Once again, the opening picks up exactly where the previous film left off, concluding the cliffhanger which had Mike and Liz trapped in a runaway hearse. Reggie, who was clearly dying the last time we saw him, reveals it was little more than a scratch. Sure, whatever. The other two characters don’t get off so easy as the Tall Man decapitates Liz and kidnaps Mike. It’s a little strange that Mike doesn’t mourn Liz’s death at all, but at least the movie hits the ground running, eschewing all the routine emotional stuff that movies like this suck at anyway.
What the movie doesn’t eschew, unfortunately, are some disappointingly routine horror tropes. While searching for Mike in a ghost town, Reggie is taken hostage by three expendable characters who’re scavenging abandoned storefronts and cars. It all feels like a pointless detour until we’re finally introduced to Tim, a kid who’s been playing Home Alone ever since the Tall Man killed everyone else in his town.
Tim is supposed to remind us of Mike in the first film, I guess, but he doesn’t because he’s a ruthless killer. At one point he slices a bad guy’s throat with a razor-lined Frisbee, which is suspiciously similar to a death scene in Hard Ticket to Hawaii. Later, the duo will end up in yet another ghost town where they’ll pick up a nunchaku-packing wanderer by the name of Rocky. I appreciate the exploitation value Tim and Rocky bring to the series, but their one-liners are generic and their motivation is murky.
The best part of Phantasm III is returning director Don Coscarelli manages to preserve the mystery surrounding the Tall Man while simultaneously expanding the mythos. We learn a little more about the spheres’ origin and what’s inside them. We see the Tall Man sitting in a throne, surrounded by candles in a mausoleum, which squares nicely with the series’ fantasy aspirations as it makes him look like the evil wizard of a fairy tale.
What I could have used a little less of was the cheese of bringing Jody back as a spirit guide. Now that the actor who originally played Mike is back, what we get is a sappy reunion picture. At any rate, it shows Coscarelli was probably thinking more about his fans than the mainstream audience he seemed to be gunning for in the previous film. I can’t fault him for that, but I still liked the last two movies a little more than this one, even if the special effects here are better for the most part. As far as second sequels go, Phantasm III is among the best.
This time around, Reggie peaks as the lovable buffoon. There’s a bit more humor and, while it doesn’t detract from the horror, it clashes terribly with the cheesy mentioned above. I’ll say this about Reggie: for a middle-aged ice cream man who’s on his third house and his second Barracuda, he must have some amazing insurance. Once again, he doesn’t waste any time throwing himself into the dating world after the death of a loved one.
So what does the Tall Man want from Mike, anyway? Three films in and I haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe they’ll finally explain it in Phantasm IV: Oblivion, which I’ll feature tonight at midnight, Central Time.
The Goug' Blog 