June 3, 2018
"Where do you think you're going boy? Death is no escape from me." And so the saga of Mike and the Tall Man continues in this fourth installment of the Phantasm movie series. While the movie received mixed reviews from fans and critics, this was my favorite film aside from the original one (of course). This film, more than the previous sequels, has the closest feel to the original. There is a much bigger focus on illusionary and dreamlike scenes in the film that really made Phantasm such a unique and beloved movie. Also, while the second and especially the third movies were venturing hard into the action and comedy genres, Phantasm IV is much more inline with the scifi horror of the original. This movie was a back to basic approach to the film saga and it left a deep impression on me.
The film follows immediately after the third movie with the Tall Man closing in on Mike and Reggie. Mike and Reggie get split up and Mike decides to attempts to find the Tall Man and discover his origins in a hope to stop him. He does this by traveling through dimensions and hanging out in Death Valley for a couple days. One dimension Mike enters takes him to the early 1800s where the Tall Man is a kind local physician named Jedediah who has just invented a steam punk-styled dimension gate. For some unexplained reason, the fortune teller from the first movie is there with him. Oh, and in Death Valley Mike realizes he can move rocks with his mind and builds a makeshift sphere out of car parts. Meanwhile, Reggie is trying to find and save Mike along with a beautiful blonde woman he picks up along the way. Finally, Jody keeps popping up to give advice to Mike and Reggie who begin to realize that Jody is evil and working for the Tall Man. In the end, they once again kill the Tall Man and he once again is immediately replaced by another version of the Tall Man. Hold your hats, it is going to take almost two decades before we'll get the fifth and final (?) chapter in the Phantasm story.
The illusory sequences give the film a confused dreamlike quality. Like the characters in the film, we do not know what is real and what is imaginary. The characters are also given up to a lot of ambiguity. Is Jody a bad guy? Probably. What about Mike? Maybe. What about Reggie? No, Reggie is the one pure characters. This film provides a number of answers about the Tall Man and his origin but while also creating a whole lot of new questions. We have Jedediah inventing the dimension gates, but we also have scenes during the Civil War where the Tall Man has already begun murdering others. Also, I thought he was an interdimensional alien? Or is he a southern physician? See what I mean? While it can be frustrating never being given sufficient answers, that is what makes the film series so compelling. I could watch them a dozen times and notice new things and come up with new theories. It is a blessing that Coscarelli believes in his fans enough to feel he doesn't have to spoon feed plot points to us.
Of all the sequels, this film had the lowest budget (Phantasm II was $3 million, Phantasm III was $2.5 million, and this one was only $650,000). This low budget forced Coscarelli to get creative and what he creates is really impressive. This is a great scene where Reggie fights a demon cop. The demon's makeup and costume are great. Reggie kills him with a shotgun while it is on the roof of a car and then it spews the yellow fluid into Reggie's mouth. Afterwards the demon is locked into the police care and Reggie blows up the car to which a burning demon stumbles out of the car and falls down dead. The demon is played by stuntman Bob Ivy (he'll play Bubba Ho-Tep in the film of the same name) who is known for flipping cars in Coscarelli films. Of course this scene has some incredible Reggie lines. Before shooting the shotgun Reggie tells the cop to "Blow me." Also, after the demon finally dies, he explains into the camera that "Some cops can be real assholes." So good!
There is another great scene where Reggie is sleeping next to the really pretty blonde woman he picked up alongside the road. We he looks over at her he notices her chest is making weird movements. After he unbuttons her blouse he sees that she was hiding spheres in each of her breasts. He then kills them with a sledge hammer. Reggie and sphere boobs are a winning combo.
There are a ton of other great scenes. Too many to get into (the removal of the sphere from Mike's head, Mike's homemade sphere in action, the car bomb). But what does need to be addressed is the incredible soundtrack featuring lyrics and music by Reggie Bannister himself (under the name Reggie B and the Jizz Wailing Yah Doggies). The music is similar to the 1980s hair bands with the phantasm theme slipped into it at certain points. Is there nothing that Reggie cannot do?
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