The ball of fear is back!

PHANTASM II (1988)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The original "Phantasm" film was original, messy and a little disorganized yet it felt like a half-remembered nightmare dealing with cemeteries and mortuaries. "Phantasm II" is more clever, wittier, gorier yet never oversteps its own nightmare logic. I do not know what it all means, and I can't say that we are meant to, but it is entrancing and unforgettable and completely original.

The 13-year-old Mike from the original was last seen awakened from a nightmare involving the creepy cemetery worker, alien from another world or something preternatural known as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Of course, once Mike wakes up and has a tender talk with Reggie (Reggie Bannister), the nightmare begins all over again as psychically-inclined Mike faces the grim being from another world. Reggie rescues Mike from their house before it explodes, killing all those dwarf-zombies who are the Tall Man's minions. Before long, another house explodes, making this film one of the few I have seen in recent memory where two houses are destroyed in a fireball just after ten minutes of screen time. Fortunately, the movie is not a Jerry Bruckheimer action picture as it evolves into a subterranean horror flick with the elder Mike (now played by James Le Gros) still digging graveyards and finding empty coffins. Mike has been let out of a mental institution and pairs up with Reggie to find and destroy the Tall Man. You know this is an 80's movie when guns and flamethrowers are assembled so they can, as Reggie so succinctly puts it, "kick ass!" Meanwhile, there is an innocent blonde psychic teenager (Paula Irvine) who senses the Tall Man's whereabouts and seeks Mike's help. In addition, we get an alcoholic priest (Kenneth Tigar) who wants to stop the white-haired, yellow-blooded maniac's dastardly experiments, and some hitchhiking girl (Samantha Phillips) who only appears to be a sweet, beatific angel.

"Phantasm II" is directed with flair and a cool energy by Don Coscarelli, who helmed the original "Phantasm." This film works on your nerves, accentuating an acute use of silence and whispers before seguing to heavy murmurs in the soundtrack. The music score envelops you and never lets go. Though the film has more choice moments of gore than the original, it is not leaden or gratuitous (the flying sphere with multiple blades is thankfully not overused). Some of the gore is downright chilling to the bone, such as a bloodied, puppet-sized Tall Man that emerges from a girl's backside (watching this visual might make your spine hurt).

But what makes "Phantasm II" so much more than an average horror film sequel is its disquieting atmosphere inside those marbled mausoleums and forbidden cemeteries, or that netherworld of red skies and dwarf-zombies hidden in between two beams inside a deadly white room. The film doesn't pass up on the humor quotient either, especially a hilarious lovemaking session with Samantha and Reggie that just might have inspired a similar scene in "Hot Shots! Part Deux." It is Reggie and Le Gros, though, who keep us interested in this nightmare while the Tall Man and director Coscarelli fill us with dread...about the dead.