It’s Never Over

I’m just going to say it: this film series is really weird. The Phantasm movies have been doing their own thing pretty much since the first film, which started as a dark and moody horror film before introducing sci-fi elements and flying, alien balls, all before then pulling a sudden “it was all a dream” ending that made us think much of what we watched didn’t happen… right up until it twisted again. That first film is a trip, and while it works really well on its own, it’s the sequels that then said, “hold my beer,” before really wandering off the reservation.

The second film likes to play with the dreamlike quality of the first film’s ending. It keeps changing itself, making you second guess what you’re seeing, what the film is telling you. Each new bit of information is then countermanded later, right up to the end where one of the main characters that was introduced in that film is then revealed to be a villain. The film never stops twisting things simply for the sake of twisting, all so the filmmakers can keep the audience off kilter. It’s a film that keeps making you wonder what’s next at every turn.

And what was next was Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, a film that immediately changes the status quo again. This film seems like it was designed simply to throw out everything we thought we knew from the second film so it could then throw just about every new idea at the wall to see what stuck. It sidelines one of the main two protagonists, introduces a kid sidekick, throws on a Black character that feels like they walked in from a completely different movie… and then changes everything we thought we knew about the world we were watching up to that point. Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead doesn’t care about your expectations; it’s going to do its own thing.

The film picks up right at the end of the previous film, with the girl Reggie (Reggie Bannister) had been sleeping with revealing herself to be an undead freak serving The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), just as the heroes were driving away in a stolen hearse. She attacks Reggie, knocks out Mike (a returning A. Michael Baldwin), and kills Mike’s girlfriend. Mike is captured and taken away by the minions of The Tall Man, while Reggie is able to escape. He then has to try and track down his friend to rescue him from The Tall Man.

This leads him on a drive around the backroads of the West, going through abandoned town after abandoned town. The Tall Man had been busy, clearing out the populations of these towns, stealing their bodies away to make his forces. Along the way, Reggie meets Tim (Kevin Connors), a young kid who has been forced to live on his own after his father and mother were both killed and taken by The Tall Man. Then the two of them meet Rocky (Gloria Lynne Henry), a street warrior who is quite capable with nunchucks. Together the three continue their search, right up to a mausoleum where they find The Tall Man waiting as he tries to convert Mike over to his own side…

Even in comparison to the first two movies, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead is a weird movie. It’s a film that almost makes you question everything you saw before as it decides to throw out much of the story from the first two films so it can wander off and do its own thing. The movies up to that point had been about Reggie and Mike trying to kill The Tall Man. They were the dynamic duo of the series, with Mike acting as its heart. But then we get a film with barely any Mike at all, focusing on Reggie and a new band of characters as they fight zombies and search the Western part of America. It’s a weird fit.

I think it’s the new characters more than anything that give this film its weird vibe. I doubt anyone that had watched the first two films was sitting there going, “you know what we need? To ditch Mike and replace him with a kid and a kung-fu lady.” They feel very out of place in this film, almost like the studio which backed the production, demanded that writer / director Don Coscarelli insert some new characters to give the film greater appeal. I doubt that was actually the case as this film was independently produced and had only a limited theatrical window, but you still have to wonder why the film went to such great lengths to completely reinvent itself to the point where it was almost unrecognizable.

At the same time, the film also adds really weird twists to the things we already knew. Mike, for instance, comes back late in the film and is revealed to no longer be human. When did this happen? How did it happen? What even happened to the original Mike (if this isn’t the original)? It’s a strange twist on the character that the film doesn’t even fully address, presumably leaving it for a later movie (unless that film then decides to throw that plot point out and reinvent itself, which I wouldn’t put it past the movie to do).

And then we also learn that the weird floating balls, which are the iconic monsters of these movies, are actually powered by shrunken brains stolen from corpses. This is just… I don’t even know. It does allow the film a way to bring back Mike’s older brother, Jody Pearson (Bill Thornbury), who died at the end of the first film, since he’s now been turned into a floating ball and can communicate with Mike, but at the same time this feels like an explanation for a question no one was asking. We didn’t need to know how the balls were made because they were cool all on their own.

What this film lacks is a cohesive narrative that actually answers questions that matter. Coscarelli seems to have more fun reinventing his mythology and throwing out whatever twists he can whenever he gets bored. Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, even more so than the films before, feels like an, “and then…” kind of film. This thing happens, and then then next thing, and then… and then… and then… It doesn’t matter if it makes any sense when stacked up with what we saw before or what the previous films told us. All that matters is a weird new idea, and then the next one.

It makes for a very strange watching experience because you’re never able to get a handle on what the story is really supposed to be or what Coscarelli is even saying about the story… if he’s saying anything. The filmmaker seems to be having fun just throwing crap at the wall for his own entertainment, twisting and turning the story around for whatever weird idea he gets next. Did the film need zombified criminal things chasing the heroes? No, but Coscarelli wanted it, so in they go. Time and again weird crap just happens because that’s what the writer wanted, and that seems to be the start and end of the discussion.

And yet… it does at least make for an energetic movie. You can never tell what is going to happen next or where the film is going. Not all of it may stick, and most of it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but I have to admit I was at least engaged, waiting to see what batshit thing occurred in the next scene. Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead is not a cohesive watch, and it absolutely doesn’t blend well with the previous two films, but it certainly did continue keeping me off kilter while I watched, wondering what weird thing Coscarelli would come up with.

That alone is keeping me in the film series. I still want to see where these movies are going as we head into the last two, and I want to see what weird ass ideas Coscarelli has in store. I can’t say Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead was a good movie, but it certainly kept me just interested enough to see what comes next…