Phantasm 4: Oblivion
The Phantasm Franchise is one of the most revered in the history of horror cinema, one which spouts as its literal mantra not to believe everything that you (the viewer) sees. It also gave rise to one of the best (and most underrated) horror villains as well as featuring one of the very few (male) heroes of horror to become an icon in his own right. When Don Coscarelli became freed from the constraints of working within the Hollywood Studio System (where he ironically made the best film of the series in Part 2), he made Part 3 just the way that he wanted almost exactly even going so far as to bring back A. Michael Baldwin to play the lead role of Mike Pearson whom he had played as a child in Part 1 (and replacing James LeGros who had played the role in Part 2). However, many felt that the Evil Dead / Sam Raimi influence of horror mixed with comedy that had been a key component of Parts 2 and 3 had worn a bit thin with its butchy, militant black female and killing machine little kid comedic sidekicks in Part 3 and so (after having the black girl drive away on her own while killing off the little kid offscreen at the end) Coscarelli decided to make Part 4 a return to basics, utilizing a scaled back cast and a much lower budget this time around while still being ambitious enough to cover a number of important story points and employing without a doubt the most incredible cinematography and location filming that the series had seen to date, including an unforgettable bit that was actually shot guerilla style on Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles which showed the entire street being deserted, an effect that Coscarelli achieved (without permits) by gathering the needed cast and crew at dawn on Thanksgiving morning and getting in and out of there in about ten minutes with the shots they needed to give the area that desired, deserted post apocalyptic look. The four principals (Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Thornbury and Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man) are all back into the mix once again and it’s a most welcome sight to report that Baldwin (who also served as a co producer on this go around) is finally able to completely shed the gawky, awkward screen presence that he had in Part 3 (probably because he had not acted on camera in over 10 years and maybe why Coscarelli had kept him offscreen for at least half the running time of that sequel) and here plays Mike with some measure of confidence, poise and even a little bit of swagger, successfully carrying his end of the movie since once again the main plot hinges on he and Reggie being split up. Another notable difference is that whenever Mike’s dead brother Jody (Thornbury) materializes from being in the sphere that he travels in, Mike and Reggie both look at him with not so much awe and gratitude but rather with a healthy measure of doubt, skepticism and mistrust, probably because Jody comes to them on the pretense of “helping” them but aside from giving them some exposition seems to do little good for the pair especially since being a sphere could possibly make him a slave / minion of The Tall Man doing his bidding (and setting them up). The film opens with the cliffhanger conclusion of Part 3 with Reggie pinned against the wall by several of those little suckers, only to be released without harm by The Tall Man himself (who mockingly addresses Reggie as “small man” in the same way that he refers to Mike as “boy”) who then tells Reggie to choose his next move wisely as the “game” he’s playing is solely between him and Mike (who has taken off in a hearse) and that it would be best for Reg to just back off. Reggie seems to agree (since his legendary Hemicuda needs some work done) only to later have Jody appear to him (much to his annoyance) and persuade him to continue pursuing both Mike and The Tall Man presumably on the idea that Reggie could throw quite a nasty monkey wrench into The Tall Man’s plans for his brother. Much of the story then evolves into being a road film, with The Tall Man psychically taking the controls of Mike’s hearse to lead him into the desert (Death Valley specifically) where the epicenter of The Tall Man’s activities seems to be while Reggie has a much more eventful journey, first being pulled over by a state trooper who is in actuality one of The Tall Man’s demonic minions which requires Reggie to engage in an epic battle to the death in order to defeat and dismantle this literal cop from Hell (with a knowing nod to a low budget horror comedy from a few years before called Highway To Hell which featured a similar villain called The Hellcop played by Jason Voorhees actor C.J. Graham) and having accomplished that, we then get to see Reggie doing what he does best (or rather what he enjoys doing the most), hooking up with a beautiful blonde babe (Heidi Marnhout) on the pretense of helping her with car trouble only to once again get distracted from the mission at hand because of his lust for a hot girl. The question continues to be explored not only of what actual significance that Mike has for The Tall Man which makes him so important to be taken alive, but also in The Tall Man himself when it comes to who he really is and where exactly he comes from and most interestingly, who was he before he became Evil Incarnate? But here Coscarelli takes the answering of questions a step further since Part 1 of the series had made it clear at the conclusion that the events which we had just witnessed in that film were but only a dream but that Mike had clearly encountered The Tall Man in some way that was actual reality (but never shown) and the biggest question for years had remained, WHAT had actually happened with these characters back in 1978 (keeping in mind that in the “dream” portion of the first film, Reggie had actually died!)?? Well it turns out that Coscarelli had dug up some missing footage that had actually been filmed in 1978 but never used (and at one point was thought to be lost forever) and incorporated it into the story in the form of flashbacks (allowing Baldwin to have significant screentime here as both his adult self and himself as a little kid). Among the bits we get are a beautifully evocative sequence that took place on the “last perfect day” before The Tall Man arrived involving Mike, Reggie and his ice cream truck, a brief scene showing what really happened to Jody which led to his death / disappearance (which also reveals that Jody had actually “died” before Mike’s parents did unlike what was stated at the end of Part 1), an unforgettable, terrifying scene depicting The Tall Man literally being lynched from a tree by Mike and Jody before he manages to sweet talk Mike into cutting him down (implying that The Tall Man was powerless to free himself otherwise) and finally a bit saved for the very last scene that is nearly mindblowing in its narrative audacity (think time travel or at the very least alternate dimensions). One other very important topic of note was Coscarelli’s revealing of The Tall Man’s backstory, that of him originally being a working mortician on a Civil War battlefield, a guy who had witnessed so much death and destruction on a regular basis that he made it his life’s work to discover and then cross over to the other side while still in living human form (in the process inventing the first working gateway into the other world which had appeared often in the series). It is through this briefly seen but intriguing “new” character (Jebediah Morningside) that we get a glimpse at just what a major talent and massive asset to the series Angus Scrimm really was, playing Morningside in such a subtly different manner that we really do consider him to be a newly introduced character in the series despite his very familiar face (though Scrimm uses a completely different speaking voice to play him) as even Mike seems stunned at seeing his old enemy take on such a kindly, benign form. Scrimm also wows us with his acting in the 1978 footage during the lynching scene and if the film had continued to play some aspects closer to the vest (the Jody twist being telegraphed pretty badly and Reggie being allowed to live by The Tall Man for no good reason instead of fighting his way out of trouble are two things that immediately come to mind), then this would be comparable to the classic Parts 1 and 2, but as it stands, this remains a return to form from some of the excesses of Part 3 along with giving Angus Scrimm a chance to do some real, outside the box acting other than the usual schtick that we’ve come to know and love from him (while still getting plenty of that too)…
8/10