The tagline for this movie is great. If you can't see the poster, the tagline says: "We tried to warn you. If you don't get it this time, we're gonna have to drill it into your head!" I remember that tagline and how much I loved it way before I was conscious that I wanted to see the movie. The tagline refers, of course, to the evil Tall Man's deadly floating silver sphere that targets victims and then drills into their heads. I know that kind of sounds stupid, but trust me, it looks really cool in the context of the movie. I'm going to try and check out all the Phantasm sequels today, so here we go with the third one.
The third movie picks up right after the second left off, only instead of being years later, it starts the same night the second movie ended, with the Tall Man attacking Mike and Reggie and crashing their car and trying to kill them once and for all. As the movie goes on, we learn more about the Tall Man and the mysterious world he comes from. I doubt we'll learn how to stop him for good though, since there's two more movies after this one. I guess we'll see.
Sequels have a reputation for being much worse than the original movies, but the second Phantasm was great, maybe even better than the first. This one piles on more gore than the first two, or at least shows the gore right away without waiting like the first two movies did. I guess they figured there was no need to beat around the bush since this was the third movie in the series. Plus this one is a lot more of a comedy than the first two, which means it has a lot of stupid stuff that's supposed to be funny. Three criminals who remind me of the three stooges (except not as funny) are a highlight (or perhaps a lowlight). And when did Reggie decide he's a huge stud that every woman wants to fuck? That got annoying.
Not all is bad, though. This movie is clearly a journey story, with a hero going on a quest who meets "magical companions" along the way who help him complete his task. We learned about journey stories in literature class, and it was fun to see one in action emerging out of a low budget horror movie. I like the new characters, too. At first the little kid was annoying, but he grew on me, and the woman had some bad acting/stilted line delivery issues on the beginning, but she gets better.
Like the third Hellraiser movie did with Pinhead, this movie makes the Tall Man a little less evil with something of a background and motivation: he thinks killing Mike is the same as freeing him from his "flesh prison." Uh...thanks but no thanks, dude. Overall, this movie wasn't as good as the first two, but there's some cool gore, interesting special effects, and a few engaging characters, so it's not all bad. I'm still glad I finally watched it.
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