Phantasm II Review

hello world line with shadow the other personality the best hair and there are quite a lot of phantasm movies so let's take a look at them sometimes I worry that reviewing a long series back-to-back might get a bit samey as the week's go on but I don't think that's gonna be the case with phantasm - this is the first one of the series to be produced under Universal Studios and had the largest budget of any film in the series as such it was subject to the harshest studio interference as well as don coscarelli had to make more than a few concessions just to get the green light in the first place such as the fact this is the only movie in this series that does not have a Michael Baldwin playing Mike except in stock footage they got a whole new guy for Mike Donna actually one of the getting both Reggie and Mike back to play Reggie and Mike but Universal didn't want either Reggie or Mike back to play Reggie or Mike so they had a compromise keep Reggie [ __ ] Mike which I guess is slightly better than simply cutting actors in half but another thing that studio demanded was some more traditional structure so instead of a rump down in sending Lane the movie is a story about how Reggie and I can't believe it's not Mike set out to find the tall man and put an end to his reign of terror for good which means I'll probably had a lot easier of a time figuring out the plot is now but is that really a good thing well let's take a look at phantasm 2 and find out we open to a brand new character who also just so happens to be in the movie only because of Studio demanders who is played by Paula Irvine she's tormented by mysterious dreams which she conveniently has been instructed to keep down in a handy-dandy notebook complete with a voiceover illustrations and movie flashbacks to the ending of the original phantasm with a couple changes [Music] honey not supposed to scream and break [ __ ] until the bridge Mike the biggest change of course is the fact that it keeps going past the final scare Reggie Van Esther goes for a shotgun but it's not loaded to make matters worse he's having a hell of a time actually finding where the shells are also the Java spaces are far freakier this time around it's amazing what you can do with a barrel a corpse and some latex not being able to load the thing Reggie simply uses the gun to beat the ever-loving [ __ ] out of a miniscule that strategy looks far less feasible once he finds out the whole troop is surrounding him however perhaps he can just put out the pilot lights and pump up the gas now this trap is set he's got to figure out how the hell to take out the tall man I'm not sure why I took him so long to realize that the Maplewood Slugger might have a slightly higher DPS than the woven string but again he doesn't have to worry about the tall man and maybe a tennis racket could have taken out the Jaguar just the same the point is he gets Mike's body double Lori Loughlin out of there in a hurry because like a lot of movies they fuel the stoves with goddamn nitroglycerin but it was all just a dream of Liz as we established she's reading us from her dream journal and as we see when Mike awakens in a psychiatric hospital now played by James Lee gross and we established of the extended ending after he woke up from the dream in the first movie was also just a dream just tell him what he wants to hear and don't worry the studio also made sure that there was plenty of thought of voiceovers just in case the audience was too stupid to figure out the scenes on their own and didn't realize that when Mike is telling the psychiatric doctor that he really accepts that his dreams were fakin there's no real connotations he doesn't actually believe that yay because it's not like we could have figured that out on our own after he receives his clean bill of mental health only the head right out to a cemetery and start digging up Graves something that's like coming out of habit of his that a Reggie banister catches him in the act [Music] well because digging up grace is so damn easy in movies of course it is still hard to establish this plot point if his arms give out he collapses from exhaustion halfway down the first hole Reggie still doesn't believe those insane rantings though he's only trying to keep my his head down so he doesn't get dragged off to the loony bin for the rest of his life no bother they can head home where Reggie says there's all kinds of great friends over to have a lovely dinner which sets Mike off in short order [Music] and if that blast looks familiar that's because they could only really afford to blow up the house one time so they just set up a whole bunch of cameras around it and filmed it all at the same time with every person in the right spot in the scene which honestly is pretty impressive cheaper to do than blowing up multiple houses and cinematically more effective with the deaths of three beloved characters who we never see Reggie decides since Mike knew it was going to happen his visions must be true unless they head out on a road trip to attract that ol man down and take him out first things first let's break into a hardware store and stock up on all the essentials such as a [ __ ] chainsaw also this next to no security here so plenty of time to get at a montage to craft some custom gear while they're at it [Music] such as the goddamn quadruple barrel sawed-off shotgun I feel like the series can piss me off in whatever way it likes from here on out at the very least they gave us quadruple barreled sawed-off shotguns that possess aunty Danny flame thrower test-fired indoors of course and they got everything they need okay Reggie that's a nice gesture no but I'm pretty sure the two he's still way more than 200 bucks worth of [ __ ] trying to track down the tall man might be a bit easier than you would think though as he tends to focus on less populated areas and they don't look all that great once he's been through them small towns are like people some get old and die and naturally yeah some are murdered and some up their luck out with natural resources and location and strike it rich and become huge technological monstrosity spreading far and wide and consuming all the people around them to grow in it looks like they're far too late to save this place but they've bothered come all the way out so they might as well check for clues the ravaged cemetery appears to be a dead giveaway of the tall man's work pun very much intended but still they decide to check the funeral parlor for anything else it's loaded with your generic spooky heart props but nothing really out of the ordinary if you ask me spare perhaps the naked dead woman on the slab who might feels the need to get a good look at shortly before he hears something outside but not expect them to get jumped by a naked dead woman anytime soon though it's the same naked dead women running around it's part of what made the Evil Dead such a fun franchise the cute corpse isn't important though Reggie found something upon closer examination it's Liz except of course upon even closer examination Freddie what the [ __ ] are you doing in this movie dropping a hint to come east before being burnt to a crisp now this doesn't mean liz is dead mind you that wasn't Liz just a phantasm phantasm that required inhalation but what else the point is they head east and we see ourselves at Liz's perfectly fine as she's heading to her grandfather's funeral along with her grandmother played by Ruth sieng go what mysterious town is his tall man hiding in Perigord organ no so much for that mystery no bad that old man has got two new goons this time around one played by mark major the other by someone that neither IMDb nor the Wikia fan page nor the end credits of this movie itself felt necessary enough to list well at least father Meyers played by Kenneth Tiger was able to get his name listed the wake for the grandfather played by Reuben Kushner is great and all but we had a wake last movie and Liz decides to look elsewhere for horror excitement like the giant [ __ ] crypt attached to the church I got the feeling the original diabla took a lot of architectural inspiration from the phantasm series being surrounded by Death is creepy and all but the real scares when she spots the scattering off one of those damned jealous [Music] damn not a dream haha thank you voiceover I'd hate to have to talk to my friends about the meaning behind this scene it seems that father Myers here knows a bit more about the oddities that have befallen this town MO and immediately after the ceremonies are over walks up to the body saying a few words but more importantly staring the [ __ ] out of grandpa's corpse [Music] okay was it the stabbing her fallen left part that overwhelmed her or the crazy as look from the priest whichever it was it didn't catch the attention of Liz who has gone deeper into the Crypt noticing a coffin in the hallway that looks like it was taken from the ground recently and had been there someone good luck reanimating what's left in it she goes to investigate grave sorry service is about to begin need to be interrupted by a nostalgic jump-scare well so this is just me or is that old man wearing a little something on his lips to stun our room we have plenty of time to double check considering the pin she had was stabbed right through his finger showing us all of the man has yellow blood like the first movie established now well we move on to see the priest made at home mostly intact spare is boozing to try to deal with the stress or the memories or maybe he's just trying to conk out before any more weird [ __ ] happens but there's someone knocking on the door [Music] so just close the people and forget about it you got your shambling zombies you're running zombies and now you got your ding-dong-ditch zombies as that's not important we've got to go over to Grandma's house where she too is having trouble sleeping what with weird sounds keeping her up at night [Music] that's the kind of face to put the romance back in Nick I didn't I already do this joke in another review why does zombie sex keep coming up so often so she's [ __ ] dead in more ways than one and when Mike awakens we find out that while he was asleep Ritchie picked up a hitchhiker which might coincidentally dreamed about being dead alchemy played by Samantha Phillips I would have thought al would be a bit easier and shorter and ironically less weird Mike isn't happy with this turn of events and demands they stop to pee naturally this let him have a private conversation with Reggie the kind you have with your privates out he saw alchemy dead in a dream so he fears she's in danger so she's in danger with us or without us at least with us we can protect her right it's not logical but of course the kind of protection Reggie second about comes in latex as luck would have it Kimmy here is headed down to Perigord which is exactly where our heroes were heading anyway over in that little town however liz is just discovering her grandmother is no longer in the house but her needle is there complete with yellow blood if you want her tonight I guess a tall man realizes that he's dealing with characters in a horror movie so they probably need a little help in order to keep the plot moving I mean it's not like she could just go and we understand that is more than enough reason for Liz to check the funeral home you gotta explain these things slowly and painfully to the audience but while she's following the neatly message Mike and Reggie reach Kimmy's family's bed-and-breakfast which no surprise here is closed sure Liz was going around Perigord earlier and it looked okay but now it looks like the small town from before an uninhabited wreck no bother they can break in and spend the night anyway ah damn college pranks are pretty [ __ ] extreme innies oh no they're just setting up some defenses so the house can be reasonably safe against the [ __ ] teleport anyway but ignore that for now the men head out to find the tall man while Liz is already in the morgue observing how not only do certain bodies have their genitalia obscured by convenient towels but the people here strangely train the bodies of blood before pumping them full of Red Bull she's not the only one snooping around though father Meyers is here as well because we got to up the body count somehow I come to think of it phantasm seems a lot simpler than I initially thought the main thing is this if you don't want to die stop hanging around in mortuaries the tall man does what horror movie icons tend to do with priests laughs in the face of the impotent god thing is he doesn't out and kill the man just yet we've got to introduce another tool for that job [Applause] the chrome ball is back and it brought friends I guess what was missing was a good witness so Meyers tracks Liz down shortly before the balls closed in [Music] what's not only coming greater numbers in this mill but also have an expanded arsenal of tricks why just drill a man's brain out when you can torture him first that and the fact that the brain drilling is a step down in this film believe it or not no out fake skin flaking because there's no penetration than the close-up the sphere spews far less blood and overall father Meyers death isn't nearly as impressive much like Liz's skill at hiding compared to Mike's fortunately for her though the tall man isn't in any rush to slaughter the main cast gotta reset 90 minute mark after all meaning he just walks the [ __ ] off leaving the tormenting task to Liz's grandmother now transformed into a Jawa being old short and dead however it doesn't take much to feed her allowing Liz to escape fleeing back into the cemetery [Music] we need to be grabbed by Psycho Mantis or Mike who likes to combine the classic friend grabbing friends from behind instead of saying hello scare with an unnecessary gas mask just a [ __ ] were there however before he can finish [ __ ] with her Reggie interrupts and they all retreat back to Alchemy's bed-and-breakfast and booby traps the plan is still to go forth and kill the tall man but you know what [ __ ] it it's been a long-ass day let's just head up to bed alchemy and Reggie hit up for some [ __ ] while listen Mike enjoy some psychic pillow talk [Music] it's um McCamey wow this is great yeah they happened to be able to talk to each other in their dreams think of it like the dream warriors dream powers except without nearly as much thought put into it or any kind of usefulness to the overall plot her establishing herself as a love interest for Mike because that's her job is juxtaposed against the fully clothed fridge she play [ __ ] the [ __ ] out of alchemy and her unmoving unmentionables however this is interrupted when suddenly they hear the home-security grenade go off Mike nobody say Kenny's not go ahead a cat or a dog movie are you trying to make me hate these characters however now that they're distracted and scattered the tall man swoops in to kidnap Liz this means we get our car chase and Mike and Reggie leave alchemy all alone in hopes to save Liz from certain doom [Music] I'm sorry I thought we were going for the high-speed staring contest unfortunately the quad barreled wrist breaker can't be utilized because they just end up crashing the car anyway this means instead of saving Liz the two men must escape innovation Liz on the other hand is being brought over to the crematorium for her own immolation [Music] sumbitch they cremated Sam Raimi now who's gonna teach emo spider-man how to dance before the heroes find her they find that little room she found earlier with a Red Bull embalming machine knowing it's to reanimate the dead Reggie decides to spike the concoction with an acetone of hydrochloric acid also they take note of a strange concave keyhole that will obviously be important later sure they're not much of a rush to save lives but that's okay goons are always terrible at their jobs and the lack of restraints on the woman allows her to easily escape death by cremation okay now all we need to see is him try to grab her and end up accidentally cremating himself and the nf2 goon trifecta is complete close enough of course that wasn't the only goon also so far as I can tell the quantity of non Jawa goons has suddenly increased as there is one waiting for Reggie as he explores down below but when Liz is being chased down by a shiny ball of death dodging it along with a help of Mike another one pops up to try capture her again and while the head drilling scene was lackluster compared to the original at least there's a lot more ball action in this movie there's no way to say that without it sounding weird also this movie introduces the giant [ __ ] gold ball which legend has it was nicknamed Rambo on set I'm not going to find out why just yet everyone either runs away or chops their own limbs off and then runs away oh well this just means we get to check out how Reggie is doing in the basement finding Lagoon they wind up in a battle one with Reggie isn't doing that great in but it's cool he's got a [ __ ] chainsaw nobody's [ __ ] we're gonna have to leave it at that as we suddenly teleport back to listen Mike running for their lives away from the gold sphere the first few doors do [ __ ] all the stop it but the last one has a latch which somehow matters however it's not enough to stop the hatchet wielding mortician who yet again grabs ahold Oh Liz okay you know what other than the priests the balls have only ever killed the tall man's own goons it's really not a great track record by the way it doesn't look like he's gonna be walking away from this when it's a sphere revs up and burrows deep into his back tearing the gonna pop on the inside there's very little blood in this skill but it still doesn't look particularly comfortable so doesn't impress Liz though she's got balls of steel we finally got to see how that fight with Reggie's going though as we could have guessed he shows the bad guy it's not the size that counts but how you use it and Jay solves that [ __ ] right in the dick not sure if I killed him but he certainly isn't going to be doing any fighting after that one however on the way out Reggie is followed by four Jawas [Music] Oh way to go you had a [ __ ] quad barrel shotgun and you used a total of one time before just throwing it away the very least pass it off to ash or something now that all the fighting is over for the moment the heroes regroup and decide the best thing to do is to investigate the ball lockdoor pulling out of their assets somehow being embedded in flesh already makes the spheres relatively safe to handle they take the handy-dandy sphere pinning a hand to the wall in their hands and handily handle McCullar keyhole [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh my god it's hiding the same damn [ __ ] from the first movie could gone for a slightly more shocking revelation there you've got your clean white room the barrels full of Jawas and of course the two poles that create a portal to the tall man's world where the reanimated crushed dead are used as slaves now a problem is the second time around is hardly surprising but this time the toll man himself comes right off [ __ ] things up for our heroes really make me wonder why he's bothering with the Jawas at all in this movie I mean yeah you need slaves or his planet they're not really getting a much screen time at least until he throws Mike and Reggie through the portal revealing the same world we saw in the first movie which they started to escape while the tall man strapped slizz down to be injected with the yellow blood not realizing his machine has been sabotage with hydrochloric acid no bother before he managed to get that far Mike tells the guy just what he can do with his balls okay so the tall man doesn't control the balls or he does but so can Mike I guess I mean they have a knack for killing bad guys anyway so there's that but the ball doesn't kill the tall man only drill out his cranium there's more to him than meets the eye [Music] but like brain worms or the brain worm is him maybe I you know if I we've reached that part of the phantasm movie where it's best for me to just not question anything and list let it be as boring through his cerebrum did nothing Liz jabs him with a yellow blood tube which she doesn't know his full of acid but fortunately for her turns out to be full of acid thus the tow men horrifyingly melts away as he's disintegrated from the inside out this means Reggie can burn all [ __ ] place to the ground and they can escape into the night right under the spare her said alchemy stole on the way over providing a very convenient getaway for the gang except of course is the ending of a phantasm movie [Music] therefore nothing is safe nobody lives everybody dies and it's probably just a [ __ ] dream sequence anyway it's a dream huh when I stand corrected anyway that was phantasm too and it made more sense than the first movie in is that really a good thing yes i bitched and moaned about how little since the first phantasm made but while i scored that particular movie rather low that was more for the low quality acting in subplots that go nowhere this time around the movie is a lot more solid the acting much better all around now i mean it still pretty bad words way better the first and it's a lot easier to understand maybe too easy aside from the condescending nature of voiceovers here and there explaining the plot in case we can't figure it out from the more visual scenes there's a distinct lack of twist this time around not just for a phantasm movie either most of the things that come up that should be surprises are the same things that were revealed in the first movie this means we go through 90 minutes of movie without really getting any of our old questions answered or even getting any new questions to go on top and there are a few surprises and explanations here in there don't get me wrong but I don't think a feature film was needed to establish a head worm thing in the yellow blood transfusion machine at saga those two revelations what else was there that really added to the mythos it's still a fun enough horror movie though when you've got chainsaw duels and I'm not having quadruple barrel sawed-off shotgun it's hard to say they didn't try to make the movie entertaining but the somewhat simple setup keeps the film at a very average three balls of ever painful death out of five it's an okay movie that fans of horror should like well enough I'm just not sure with as simple as it is fans of phantasm will really like it so thank you all for watching - Decker shadow and remember always double check your beer cans for grenades those damn frat boys don't know winter quit [Music] [Music] okay Wow this is great

Channel: Decker Shado

Views: 113,014

Keywords: Decker Shado, phantasm, phantasm ii, phantasm 2, horror movie, review, movie review, review (media genre), angus scrimm, the tall man

Id: b7BF-I6xJFs

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2018