Director John Flynn’s 1977 film Rolling Thunder has been cited several times by Quentin Tarantino as a major influence (The Acuna Boys in Kill Bill are taken directly from this film). Here, he’s directing a script by Brian Owens and Andrew Kevin Walker (who would go on to write Seven, Hideaway and 8mm).
Michael Brower (Edward Furlong) lives alone in a mansion that belongs to his absent father. Ever since a car crash, his father has disappeared from his life, he’s lost his mother and he has a permanent leg injury. He’s pretty much anyone who would rent this movie — he loves horror films and longs for his next-door neighbor Kimberly.
He has only one friend, Kyle, who introduces him to Brainscan, a new video game that’s hosted by the Trickster (stage actor T. Ryder Smith, who pretty much makes this movie watchable), an evil entity that encourages players to live out their most murderous impulses. Michael learns that anyone that is killed in the game also dies in the real world when one of his virtual victims shows up dead. And then he kills his best friend — which he doesn’t remember — as the game takes over his brain.
Soon, Detective Hayden (Frank Langella, the other reason this movie is watchable) is on the case and the Trickster is tormenting him everywhere he goes and even demands that he kill Kimberly. , who refuses to leave his home. Trickster ultimately instructs him to kill Kimberly.
This movie ends — like most 1990’s virtual reality films — with a series of fakeouts to make you wonder what’s real and what’s inside the video game world. Also: if you’re into late 1990’s nu metal, good news. There’s some Primus, some White Zombie and some Pitchshifter, amongst others.
Flynn was no fan of Edward Furlong. He said, “Eddie Furlong was a 15-year-old kid who couldn’t act. You had to slap him awake every morning. I don’t want to get into knocking people, but I was not a big Eddie Furlong fan.”
You can watch Brainscan on Mill Creek’s new Sci-Fi Double Feature blu ray disc, along with Mindwarp.
DISCLAIMER: We were sent this movie by Mill Creek, but that has no impact on our review.
Wings Hauser and Linda Blair met on the set of Bedroom Eyes II in 1989 and were a couple until 1994. Along the way, they made this film, which is also known as Gang Boys. Hauser co-wrote and directed this movie, which depicts the battles between a married couple, their gay son and an army of skinheads out to take over Los Angeles.
Joe and Maggie Joiner (Hauser and Blair) separated after he started drinking to deal with his life as a police officer. He’s since moved to Mexico so he can drink himself to death while she becomes a singer in bars. However, when they’re gay son is beaten by Nazi skinheads, she has to get him off the alcohol, get his ass into shape and get some revenge.
This movie is absolutely insane, like American History X as made by stars who have only been in exploitation movies for the last decade — which is exactly what it is. Stranger still, the main skinhead Bentz is played by Wings’ son Cole, which you should remember when the scene comes where the skins beat the night train out of a drunken Joe and then urinate all over him.
Somehow, this movie has more montages than all of the 1980’s put together, which range from drunken nightmares of bloody Nazi symbols and Wings’ daughter Cali Lili as an angel to a Rocky get back in shape and run up the mountain moment to nu metal screaming flashes of light as the Nazi kids hang out in their headquarters — which is surprisingly rad — and then, of course, Wings and Linda play a game of hide the Nazi. You know what I mean — loading the clown into the cannon. Taking grandma to Applebee’s. I could go on.
Somehow, a movie this sleazy also features musical numbers from both of its leads, as well as the son being berated by his father for his lifestyle in language that was common in 1994 and woefully insane in 2019. That kid’s name in the movie? Marjoe Joiner, which is a fabulous name I’ll be using in restaurants for years to come (I often check in as George Eastman or Bruno Mattei).
Beano also shows up. Yes, the guy who played Luigi Pappalardo from Deathrow Gameshow. When I saw his name come up in the credits, I knew instantly who he was, yet can tell you nothing about my extended family.
At the end of all this, Wings and Linda gather everyone on Hollywood Boulevard that the skins screwed with, unite the Crips and Bloods, then attack them in their lair in a scene that feels trapped on a soundstage, kind of like Streets of Fire, but it’s Linda Blair, Wings Hauser, their gay son and street gangs beating up Wings Hauser’s real-life son and a room full of fake Nazis.
Basically, this is why I watch movies. The ending even teases me with a sequel that I know I’m never going to get. 9 billion stars out of 5. Alert the Academy.
Sorceress is also known as Tempress II, but I’ve never seen the first one. I did seek this one out because somehow, both Linda Blair and Julie Strain are in the same film, which pretty much feels like the team I’ve been missing all my life. It’s directed by Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall, Sorceress— and yes, he wrote another movie with the same title — and Deathstalker II), so you know it’ll be filled with plenty of feminism and nuance.
Eddie Albert’s son is here. So are the aforementioned Strain and Blair, who never appear in a scene together. Look out, Blacula himself appears — William Marshall. And oh hey — Michael Parks!
Strain plays Erica, a witch who is abusing her powers to influence her husband Larry and his colleagues at a law firm. She’s worried that he’s been seduced by his ex-girlfriend Carol, so everything turns into sex dreams that finally become deadly.
Also, somewhere in the middle of all these sex scenes, Amelia (Blair) senses that witchcraft is behind the crippling of her husband Howard (Albert) in an automobile accident. It’s time for revenge!
There are lots of skyclad witches here, to turn a phrase. This whole thing was shot by Gary Graver, who worked with Orson Welles for most of his life, so it looks way better than it should. I mean, if you’re going to do possessed women, riffs on Vertigo and threeways along with voodoo rituals, make it look like art.
Want to see it for yourself? Synapse has an uncensored blu ray so you can truly appreciate all of Ms. Strain.
Canada may seem like our polite neighbor to the north, but they really export some amazingly bonkers movies. Under the surface, they’re boiling with films that challenge convention and embrace the weird. Take this movie, which starts with its 12-year-old antagonist, paperboy Johnny McFarley smothering an old woman with a plastic bag.
After that stunning open, we meet Melissa (Alexandra Paul, the virgin Connie Swail from Dragnet), a teacher who returns home to learn that her mother — yep, the old woman — is dead. She takes her daughter Cammie home with her for the funeral, where Johnny is way too excited to see her. He ingratiates himself into the funeral proceedings and then hides a baby monitor in a vent so he can keep up on what Melissa is doing. Yep. Our paperboy is in love.
What he can’t deal with is the fact that she has a boyfriend, Brian (William Katt). But he’s willing to do whatever it takes to win her over, from turning busybodies into paraplegics to killing his own father with a golf putter and giving another old lady a heart attack by faking the death of her dog. He even smacks Brian with a baseball bat and leaves him inside a burning boat.
Yes, this is a child who goes from sweet and approachable to pure menace in seconds. How dare you go on a date when he wanted to make you some barbecue, Melissa!
This is a sort of remake of 1992’s Mikey by way of another Canadian movie where all someone wants is a happy family, 1987’s The Stepfather.
Sadly, this is a movie that’s near impossible to find, as it’s never been released on DVD. You can, however, find it at the VHSPS.
BONUS: You can listen to us discuss this movie on our podcast.
This is the second of the L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies films that were directed by Drew Sidaris, with help from his father and mother in production. This time, there’s a big scientific convention in Dallas, but the scientists in charge of a sophisticated, state-of-the-art, satellite weapon-tracking system are being killed off.
Bruce Penhall is Chris Cannon again with Mark Barriere returning as Mark Austin. Julie Strain — Black Widow — and Rodrigo Obregon — Antonio Morales — are also back as the bad guys. Samantha Phillips joins the team as Samantha Maxx. You may remember her as Alchemy in Phantasm 2. Plus, there’s also Julie K. Smith (one of four girls to do both Playboy and Penthouse and yes, I can tell you that Alexandria Karlsen, Linn Thomas and Victoria Zdrok are the others) as Cobra, Wendy Hamilton as Scorpion (December 1991 Playboy Playmate of the Month) and Gerald Okamura as Fu.
The International World Arms Removal project is a satellite system which has the ability to detect any weapons, no matter their size and even under the most difficult weather conditions. Soon, Black Widow and her troops are trying to take out all of the scientists, who are under the protection of Agent Maxx.
This is the only film in the Sidaris universe where the agents work for I/WAR (International/World Arms Removal), but late in the film, it’s revealed that Strain’s character works for L.E.T.H.A.L.
Look, any movie that starts with Julie Strain tying a dude up and riding him reverse cowgirl until she kills him isn’t going to be all bad. This one has more actual sex scenes than the films of the elder Sidaris, but perhaps that’s what people wanted as we moved into the 1990’s.
Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich were the dynamic duo of the 1990’s, between blockbusters like Universal Soldier, Godzilla and Independence Day. They always envisioned Stargate as being part one of a trilogy, but the other two films have never been made. It’s a total popcorn film, unafraid of its own silliness, a movie that Roger Ebert selected as one of his least favorite movies of all time.
Daniel Jackson (James Spader playing a good guy, which is way out of character) is a linguist and Egyptologist who is invited by Catherine Langford (Viveca Lindfors, A Bell from Hell, Creepshow) to help translate the Giza cover stones that her father found in 1928. Soon, he’s taken to an Air Force base where Special Operations Colonel Jack O’Neil (Kurt Russell!) oversees the project.
Daniel is able to translate the hieroglyphs in no time at all, showing how they’re really coordinates for a stargate. They use his translations to open the gate, which creates a gateway to Abydos, a planet across the galaxy where Ra (Jaye Davison from The Crying Game) and his soldiers rule a human-like race of people. Ra has enslaved these humans, forcing them to mine resources for him.
Meanwhile, the army troops that have passed through the gate meet up with a tribe led by Kasuf, who presents Daniel with the gift of his daughter Sha’uri. The commander becomes friends with Skaara, as he reminds him of his son who accidentally shot himself with the soldier’s service weapon. Soon, they come into conflict with Ra, who has set himself up as a god, and his soldiers like Anubis and Horus (a very early role for Djimon Hounsou). Of course, goodness wins out and the humans — other than Spader — all return home.
Alexis Cruz (Skaara) and Erick Avari (Kasuf) would go on to reprise their roles in the TV series, Stargate SG-1. If you have Comet TV, there are all manner of Stargate spin-offs to watch, like Stargate Universe and Stargate Atlantis.
Stargate is one of those big dumb 90’s movies they just don’t make these days. It’s packed with effects, costumes and huge crowds of people (and some mannequins, which were cheaper than extras). None of it really makes any sense, but it has plenty of explosions and fight scenes, which is all you really need.
A year ago, I posted about Double Dragon on this site. What could bring me to talk about it all over again? Well, the maniacs at the MVD Rewind collection have put out a blu ray release of this movie that has the kind of care that you’d expect from a Criterion Collection film. But it’s for Double Dragon.
Kids of today — let me blow your mind. You may get movies based on board games, like Battleship and Ouija — but we had movies based on video games. Double Dragon took its inspiration from the arcade beat ’em up — indeed, producer Don Murphy talks about it on the bonus feature included in this collection — but it goes way, way, way out there after that.
In the year 2007, all that’s left of LA is New Angeles. The city has been decimated by earthquakes and tidal waves. No one goes out after dark, thanks to the gang activity. And 2000 years ago, a magical medallion called the Double Dragon (everyone cheer when the name of the movie gets said out loud) was split into two pieces.
Now, crime lord Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick, giving what he referred to as a “pretty extreme performance”) already has half of the Double Dragon. Now, he’s coming after Billy and Jimmy Lee (Scott Wolf, the one who is funnier than he fights and Mark Dacascos, who does the opposite) to get what’s his.
Too bad they’re on the rum from gang members, trying to beat the citywide curfew. Luckily, they save their mother Satori with some help from a vigilante gang called the Power Corps and their leader, Marian, who is played by Alyssa Milano. For some reason, she has an outfit on that can best be described as short jean shorts with stockings and a baby doll t-shirt. She also has super short platinum hair. None of the above are complaints.
One of the Mohawk gang members, Abobo, tries to tell Shunko he saw the medallion and is mutated for his blunder. This will not be the strangest thing in a movie packed with gangs made up of newspaper boys and mailmen falling into neon green pools of water while fistfighting.
Of course, the boys’ mom sacrifices herself — moms always have to die in the 1990’s hero’s journey — and they join Marian in battling Shuko’s forces. Jimmy gets kidnapped and has to fight his brother, Linda Lash shows up and uses a whip on everyone, then Vanna White, George Hamilton and Andy Dick read the news. Literally, this is a movie that continually gets stranger and stranger and you just accept it.
The real joy here is the love and care that was put into this set. You get the movie on DVD and blu, as well as a feature-length documentary called “The Making of Double Dragon,” which has everyone from stars Scott Wolf and Marc Dacascos to writers Peter Gould & Michael Davis and producer Don Murphy. Even better, the “Don Murphy: Portrait of a Producer” doc expands on how Murphy took so many properties to the screen, including Natural Born Killers, the Transformers films and two Alan Moore films, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell. He’s exceedingly honest in his appraisal of the films he’s worked on, as well as their merits — or lack thereof.
Plus, you get older making of and behind the scenes features, storyboards, press photos, trailers from TV, theaters and VHS, the pilot to the cartoon series and a poster. MVD has really been bringing it with their packaging, too. This one looks exactly like an old VHS rental tape, complete with stickers that say “Be Kind – Rewind.”
This still isn’t my favorite movie of all time, but my score has gone up somewhat since last year. That said, if you love it — or just love great physical media packaging for movies — you can’t go wrong with this purchase!
When I was 16 years old, I probably watched Phantasm II every single day. Honestly, I was completely obsessed with the film and its gliding metal spheres that promised destruction every time they whizzed past the screen. At that stage of my life, I hated where I was and couldn’t wait to be where I was going. Its nihilistic tone and brutal violence suited me just fine. In fact, when I finally watched the original film, I found it silly and stupid by comparison.
Now that I’m in my 40’s, I can see how totally stupid sixteen year old me was.
Phantasm (1979)
Directed, written, photographed, and edited by auteur Don Coscarelli, the original Phantasm makes much more sense if viewed less as a linear film and more as a collection of imagery, a “complete movie” to use the words of Fulci.
However, if we were to look at the basics of the story, they’d concern the evil Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), an undertaker who comes from a red dimension where he transforms dead people into dwarf zombies and commands an army of flying metal spheres. He’s obsessed with a young boy named Mike (Michael Baldwin), who is trying to convince his brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) and friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) that their town is being taken over.
Sure. It’s kind of about that. It’s also a surrealistic rumination on how teenagers see death and the worry that they won’t be there for those they love. Or worse, that those they love won’t be there for them.
This is the kind of movie that has a villain who can also become a woman, the Lady in Lavender, who transforms back into the Tall Man at the moment the men orgasm. There’s some strange commentary at play here, right? It also has fortune tellers who tell you that fear is the killer, characters dying and coming back and characters that lived actually dying and chopped off fingers filled with yellow blood being transformed into winged monsters that can only be stopped by garbage disposals. And it’s also the kind of film that can completely stop the narrative for everyone to play “Sitting Here at Midnight.”
For all the narrative and psychological questions that Phantasm raises, I often wonder: exactly what kind of ice cream man wears a leather vest over his uniform?
This initial offering also introduces a trope that will endure for the rest of the series: at the end, when it seems like everything is making sense,nothing does and the villains end up exploding out of a mirror or from hiding, dragging our heroes back into the void.
I’ve watched Phantasm at least once a year since my first viewing and each time I watch it, I am struck by its strange power. Unlike so many of today’s independent movies, it looks and feels like a big budget film, except it’s been beamed to Earth from another dimension.
Phantasm is available on Shudder along with commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.
Phantasm II (1988)
Liz Reynolds is a young woman who has a psychic bond with Mike, the hero of the first film, as well as the Tall Man. She finds them in her nightmares, where she begs for Mike to save her before her grandfather dies and is taken away by the villain.
We then see how Mike escaped the end of the last film — Reggie saved him by blowing up the house, but our hero has been institutionalized from seven years. He then must convince Reggie that the Tall Man really exists. He learns when the Tall Man blows up his entire family (yes, this movie has two exploding houses within minutes of one another).
It’s time for a road trip — not the last they will take — that takes them to Périgord, Oregon. Liz’s grandfather dies and her sister Jeri disappears. The priest who does the funeral knows all about the Tall Man, so he desecrates the body which rises anyway.
On their way to Périgord, Reggie picks up a hitchhiker named Alchemy who looks like a ghost they saw earlier. This is where you learn the lessons that Reggie will never learn for the rest of the series: never pick up hitchhikers, never sleep with strange women and every girl who will actually have sex with you is really the Tall Man.
Regardless, Liz arrives at the mortuary where she learns that her grandmother is now one of the Tall Man’s lurkers (she was taken by her grandfather, who we can also assume is part of the Tall Man’s crew). The priest gets killed by a ball, which is always nice. And then one of the saddest moments in the Phantasm series happens: the Tall Man blows up Reggie’s Hemicuda.
What follows are plenty of guns (a quad-barrelled shotgun!), a chainsaw battle, more spheres, the portal to the Red Dimension and the Tall Man pumped full of embalming fluid, which causes him to melt all over the place.
Alchemy has taken a hearse, but she’s really the Tall Man, killing Reggie (again, but of course, not really) and Mike and Liz convinced they’re trapped in a dream. The Tall Man utters the best line of the movie: “No, it’s not!” before pulling them through the back window.
While the lowest budget Universal film of the 1980’s, they also exerted a lot of control over the film. The, well, phantasmagorical style of the first movie was asked to be toned down with a more linear plotline and character voiceovers. Honestly, any time you hear a voiceover in a film, you should read that as a note from the producers saying, “No one will understand this if we don’t spell it out to them.”
Plus, no dreams were allowed in the final cut and a female romantic lead was created for Mike. And most distressing, Universal wanted to recast both leads but allowed A. Michael Baldwin and Reggie Bannister (neither of them had acted in the nine years in between the films, with Reggie actually working at a funeral home as an embalmer) to audition for the roles they originated. Big of them. Coscarelli was allowed to keep one of them in a Sophie’s Choice and went with Bannister, casting James Le Gros in Baldwin’s place. Seriously, were the Universal executives supervillains? That’s some crazy thinking there.
Actually, the Tall Man has plenty of great lines here, like “You think that when you die you go to Heaven… you come to us!” This movie pretty much dominated my teenage years and nothing that followed it would ever top it. But hey — they took three chances trying.
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
Universal Studios was going to put this out in theaters before differences with Coscarelli, yet the direct to video release of this film was in the top 100 rentals of that year — ah, the magic days when video rental could help a movie succeed!
Right after the end of the last film, the Tall Man comes back from the Red Dimension just as the hearse with Liz and Mike in it explodes. Reggie finds that Liz is dead and saves Mike from the Tall Man by threatening to set off a grenade. The Tall Man just laughs and says that he will come from Mike when he’s well again. This takes two years of hospital time, as he wakes up after a dream with his brother Jody and the Tall Men in it. The minute he wakes up, his nurse turns into a demon with a ball inside her skull.
Soon enough, the Tall Man is back, transforming Jody into a sphere and taking Mike with him, sending Reggie on a road trip. He ends up in a small town where three gangsters — somehow this movie becomes The People Under the Stairs for a bit — throw him into the trunk of his car but are thwarted by Tim, a young kid who has been fighting the forces of the Tall Man.
Of note, Tim’s house is the same house from House!
Much like how Princess from The Walking Dead comic has to be directly influenced by Alma from Warriors of the Wasteland, the way Carl Grimes dresses seems like too much of a coincidence when we see Tim in the film.
Reggie and Tim make their way to a mausoleum where they team up with Rocky, a tough woman who is good with nunchakus. They follow a whole bunch of hearses to the Tall Man’s base, where they rescue Mike and use the portal to cut off the Tall Man’s hands, which of course become monsters.
Mike then talks to his brother who is now a ball and learns that the Tall Man is making an army to conquer every other dimension, using human brains inside his spheres and shrunken down dead people as his slaves. “There are thousands of them!” yells Mike as the Looters wheel in Tim, who is saved at the last minute by Jody, still a metal ball. Whew!
Reggie and Rocky arrive just in time to shoot the Tall Man with a spear and liquid nitrogen just as a gold ball emerges from his head. Reggie destroys that as everyone learns that Mike also has a gold ball inside his head that turns his eyes silver. He warns Reggie to stay away from him and leaves with his brother, still a ball.
Rocky leaves just as Reggie is pinned to the wall by a ton of spheres. Just as Tim tries to save him, the Tall Man comes back to say, “It’s never over!” and pulls Tim through a window.
There was an alternate ending filmed where Reggie and Tim travel to Alaska, where they bury the Tall Man’s gold sphere in the ice and leave a plaque over it that says “Here Lies The Tall Man – R.I.P.” Reggie then exclaims, “Now, all we have to worry about is global warming” as they leave.
As a rule, the less money the Phantasm films have in the budget, the better they generally are. This one is considered the roughest by fans as it deviates so much from the storyline. I’d argue that these films have no real storyline and are all over the place, necessitating the use of stimulants any time you try and watch them.
You can watch this on Shudder with Joe Bob Briggs commentary.
Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998)
This one opens right where the last one ended, with Mike leaving town and Reggie trapped. The Tall Man lets him go to play one last game while the ball form of Jody becomes human long enough to tell Reggie that he has to search for Mike.
Reggie saves a woman named Jennifer from some of the Tall Man’s soldiers and just when it seems like our ice cream dude is finally about to get lucky, her breasts rip apart to reveal two silver balls — yes, really this happens — before Reggie uses a sledgehammer and his tuning form to stop her.
Mike has flashbacks to his younger days — using footage shot during the original Phantasm that was never used — to try and determine who the tall man is. He tries to kill himself, only to be stopped by the Tall Man. He escapes through a gateway where he meets a kindly old man named Jebediah Morningside, who looks exactly like the Tall Man (the old lady on the porch is supposed to be the fortune teller from Phantasm).
Then, Mike learns that he can move things with his brain. Jody finds him just in time to escape the Tall Man again.
Reggie arrives in Death Valley, fighting off some dwarves as Mike and Jody reappear, yet Mike tells him not to trust Jody. Mike and Jody then go through another gate back to Jebediah’s house, where they learn how he created the first interdimensional gate and became the Tall Man, who chases them back to another cemetery where Jody turns on his brother. Mike kills his brother with a sphere he built out of car parts and runs from the Tall Man.
If at this point your head is spinning from reading this, imagine watching it. This installment tries hard to keep the crazy narrative shifts from the beginning, constantly shifting the questions when you think you have all the answers.
Mike and Reggie use the car sphere and the hearse’s motor, now an interdimensional bomb, to destroy the Tall Man, who of course emerges seconds later from the gate, unharmed. He reveals that he is one of many as he removes the gold sphere from Mike head and leaves. Reggie arms himself and jumps through the gate, just as Mike has a memory of them riding in his ice cream truck together.
This installment’s budget was minuscule when compared to the last two Phantasm films. In fact, if you look at inflation, it was shot on a lower budget than the original. That’s why so many scenes are set in the desert. And the film wasn’t afraid to call in some favors, like the swarm of spheres, which was created by fans and KNB cutting Coscarelli a break on the cost of their effects.
Sadly, this movie could have been even bigger. Roger Avery, who co-wrote Pulp Fiction as well as Silent Hill, is a super fan of the Phantasm Series and suggested an epic ending called Phantasm 1999 A.D. This post-apocalyptic film would also star Bruce Campbell but cost way too much to get made in the pre-Kickstarter world.
Here’s the synopsis from IMDB, which will make you crestfallen that we never got this sequel: “The year is 2012 and there are only three U.S. states left. Between New York and California is the wasteland known as the Plague Zone. Unfortunately, the evil Tall Man controls that area. Since many people are dead, the Tall Man is able to make thousands of dwarf slaves for his planet daily in the Mormon Mausoleum. Besides him, the other residents are “baggers,” human-like creatures that are infected by the Tall Man’s blood, the dwarves, and, of course, the silver spheres, all trying to break out of the barrier that contains them and into the real world. A group of hi-tech troops are sent in to destroy the red dimension where the Tall Man gets his power. Reggie follows so he can find Mike after a series of nightmares he had. Will they be able to finally destroy the Tall Man for good?”
There’s one awesome scene in this one, where the Tall Man chases Mike down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is completely deserted, an effect achieved by shooting it on Thanksgiving morning.
Oh yeah — where is Tim? The kid who ended up being a main character in the last film was to have been eaten by the dwarves in this one, but the budget kept that from being filmed.
You can also watch this one with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder.
Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
Directed by David Hartman and produced by Coscarelli, this final sequel was done in secret and announced a few months before it was released. It’s the final word — one imagines — in the series, as it ends at least Reggie’s story. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s hard to tell with Phantasm.
In development since 2004, this one starts with Reggie still hunting the Tall Man. Or perhaps he’s suffering from dementia in an assisted living facility. Or perhaps he’s at a farm where a potential love interest and everyone but him get killed by the Tall Man’s spheres. Or maybe he’s in a hospital in the 1860’s and there to die alongside Jebediah before he became the Tall Man or maybe even in a reality where he never becomes the Tall Man. And oh yeah, the Lady in Lavender shows up again.
The Tall Man then meets Reggie in 1979, where he tells him everything that will happen and offers to save his family if he never gets involved. He replies that he’d rather be loyal to his friends Mike and Jody.
My favorite part of this one is the gigantic spheres that are battling whole cities as Mike leads a hi-tech future squad (shades of the Avery script) against the Tall Man’s forces. Reggie has been in a coma for ten years (shades of Mike in Phantasm II) and now, the Tall Man has taken over the world.
The ending is up for debate: does Reggie die in the real world? Is that a dream? Is the reality where Reggie, Mike and Jody — joined by heroic dwarf Chunk and the surprise return of Rocky from Phantasm III — continue to fight the Tall Man’s gigantic spheres the truth? Are all of them?
As Reggie himself said when he was on with Joe Bob for the Shudder marathon, “Well, it’s Phantasm.” Eventually you have to stop asking questions and just enjoy. I guess it’s just nice to see everyone together again, no matter if the last film doesn’t live up to what it could be.
You can — you guessed it — check this one out on Shudder with Joe Bob Briggs.
In case you didn’t know, the Star Wars character Captain Phasma was named for this movie and Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams is such a big fan of the film he personally oversaw the new cleaned up version of the original film.
So many movies can cite Phantasm as an influence — Poltergeist 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street, One Dark Night and the TV series Supernatural has its protagonists drive around in a black muscle car…kind of just like Phantasm.
Its influence can also be felt in the world of metal, as Tormentor covered the theme, and the line “The funeral is about to begin, sir” has been sampled by the bands Splatterhouse, Marduk and Mortician. You can also hear the band Entombed play the theme at the end of their song “Left Hand Path.”
Someday, someone is going to get the idea to make an entirely new Phantasm. But it won’t be so strange and it won’t be so special. Until that time comes, we’ll always have five movies — one awesome, a few ok and a few stinkers that I still love — to enjoy. And remember: “If this one doesn’t scare you, you’re already dead!”
You think Paul Kersey has learned his lesson about love and loss? No way, pal. Now back in New York City in the witness protection program and going by Paul Stewart, he’s keeping a low profile by going to fashion shows with his super hot girlfriend (Lesley-Anne Down) who also has a young daughter named Chelsea who is surely doomed. Come on, everyone. We’ve made it this far. We may as well watch Death Wish 5: The Face of Death.
It turns out that Olivia has been paying protection money to her evil mobster ex-husband Tommy O’Shea, who is Michael Parks! Paul confronts the guy at the fashion show, but one of the villain’s goons shows him his revolver. He tries to do the right thing and brings in a District Attorney.
Paul again proves he has no short or long-term memory by proposing to Olivia, who doesn’t understand what we all have accepted: God hates Paul Kersey like He has never hated another of His creations. Excusing herself to the powder room to piddle in absolute joy after being asked to be the life partner of a man who has personally murdered thousands of scumwads, one of Tommy’s men named Flakes (Robert Joy, Lizard from The Hills Have Eyes and, as my wife would exclaim loudly, Jim from Desperately Seeking Susan) shoves her face so hard into a mirror that she’s disfigured for life. Even surgery won’t fix her face. Such is the life of a woman who gets involved with Paul Kersey.
After meeting two cops, Mickey King (Windom Earle from Twin Peaks!) and Janice Omori, the female cop dies in the very next scene. She must have gotten a little too close to Paul. In the hospital, King tells Kersey not to go back to his old ways. King tells him that he’s been on this case for 16 years. “16 years? That’s a long time to be failing,” replies Kersey.
Even after getting out of the hospital, Olivia still has to deal with the life she’s chosen as more henchmen come after Paul, shooting her in the back and finally ending her suffering. Well, it turns out that Tommy runs all of the police and has taken his daughter back, so Paul goes full on 007 by killing one goon with poisoned canoli and another with a remote-controlled soccer ball! At this point, this film has gone from boring to right where I want it to be.
What follows is exactly what we want to see: a slasher movie with the righteous Paul going old man nutzoid on every crook there is left, shooting them into sewing machines, slashing their faces with broken bottles and shotgun blasting them into acid baths. At the end, he walks away with his dead fiancee’s daughter, yelling to the cop who couldn’t keep up, “Hey Lieutenant, if you need any help, give me a call.”
After the last three movies coming from Cannon Films, which was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, this one comes from Menahem Golan’s new 21st Century Film Corporation. They were having trouble making money and figured that a new Death Wish was going to be a sure-fire hit. Incredibly, for reasons no one is sure about, Bronson and Golan weren’t speaking during the filming, so they’d only communicate through Allan A. Goldstein.
Sadly, the film failed at the box office (but it did fine on home video). Golan planned to continue the film series without Bronson (!) and was planing Death Wish 6: The New Vigilante before 21st Century Film Corporation went bankrupt. This would be Bronson’s last theatrical film, as he was 71 years old as this was being filmed.
You can watch this with your Amazon Prime subscription.
Where could a Nightmare on Elm Street go after five movies, a TV series and numerous appearances in pop culture? Freddy had gone from a horrifying villain to somehow, the hero of the series. Sure, this had happened to Godzilla and Gamera, but those monsters were always friends of children, not murderers of them.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare – 1994
Originally, this film was going to be A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: The Ascension, but Wes Craven had the goal of creating a more intelligent meditation on the effects of horror on those who created it. He also wanted to bring Freddy closer to what he envisioned him as being in the original film, both in look and how he behaves.
Heather Langenkamp, yes played by Heather Langenkamp, played Nancy Thompson in the first and third movies in the Elm Street movies, but now she keeps dreaming that Freddy is coming for her, her husband Chase and her son Dylan (Miko Hughes, Gage from Pet Semetary). She awakens to an earthquake tearing through her house and a prank caller who continually keeps phoning in Freddy’s nursery rhyme.
After a talk show appearance with an in-costume Robert Englund, Heather learns that New Line Cinema wants her to work on a new Elm Street film that her husband has already been doing effects for. And when she arrives home, her son is watching the first film, screaming at her when she tries to turn it off. She calls her husband to help and as he rushes home, he falls asleep at the wheel and is killed by Freddy.
At the funeral, she has another vision of Freddy and John Saxon — you better believe I stood on my couch and cheered — tells her that she needs help. Dylan refuses to sleep and becomes obsessed with Krueger, which leads to her visiting series creator Wes Craven, played by, you knew it, Wes Craven.
Craven explains that Freddy has always been alive, a supernatural creature that attached itself to the films and was freed when Freddy died for the last time in the fifth film (perhaps it was just that he was upset that that one is so bad). Englund knows even more, but soon disappears from all contact.
After an aftershock to the earthquake, Heather takes Dylan to the hospital, where the doctor on call believes that he’s being abused. While police have her under custody, Freddy appears and kills the babysitter much like the first kill in the first film.
Dylan sleepwalks across a crowded freeway with Nancy in pursuit as the film grows more nightmarish — yes, I know that was super literal. After being injured saving him, Heather returns home, only to learn that John Saxon has now become her/Nancy’s father Don Thompson. She decides to embrace her old role and Freddy emerges into reality, taking her son into her world.
Working together, Dylan and Heather/Nancy shove Freddy into an oven — echoing how the parents of Elm Street stopped him in the original story — murdering him. They awake in bed, with a copy of the film’s script close behind. There’s a note from Craven, thanking her for defeating Freddy and playing Nancy one last time. Now, she has jailed the demon into the film’s world all over again. Dylan asks if it’s just a story and Heather says that yes, it has all just been a story. Yet that’s up to debate, as In the ending credits, Freddy Krueger is listed as playing himself.
If the end result is similar to Fulci’s A Cat in the Brain, this was not lost on the Italian godfather of gore (and emperor of eviscerated eyeballs). In his lone U.S. convention appearance (at the January 1996 Fangoria Horror Convention in New York City), Fulci would claim that New Nightmare rips off his film.
This movie was well-received by critics, but where can you go with Freddy Krueger? Simple. You make him battle someone else. 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason would pit the two horror icons against each other and the results were that each would have to reboot afterward. You can read our thoughts on this film from last year’s Friday the 13th Watch the Series post right here.
A Nightmare on Elm Street – 2010
Samuel Bayer directed the Nirvana video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” amongst literally hundreds of other videos and commercials. For his first movie, he was selected to remake the first Elm Street, a task that had to feel herculean.
Produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes team, the goal was to do what they had done for their Friday the 13th remake: take the best parts of each film and make one new story. However, they soon learned that going back to the first film was really the only way to go. They also made Krueger an actual child molester and not a killer, as well as making him meaner, with a look more like an actual burn victim.
Robert Englund endorsed the film (and Jackie Earle Haley playing Freddy), but Craven was not as kind, perhaps because he wasn’t consulted before the movie was made.
Kris Fowles (Katie Cassidy, Black Canary on TV’s Arrow) meets her friend Dean (Kellan Lutz, Twilight) at the Springwood Diner, but soon, Dean is asleep and dreaming of Freddy Krueger, who slices his throat. In our reality, Dean cuts his own throat as waitress Nancy (Rooney Mara, the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, who hated being in this movie so much that she nearly stopped acting) watches.
The children of Elm Street soon learn that they all went to pre-school together, where they were abused by — you guessed it — Freddy Krueger. Now, they’re all dreaming of the burned killing machine. Kris is soon killed by him, with her murder blamed on her ex-boyfriend Jesse (Thomas Dekker, John Connor from the Fox Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show, who called this film a horrible mess). Of course, he’s soon dead in his jail cell.
Quentin (Kyle Gallner, American Sniper) and Nancy begin investigating and soon learn that once the parents of Elm Street learned that Krueger was molesting their children, they hunted him down and burned him alive. What follows is pretty much the same tale as the original, with Freddy being pulled into our world and a similar shock twist ending.
I really have no idea who this movie is for. You can just go watch the original to see a much better, more imaginative film. Bayer has a great visual style — he came up in directing with Bay and David Fincher — but between the CGI makeup for Freddy, the portrayal of him and the general been there, done that nature of this film, I was bored throughout. Then again, I realize that millennials don’t have as many DVDs as me or any interest in watching a movie from the early 80’s.
Platinum Dunes producer Brad Fuller has been quoted as saying that while the film was a financial success, the backlash didn’t stop for two years. The company wouldn’t make another movie until 2013’s The Purge and hasn’t remade a horror movie since.
While a talented actor, I just don’t like Haley in the Freddy role. Maybe its because he has referred to the original as, “The worst movie ever.” Or perhaps that’s just sour grape, as there’s a rumor that Johnny Depp tagged along when Haley auditioned for the original and got the part while his friend didn’t.
Want more Elm Street?
2011’s I Am Nancy explores Heather Langenkamp’s feelings about starring in the films and her role in the series.
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street will be out later this year and is all about Mark Patton’s journey in Hollywood after making the second Elm Street. It looks really interesting and you can find the official site here.
Nightmares in the Makeup Chair is another upcoming film that is all about the process that it took to transform Robert Englund into Freddy every single day of filming. You can learn more here.
Beyond the Marvel comics we covered, Freddy has also appeared in comics from Innovation Comics, Trident Comics, Avatar Press and WildStorm Comics. There was also a crossover comic with Dynamite Entertainment that was all about Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, which puts a dream movie into the hands of eager readers.
If you love Mortal Kombat, good news. You can play as Freddy in the 2011 edition of the game and its Mortal Kombat X mobile game. While he looks like the 2010 version of the character, that’s really Robert Englund providing his voice.
Freddy is also available for the slashertastic game Dead by Daylight (you can also play as Michael Myers, Leatherface and the Pig from Saw), which also came with a playable version of Quentin Smith from the 2010 film.
I almost forgot…Freddy also chased politicians on DC Follies…
He also was on The Goldbergs last week!
Thanks for joining us on our voyage through Elm Street! Do you have a favorite? Did we miss something? Let us know in the comments!
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