle-of-nowhere-ish road, and get in a car accident. The driver of the other car is still alive, and so our quartet makes their way to this film's version of the Last Chance gas station - in this case an insurance office manned by Darla (Tonie Perensky), who likes to flash her fake boobs to passing cars. You can't make this stuff up. After an extended (read: never-ending) sequence, Darla calls in her husband Vilmer to take care of the wreck.

Soon enough, Vilmer shows up, played by Matthew McConaughey and driving an old beat-up wrecker truck. He also has a pretty cool-looking bionic leg. The deep, suspenseful build of this movie lasts for all of one minute before Vilmer goes bat-crazy insane, breaking the guy's neck and running Sean over with his truck, all while partaking in the absolute most ridiculous of mannerisms and evil laughs. For what it's worth, I actually found McConaughey to be a pretty good, convincing villain. You buy the guy as an insane killer, and unlike Zellweger, I'm not surprised at all that the guy eventually became a big star. Until the movie turns extremely loopy, the character of Vilmer is definitely the strong point of the movie, without a doubt.

Meanwhile, Jenny, Heather and Barry get tired of waiting around the insurance office, and go out into this strange mini-town in search of Sean. Sometime in this time span, Jenny becomes separated from the other two, who promptly find the old, beat-up Sawyer farmhouse. You might notice that in this review I'm not mentioning any of these people's personal traits, and that's because, other than some VERY shallow characteristics (Barry=asshole, Heather=prom queen, Jenny=troubled stoner, Sean=nice guy), they're nonentities. Don't take it that I'm being lazy. I'm only reporting what we're given.

Having said all that, we're about to enter the movie's money sequence. Barry and Heather enter the Sawyer abode and immediately get brutalized by Leatherface in a manner very similar to the way that the original victims in the first TCM film bit the dust. Barry getting hit in the head with a mallet is a cheer-out-loud moment, to say the least. The Leatherface in this film is played by Robert Jacks, who does a decent-enough job given the material. The Face Man for this go-round is, by this point, merely a prop, window dressing for a plot that takes more nonsensical plot twists than all nine seasons of The X-Files combined, so don't expect too much gushing about one of horror's main luminaries from this point on. Oh, I also forgot to mention that we've just been introduced to another member of the Sawyer family - W.E. (Joe Stevens), a shotgun-wielding dude who speaks only in classical literature quotes. Once again, you can't make this stuff up.

From here, we get our tribute/ripoff of the Marilyn Burns/Sally Hardesty chase sequence from the original film, as Jenny runs across Vilmer and uses her Scooby Doo-like detective skills to deduce that the crazy-eyed guy spouting off about fear is a homicidal maniac. After escaping Vilmer, there is a lengthy (and actually quite suspenseful) "Final Girl" scene between Jenny and Leatherface. After managing to get away from Face, she finds her way back to the insurance station, where (in another tribute/ripoff of the original film) Darla (remember her?) makes a HEEL TURN and calls in the Sawyer family to bring Jenny back to the family abode.

And...wow. What a "dinner/Sawyer family gathering" scene you're about to...uh...enjoy. Get ready.

With the above picture as evidence, McConaughey continues to perfect the "frothing at the mouth villain" role on Zellweger before she makes no less than three escape attempts that get cut off by either Vilmer or Leatherface. At a few points during this long sequence (it takes up the last half-hour of the movie), Darla shows signs of remorse which Jenny begins to play on. Eventually, Darla breaks down and says that Vilmer works for a "secret organization" of some sort, and after a tribute/mockery of the original film's dinner scene, the boss of this shadowy organization shows up in the form of Rothman (James Gale), a black-suited guy who kindly informs us that all of this - the Sawyer house, the murders, the macabre fascination with dead bodies - is all about an experiment to show people "the true meaning of horror."

Ok, first off - HAHAHAHAHAHA. That is, by far, the greatest film plot I've ever heard, but it gets better. Earlier in the film, it had been shown that "Illuminati" was written on the side of Vilmer's wrecker truck. For those not in the know, the Illuminati are a long-rumored/speculated/never-seen secret club of some sort that supposedly controls the world. Or something. Yeah. The idea that the all-powerful, all-knowing bureau of controlling the universe runs a beaten up old farmhouse where people like to engage in cannibalism and spout off cryptic philosophies about the meaning of fear is quite amusing to me. I can only presume that it's a tax writeoff for the Illuminati.

Time to give this stallion the Euthanasia treatment. Jenny's four millionth escape attempt finally proves fruitful when she is able to gain control of the remote that manipulates Vilmer's bionic leg (don't ask) and runs out into the balmy Texas morning in yet another tribute/ripoff of the original film. She runs down a camper with Leatherface and Vilmer in HOT PURSUIT (/Roscoe P. Coltrane). Meanwhile, somewhere, a plane takes off. We don't know why, but it does. After Leatherface - while riding in the back of Vilmer's wrecker - manages to run the camper off the road, the plane swoops down and nails Vilmer in the face, killing him instantly and causing Leatherface to cease his HOT PURSUIT (/Roscoe P. Coltrane). Jenny hops into a waiting black car that whisks her away from the farm, and inside, Rothman informs her that this experiment was an "abomination" and that it was supposed to be a "spiritual experience."

And then, after being taken to a hospital, Jenny sees Sally Hardesty being wheeled around on a stretcher, once again played by Marilyn Burns and ending the movie on an admittedly creepy note.

Oh boy, time to pass judgment on this film. You know - from reading that convoluted and scatterbrained plot description, do you really need me to spell out that it sucks? The experience I had with it was the following - the first twenty minutes or so were actually pretty atmospheric, but when all of the "danger" elements started making their presence be known in the second act, I was completely bored because I didn't care. The movie has a gold mine here in the form of four potentially likable, potentially innocent and undeserving people going to their high school prom and finding their way to hell, and much like pretty all of Rob Zombie's opuses, the movie left me cold because I hated every victim character.

Now, it's time for a pseudo-intellectual rant. It is entirely possible to create an unconventional movie and make it deep, emotional, and resonant. The Korean horror film A Tale of Two Sisters is a perfect example of this - it doesn't make much sense in the traditional manner of things, but the two main characters are drawn so well, and we as an audience are given plenty of reasons to care about them as people, therefore when the weirdness begins it becomes a positive rather than a negative. These are people we like, and they are trapped in an impenetrable maze.

This movie? Not so much. Kim Henkel chose to write one of the most bizarre stories I've ever seen play out in any horror movie, giving the Texas Chainsaw series a mythology that it really didn't need to have, but all of that would be forgivable if we cared about it. Since we don't, the movie's hackneyed plot involving a secret organization fronting the Sawyer clan's murderous tendencies isn't even laughably bad. It's just horrible. After 86 minutes, I couldn't wait for this abomination to be over, and I've suffered through plenty of crap in my day. The third movie in the series seemed to have the idea for a TCM sequel right - the Sawyer clan moves their stakes to a newer but equally backwoods section of Texas and waits for potential victims. Introducing the Illuminati and voodoo mind control into the proceedings is not the way to do it, and it's thanks to this movie that we have the entirely forgettable Platinum Dunes remakes.

Positives? As mentioned, McConaughey is definitely game for his role. No matter how goofy the movie gets in its final trimester, he'll keep you from hitting the eject button just because he plays the Vilmer role so completely over the top that you can't take your eyes off the train wreck. Other than that, though, don't expect much in the way of redeeming qualities. The victims are vanilla, the look of the film is flat and dingy, the music sucks, and the story sounds like something that would be right at home on the Satellite of Love.

* out of ****. Avoid this one like the plague.

I AM "LEATHERFACE: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre III"!!!

Confession time: I had never seen this movie in my life before the obligatory research viewing for this review. I'm far too lazy to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure that I have lied about this at one point at a few message boards, so if you're one of the people who were under the impression that I had a half-assed nuanced opinion of this flick, much apologies. I now have a slightly more educated half-assed nuanced opinion.

So here we are - the third film in the Texas Chain Saw series. Without a doubt, a series that deserves its place on the virtual Mount Rushmore of modern horror film icons along with Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers, this is also one of the many franchises that hold a special place in my heart for having the power to creep the holy hell out of me as a kid via its BOX ART alone. When I was just a little bastard, I would peruse the horror aisle looking to get creeped out due to nothing more than masochism, and the images of the beastly man with creepy masks brandishing large implements seen in the aisles at Sears always did the job with shocking ease. Nonetheless, curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I eventually caught the first movie on TV sometime in my sixth grade year.

So, to give this whole thing some vague semblance of completion, my brief reviews of the first two films in the franchise:

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Man oh man, the Horror Nerd loves him some Texas Chain Saw Massacre! Throughout my dalliances with fellow horror fans out there on the interwebz, I've learned that it's very much a "love it or hate it" thing, and feel free to put me in the former camp. It traumatized the holy hell out of me as a 12-year-old, and while I've seen plenty of films since then that are technically scarier and plenty more that are gorier, the atmosphere, dirtiness and grittiness are off the charts to the point of making this one unforgettable. To me, it's beauty in simplicity - a group of kids goes on a trek across the backroads of Texas only to chance into running across an insane family of cannibal meat merchants, most notably Gunner Hansen as the legendary muscle of the group, Leatherface. The remake? It tried - I won't fault Michael F**king Bay and his foot soldiers for not putting out a solid effort. But this is a flick that just CAN'T be repeated with slickness and professionalism. It's got the budget of an order of McNuggets and the uncanny screaming ability of Marilyn Burns to carry it...and that is why it's immortal.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part 2: Good, although nowhere near as memorable as the first film. Also directed by Tobe Hooper (the same guy responsible for the first installment), this one is more of a parody of the original. The theatrical poster is a spoof of the promotional material for The Breakfast Club, but that fact was lost on me during my formative years, and this is one video cover that scared the bejesus out of me. It's Leatherface along with three other like-minded cannibalism proponents. Yikes. At any rate, Hooper piles on the humor and the plot is pretty goofy - a small-town Sheriff (played by Dennis Hopper - the budget for this flick was approximately 90 times that of the original) remains hot on the trail of the Sawyers long after the crimes seen in the first film, while a radio DJ (Caroline Williams, who looks great in the tiny jean shorts she wears throughout the film's running time, I must say) is the star victim in peril/object of Leatherface's affection for this go-round. It's also got the always amusing Bill Moseley as the "comic relief" villain, although this indirectly may have led to Rob Zombie having a film career, so take it for what it's worth. In short, a lot of fun, but not a revolution like the first film was.

And that brings us to...this flick. Leatherface: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre III was released in January of 1990 and directed by Jeff Burr of Puppet Master 4 and 5 relative fame. More or less, it pretends that the second installment doesn't exist, which seems like a prudent course of action since that film ended with, ya know, every villain character dead. For the most part, it also junks the jokey, almost mocking tone of that film and takes a more serious approach. Maybe a bit TOO serious - it was originally saddled with the dreaded X rating before several MPAA cuts netted it the R needed for a mainstream release, although the uncut version is now widely available on DVD. End Wikipedia research phase.

Before we get going on this particular go-round of reviewing madness, allow me to play like Vince Russo and/or the Daniel Craig Bond films and pull back the curtain (you know - remove all the fun) on the proceedings. I had my next series of reviews slated to be either the lesser-known TCM films or the Evil Dead series and was leaning toward the latter, even dropping a reference to it in the Phantasm IV review. However, since I hate the ED series with a passion and seemingly every other horror fan adores it, I figured I'd save myself the hate mail and go with the movies that have much more variance in their reception. So thank everyone's favorite skin-wearing psycho for saving you the trouble of reading 30-or-so paragraphs of me bitching about how Ash Williams isn't quite the end-all-be-all hero character that everyone thinks he is. Although I just said it.

With that...FINALLY...the movie.

After the expected (and quite awesome) opening narration followed by a skull-bludgeoning murder scene, the flick immediately calms down and stays that way for a nice long, slow build. In one of my favorite rapidly-becoming-cliche phrases, this is a move that is always appreciated. The two saps above are your star victim characters for TCM III, a college couple on their way to Florida to "work out their differences" or some vague thing that isn't quite spelled out. Maybe it was, but I wasn't playing particularly close attention during this phase of the movie. At any rate, Kate Hodge (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ashley "Kirsty Cotton" Laurence) plays Michelle, the brunette on the right who serves as your Final Girl, while Bill Butler is the slightly nerdish-looking Ryan. Butler is one of my favorite bit part horror veterans, having been killed off in Friday the 13th Part VII, the Tom Savini version of Night of the Living Dead and Terror Night, and it was good to see him have a pseudo-starring role here.

While attempting to tune in some bitchin' late '80s tunage, they catch wind that there's an upcoming road block due to a massive mass grave (redundancy alert) being unearthed. There's some very nice special makeup effects involved in the mass grave scene where we're also clued in that Ryan is a pre-med student. Why I mentioned this, I don't know. After continuing past the road block, they find their way to the Last Chance gas station, where they run into...

Viggo Mortensen wearing a cowboy hat. Of course, there's also the requisite Texas Chain Saw Massacre creepy guy (this time an eternally skeevy dude with a glass eye named Alfredo), but hell...it's Viggo Mortensen wearing a cowboy hat. Definitely not the thing I expected to see in a TCM movie. For those of you who have seen the original film (which, let's face it, should be damn near all of you), this would be the "building up dread before the victims head out into deepest, darkest Texas" segment, as Alfredo eventually winds up trying to shoot them and the car speeds off into desolate countryside.

And you know what that means in a Texas Chain Saw movie. Eventually, they get blindsided by a large truck (driven by LEATHERFACE - seen live and in the flesh for the first time since the intro) and our two protagonists find themselves on the run. A lot of the midddle segments of this movie take place in the woods for some good old-fashioned stalk-and-slash action, where amazingly enough a few more characters are introduced. Michelle and Ryan run into Benny (played by amazing horror film luminary Ken Foree), a survivalist who fills the role of being a worthy adversary for the Sawyer clan, and then run afoul of Tinker (Joe Unger, and man, what a sleazeball he is), yet another Sawyer-in-hiding with hooked hands and a swarthy dimeanor. Anyway, after the graphic Leatherface-izing death of a survivor from a recent meat raid, Michelle and Ryan are brought into the Sawyer abode for the finale.

For those of you who are extremely uninitiated, the Sawyer clan in the TCM flicks...yeah, just think Ed Gein taken to the nth degree. In the first film, it was strongly implied that they weren't just cannibals...they were merchants who sold their barbeque creations on roadside stands. Since the second movie is mostly comedy, we'll just look at this one as the "official" sequel for the sake of posterity, and we get yet more sickness thrown our way as it's strongly implied that the captured females in their missions serve as "breeders." Hell, one of the villains in this flick is a cute little blonde girl who takes great delight in pushing the button that smashes Ryan's brain in. Great stuff.

At any rate, the ending sequence of TCM III isn't quite the religious experience that the infamous "dinner scene" from the original film is, but it's definitely a strong showing in the pantheon of "Final Girl" fight sequences. There's lots of sickness, lots of screaming, lots of gore, and even some cool badass moments for Ken Foree. What more can you ask for?

So, with that, we begin the analysis segment of the review. It's been almost two years since the last time I've taken in TCM 2, and since that film and this one are somewhat competing entities for the title of "official sequel to the original movie," I'm going to have to side with this one. The second movie is loads of fun, but the stylistic shift from grit, grime and uncomfortable realism (indeed, that first movie is so cheaply filmed that it looks like a goddamn documentary, and that a lot of the horridness was stuff that the cast actually did without the aid of makeup because that was probably a lot easier than faking it) to over-the-top slapstick was a little offputting. This one is a lot more faithful to the tone of the original, which should have been made more than apparent by the oh-so-handy plot description above, so 50 cool points to the movie for that. It's also got Viggo Mortensen making a *gasp* heel turn right before the third act, and Viggo plays a great heel. Kind of like he is in real life.

I also highly enjoyed the little nods to the first film. Leatherface slugs around in a leg brace due to the chain saw blow to the leg he took in the original, we get yet another cameo from Grandpa (although he's just a withered-up corpse in this film, as opposed to the withered-up barely-living bloodsucker he was in Hooper's movie), and we get some stellar production design work inside the Sawyer home, with bones and trophies tucked into every corner.

What's more, the characters actually end up being a strength. I was a little worried at first - I'm fond of Butler, but Hodge was pretty cookie-cutter. However, she gets a lot more likable as the movie goes along, and that final shotgun scene...cheer-out-loud moment. Of course, Foree is always game for any role. Even in the absolute dirt worst Rob Zombie-written material, he brings every bit of emotion that he can bring to a role, and this movie is no exception. You buy the dude as a legit threat to the clan of inbred cannibals, because he has a strong presence that can't be denied.

Not really a whole lot more to say about the film, other than that I greatly enjoyed it and would heartily recommend it to my horror-loving fans. However, I'm told that the NEXT movie in the franchise...isn't quite the minor classic that I found this one to be. Foreshadowing.

*** 1/2 out of ****.

The endgame (so far) comes in "Phantasm IV: Oblivion"

Alright, let's finish this bitch off. And not a moment too soon. Hopefully it hasn't been made clear, but while I've mightily enjoyed this series, sweet Mary, writing about them is exasperating. When I first sat down to watch these Phantasm movies, I envisioned...something entirely different from what wound up taking place. Some standard stalk-and-slash action, a badass villain, and different victim characters in every movie. Kind of like an all-dudes version of Friday the 13th. And, well, if you've been reading these reviews, that has wound up not being the case.

Before we get going, I have to disclose something - I'm not happy at all with how my reviews of these movies have turned out. They've been something like 95% recap, 5% all other shit. The series is just SO freakin' weird that it's difficult to describe it in handy-dandy condensed form without confusing the holy hell out of readers, but it's a sorry excuse. So, from the Horror Nerd to all of you, much apologies for the piss-poor performance on these flicks, and I shall do my best to streamline the whole experience with this go-round.

Phase one of that plan: Some introductory comments on THE FILM ITSELF. Phantasm IV: Oblivion was unleashed upon the world of direct-to-video patrons in 1998. Once again, Don Coscarelli returns to man the directing and writing duties, and since he is the guy who has concocted perhaps the most baffling long-running series I've ever taken in, does about as well of a job as anybody in the history of the world in making a series about killer spheres, hooded dwarves, and mystical otherworldly Undertakers (but not Mark Calloway) seem cool and relevant. What's more, Bill Thornbury and A. Whitney Brown are once again back as Jody and Mike, the brothers who serve as the lynchpins of the action, as well as Reggie Bannister, who in my book is a far cooler "baptism by fire/unlikely hero" character than Ash Williams could ever hope to be. Maybe a good inflammatory comment like that will make this review a bit less sucky.

Whoo boy...are you ready, kids? Ready for the final (to date, and MORE ON THAT LATER) movie in this confounding series? Christ, I don't even know if I am.

But first...LET'S ALL GO TO THE LOBBY!
Now that we got that out of the way, welcome to the crazy world of Phantasm IV. It starts off with what's actually a pretty cool bit of recap/narration by Bannister that makes me all wishy-washy for the two months' worth of nostalgia I have for these movies. Like the previous three flicks, it then resolves the cliffhanger ending from the last installment, which had Reggie pinned to the wall by the Tall Man's sentinel weapons and Mike tearing away from the Bolton mortuary/lab. For whatever reason, the Tall Man decides to let Reggie live and pursues Mike.

The one really nice thing about this movie is that it's much, much easier to follow than the others. Don't get me wrong - it's still off the charts insane, but while the other flicks were all about rapid-fire events and action, this one is more restrained, and only has two plot threads to follow instead of the 17,000 that I'm used to.

First, we get Movie A - the Mike show, and man, is it something else. Apparently Mike ran away from the mortuary so as not to be turned into one of the Tall Man's drones, or something, and eventually winds up in Death friggin' Valley. While there, he seems to be preparing for his death, as he periodically writes these cryptic notes to his buddy Reggie, but his primary goal seems to be unlocking the mystery of the cosmos that is the Tall Man's back story.

Yup, we finally get some semblance of an idea of who this guy was before the whole heinous body-stealing world conquest plot started. There is a fascinating little scene involving the guy working in the battlefields of the Civil War, obviously a doctor of some sort before the big reveal. As far as we can tell, he was an undertaker named Jebediah Morningside who became obsessed with finding the line between life and death (possibly due to witnessing so much of the latter in the war). And golly gee, he actually succeeded, inventing the very first dimensional poles sometime in the 19th century and crossing the gate, eventually being reborn as the evil Tall Man. I never told you it was a definitive answer.

The rest of Mike's story in this film isn't worth recapping quite as much. All you really need to know is that he follows his brother Jody around through a bunch of dimensional gates, unlocks past segments almost as if you would unlock content in a PS3 game by accomplishing little tasks, and eventually gains the power of telekinesis, which he immediately uses to kill a scorpion. I wish I was making that up.

Then, there's Movie B - the typical Phantasm "cool Reggie in pursuit of pussy and the Tall Man" story. This time around, there isn't much action from ol' Reg, which is really a shame, since Bannister has really grown on me as this series has gone on. He went from being a nonentity in my mind in the first movie to a cool alternative to Bruce Campbell in the second to legit badass (and somewhat lecherous) antihero in the third, and I was particularly fond of him here. This time around, all he is doing is tracking down his buddy Mike. Along the way, he defeats a demonic cop (YES!) and engages in a Phantasm classic sequence for the ages.

OK, here's the deal - for those of you who have been keeping score, all of the sequels have featured a young hot chick for Reggie to attempt to mack on, and this one is no different, as he rescues a hot young blonde named Jennifer (Heidi Marnhout) from certain doom after her car flips over. After driving to an abandoned hotel and falling asleep for the night, Reggie is awoken from a nightmare only to discover that Jennifer's...uh...chest is heaving. Ever the sexual harassment proponent, he opens up her shirt, and, well, take a look.

Yeah. Sentinel boobs. You can always count on Phantasm movies to have SOMETHING in them that will stick out in your memory forever, and this one is no exception. Anyway, he destroys the sentinels and demon-Jennifer and continues on his merry way, eventually catching up to Mike in the desert for the AFOREMENTIONED "crossing of the poles/Jebediah Morningside" revelation.

What else do you need to know? Well, not much. This flick doesn't have much of a big, rousing ending action sequence like the other films do, and as it turns out really wasn't supposed to. There's only a couple other things worth mentioning: (1) Mike gets the honors of offing the Tall Man once again, this one with some sort of strange interdimensional bomb (don't ask), and (2) we get ENDING TWIST #4, as a new Tall Man immediately comes through the gate and completes the wackamaroo transformation that he had been putting Mike through, removing the sphere from his skull and leaving him for dead as Reggie dives through the gate in HOT PURSUIT (/Roscoe P. Coltrane). Our closing scene is an outtake from the first film of child Mike getting into Reggie's ice cream truck, and the two of them driving off into the distance. And it's a scene that could bring a tear to a glass eye.

I'm not sure I know why, exactly, but I enjoyed this movie. The relaxed pace was a welcome change after the all-out frenetic campy weirdness of the first three films, and simultaneously despite and because of that tone-down, the movie gives us some classic moments. The stuff with the Tall Man's past is really awesome, and it's great seeing Angus Scrimm play something other than the slow-stalking, slow-talking killer for a change during his scenes as Jebediah. In addition to that, both Movie A and Movie B have some decent scares, and the killer breasts? Immortal.

Of course, there's also a wholly boring story associated with the possible future of the franchise. Way back in the mid-'90s, Roger Avary (the co-writer of Pulp Fiction) wrote a screenplay for the final movie in the Phantasm saga, which would pick up from the events of Phantasm III and take place in a dire, post-apocalyptic landscape. As cult movies often do, the project ran into financing difficulties, prompting Don Coscarelli to create this movie as a way to bide time and keep interest until enough money could be raised for the endgame film, and Avary even has a cameo as one of the civil war soldiers in the movie. And no, there hasn't been any headway in raising the finances for said movie, which would be titled Phantasm's End, although Coscarelli hopes to make it sometime in the future. Hope you enjoyed the information I was able to impart due to the five minutes' worth of Wikipedia research I afforded Phantasm IV.

Thus, for that reason, while I ordinarily hate open endings to horror series, I'll give Phantasm IV a slight pass since it's not OFFICIALLY over yet and award it *** out of ****.

Now, a few words on the series as a whole. This series is the very definition of "cult" - it's out there, it's definitely not digestable to the masses, but it's off-kilter wackiness and cool hero characters easily lends itself to a small but very diehard group of fans, which this series no doubt has. After taking in every movie in the series, I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore fan, but the films should get regular play during my daylight hours sleep schedule while so many of my other DVDs sit in the shelf for all of time after one watch. They're oddball, they're loads of fun, and as a whole experience, I can't recommend them enough.

More than that, however, I'm sure all of you out there reading this who consider yourselves horror fans have people in your lives - be they family, co-workers, significant others, etc. - who give you funny looks for some of the things you watch. You know, the usual "how can you watch this crap" look. According to some people (not looking at you at all, Roger Ebert), we are only supposed to watch cerebral, artistic works of social and cultural importance that make us reflect on who we are as a society and human beings. And just TYPING that last sentence almost made me hurl.

Are these films high art? No, not by a long shot. But movies can be good in different ways, and yes, the Phantasm films are good. Not in the way that they should have walked away with bagfuls of Oscars, but the best movies are the ones that are able to make you feel something. Shocked, confused, invigorated...these are the effects that these films had on me while watching them, and I'm a slightly curmudgeonly 28-year-old man. God only knows what I would have thought if had I seen this in my impressionable childhood. So shut it, Roger, or else Reggie, his awesome ride, and his cavalcade of weapons will be pointed at YOU.

Far out, indeed.

Round-three of four-barrel shotgun shootin' hemicuda-ridin' action in "Phantasm III"

I've absorbed many, many horror series in my day, but these Phantasm flicks might take the cake when it comes to sheer weirdness and the amount of content that it throws at you per minute. See, most horror flicks have about 30 minutes' worth of stuff that fans of the genre actually care about, while much of the rest is little more than filler between murder scenes. These films have more convoluted twists and turns than the WCW/ECW Alliance invasion storyline and the Spider-Man clone saga COMBINED. Hell, even the ending scares serve as major plot points that are expounded upon in the later films, which I've just found out from watching Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead.

First things first, this flick appeared on video store shelves (theaters? are you kidding me?) in 1994, six years after the previous installment and a full fifteen years after the original film hit theaters and became a miniature cult phenomenon. What's more, it even brings back Bill Thornbury as Jody Pearson and A. Whitney Brown as his little brother Mike, the latter of whom having been played by James LeGros in Phantasm II. The reason for this, as far as I can tell, is that Universal studios allowed writer-director Don Coscarelli (who returns to perform the same duties once again with this one) to bring back either Brown or Reggie Bannister, but not both of them. Deciding that it would be easier to find a new 20-something handsome leading man than another mid-'50s curmudgeonly ex-hippie, he decided to go with Bannister. Wise move, if you ask me. Well, no restrictions this time, so Bill and A. Whitney return and the trumpets sound from the heavens.

In keeping with the spirit of this franchise, Phantasm III is very much a direct sequel to the other films, and if you haven't read them, you're encouraged to check out the reviews of the other films before you partake in this one. That way, my incisive wit and biting commentary might make a little more sense.

Time to get this round of hooded-dwarf-heat-seeking-sphere-weapon madness started. We start with the ending of Phantasm II, where Alchemy (Samantha Phillips) rips her scalp off to reveal her gooey, pulsasting brain, causing their escaping hearse to crash and the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) to come back for Mike and his kinda-sorta psychic girlfriend Liz. Less than a minute into the action after the requisite recap, it's revealed that Liz dies in this attack, getting her face eaten off by one of the Lurkers before Reggie (Reggie Bannister) rescues the now-
conspicuously A. Whitney Brown-looking Mike from the Tall Man. It's also revealed that the ORIGINAL Tall Man did indeed die at the conclusion of Phantasm II, and that another one immediately emerged from the interdimensional portal to take his place.

Any idea what's going on? Nope, none.

Anyway, Mike is taken to the hospital, where he sees his older brother JODY (Bill Thornbury, and YAY!) in a hallucination tell him to "stay away from the light." After ignoring the instructions and continuing on, the Tall Man appears blocking his path, causing Mike to wake up only to be attacked by an old, cackly demonic nurse. Almost immediately, Reggie arrives to visit Mike (and this is mighty convenient since Mike has supposedly been in a coma for TWO YEARS), and witnesses the final tussle with demon-nurse before breaking his buddy out of the hospital.

After they arrive home, Jody himself appears before them to warn them that the Tall Man is coming, and proving that he is truly the most intelligent character in this series, Captain Awesome Angus Scrimm rounds the corner via his cool dimension gate to collect Mike, whom he seems to DESPERATELY want to claim for some reason or another. I should also point out that Jody gets transformed into one of the Tall Man's sphere ball weapons in this scene, half-solving one of the many questions I have about this series by saying that these little balls are made up of victims that the Tall Man claims. Anyway, our villain easily fights off Reggie, Mike, and Jody-Ball, and draws Mike away into the gate with him.

So it's off for another round of search and destroy with the Tall Man and the added stake-raising of having Mike as a hostage. At least this series keeps throwing some new wrinkles into the formula. Hell, it throws about 5,000 new ones at us per picture. At any rate, Jody-ball informs Reggie that he needs to travel to Holtsville, which is (of course) thoroughly Tall Man-ized when he arrives. This place does, however, lead him to the most humorously over-powered character ever committed to film.

Okay, I'm giddy about this one, let me set it up. Immediately after getting to Holtsville, Reggie is attacked by three goons (one hot girl and two dopey dudes), put in the trunk of his bitchin' Hemicuda, and driven to an (apparently) abandoned house. Said (apparently) abandoned house is actually inhabited by Tim (Kevin Connors), a young boy who has a Macaulay Culkin-esque ability to devise traps in his home and easily kills the three would-be looters. One of them with a razor-bladed frisbee, no less. After making work of them, he rescues Reggie from the trunk of his car.

Yup - the kid in the above picture = Jesus.

Turns out that Tim's family has also been killed by the Tall Man, and he has been surviving on his own for quite a while. Moving along, they traverse to the local mortuary, where they are attacked by two completely random African-American women, one of whom gets quickly killed by a sphere, which Reggie calls a "Sentinel" and thus gives me something to call it by proxy.

See? Now I'm happy. I'll admit - this movie doesn't move quite as fast as the previous two films, and it had actually been a little on the boring side up until now. Throw a nice sphere (oh wait - Sentinel) murder scene my way, and I'm easily sated. Even better, Tim proves himself to be even MORE awesome by appearing out of nowhere (earlier, Reggie had tried to leave him with a woman looking after orphans of the Tall Man's mass genocides, only for him to hide in the trunk of his car and stow away) and shooting the sentinel out of the air.

By process of elimination, Rocky (Gloria Lynn Henry), the remaining survivalist, teams up with Reggie and Tim. On their way to a town called Bolton, they see a massive convoy of hearses and decide to follow them instead. Seems like a good plan to me. Anyway, while camping out, Jody appears to Reggie in a dream and guides him to the Tall Man's lair where they rescue him before waking up - only it must have been slightly more than a dream since Jody himself appears before Reggie in the real world and opens another gate, which Mike himself pops out of. The Tall
Man tries to follow, but Reggie closes the gate, cutting the Tall Man's hands off. After our heroes manage to fight off the spider-like creatures that the hands transform into AND the zombified corpses of the three looters from earlier...and it's just as amazing as it sounds, believe me.

Our four main characters make our way to Bolton mortuary to crash for the night because "it's the last place he would look," which sounds like as genius of a plan as any. There, they run across a large cryonics facility, reminding Mike that the Tall Man dislikes cold (and his 56K cache memory even brings up a little video for us from the first film to demonstrate this).

OK...it's taken 2.5 movies to get to this point, and after almost four hours of four-barrel-shotgun shooting, hemicuda-riding, jet-flying, wheelin' deelin son of a gun action (WHOO)...Don Coscarelli is finally going to tell us what the hell is going on and give us some answers. Get ready.

Mike consults with the Jody-sphere, and asks him the holy question - "Tell me about him. I need to know why." You and me both, buddy. Well, Jody explains that the Tall Man (or his kind, meaning that there is more than one of the guy) are gathering up an army to conquer many different dimensions, stating quite explicitly that the guy comes from some other plane (which had been apparent). The lurkers and the sentinels are both made from the victims, and it's explained that the Tall Man removes the brains of these people, leaving only a tin part of the cerebral cortex in the body for the lurkers to function on instinct and impulse, while the "Smart" part of the brain is encased in the sentinels to serve as killers. So, by harvesting the dead, the Tall Man (or Tall Men) are hoping to eventually conquer Earth, making this series Plan 9 From Outer Space meets The Terminator.

Everybody got that?

Well, admittedly, I'd pieced 2 and 2 together on much of the above anyway, but after all of this time spent watching the Phantasm movies, it was very nice to get some sort of closure to just what the hell all of the various creatures and Tall Man-controlled beings are. Since I'm a person who sat through nine seasons of The X-Files only for Chris Carter to fuck me over and leave everything up in the air at the end, and having read the reports about what went down on Lost, I've gotta give it to Don Coscarelli that he didn't take the easy way out and just "leave it up to our imagination" or some claptrap like that. Bravo, dude.

Since we're well into the third trimester of the flick by this point and all of our heroes and villains are in the same place, it's time for the Phantasm III ending action sequence. The Tall Man has sensed the heroes' presence at the mortuary and descends upon it, and the bodies of the three looters turn up once again and attack Reggie, Tim and Rocky (who brandishes NUNCHUCKS throughout this film, which is awesome in and of itself). The Tall Man himself comes for Mike, in
a really nifty scene where he's surrounded by hundreds of his killer sentinels.

The Tall Man captures Mike and begins operating on him, but the three remaining leads surprise him, stabbing him in the chest with a pole dipped in liquid nitrogen and locking him in a freezer, which causes him to implode and a sentinel to pop out of his head, revealing that the series' Tall Men are also sentinel killers of a sort. From here, we get the usual Phantasm-style ending chase sequence involving the remaining looters and the sentinel balls. Reggie and Tim eventually
destroy the Tall Man's sentinel by dumping it into a vat of liquid nirogen, and all appears right with the world...

...except that the Tall Man's operation went further than expected, as Mike discovers that his blood is now yellow, and that a golden sphere is lodged inside his skull. He appears at the end of the film with silver eyes wandering outside the mortuary, and Jody appears to drag him through a dimensional gate, telling Reggie that they'll "be in touch." Sure thing, bro. Rocky quickly wanders off, telling Reggie and Tim that she's "sick of dealing with the undead," leaving Reggie
and Tim to search the mortuary alone to find out what happened to Mike.

And, unbeknownst to our heroes, there are dozens of sentinels hovering above them, and after Tim finds the poles to close a dimensional gate in the freezer, the sentinel balls completely cover Reggie and pin him to a wall. Tim returns to the room, and quickly enough, another Tall Man appears from the gate, a lurker grabs Tim and pulls him through a window, and we get Phantasm ambiguous ending #3. The end.

Initial reaction: Phantasm III isn't quite as good as the first two films. The Wikipedia page for the movie states that it is the most "controversial" movie in the series, but that's a statement that baffles me, since I didn't really find it any more or less weird than the other two movies in the series. Other than the scene where everything is made clear, however, this flick seems a bit more on the safe side than the other films. The first movie was out-and-out bizarro-land for 90 minutes, while the second was controlled frenzy and almost nonstop action. This one has a few stretches of elongated boredom, and in this series, it sticks out like a sore thumb. So thumbs down to the movie in that regard.

Having said that, the actors once again do a fine job, and it's very nice especially seeing Brown back in the role of Mike. On the character front, however, the supporting cast this time isn't quite as good as it was in the last-go-round, which gave us a couple hot chicks to look at in Alchemy and Liz. Tim is just a little bit...TOO awesome of a kid for my taste, having the ability to take down multiple sentinels, zombies, and other assorted crap with way too much ease for a
10-year-old. Yeah, Brown was a kid in the first movie, but he wasn't a freakin' Green Beret sharpshooter. There were a few occasions where I rolled my eyes at some of Tim's accomplishments in this movie, and eventually, the character just kinda becomes disposable. Which Coscarelli apparently realized, since he's the one who draws the "prop death in the ending twist" card this time.

But I will give the movie this - while it has flaws in the character and plot department compared to what the first two flicks gave us, it still has me more than ready to watch the final (to date) entry in the series. And here's hoping THAT one doesn't disappoint in a premature ejaculation kind of way.

** 1/2 out of ****. Definitely worth a look for completionistism sake, but not as out-and-out memorable as the first two movies.

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.