They are aided in this pursuit by another new addition to the cast: funk-rock singer Gloria Lynn Henry, playing an ankh-earring-wearing, Grace-Jones-flattopped, and nunchaku-wielding army vet named "Rocky." The quest to dismantle the Tall Man's Earth-altering influence must continue. Of all the things that any viewer of the series might have anticipated from PHANTASM III, I believe its brief transformation into an R-rated HOME ALONE qualifies as the most surprising.ĭraped in only the best denims that 1994 has to offer, Tim teams up with Reggie the Ice Cream Man (slow-jammin' Reggie Bannister, of PHANTASMs 1 and 2, and the answer to the question, "What if Clint Howard were the last action hero?")Īnd though he is "too old for this shit," ![]() These campy criminals attempt to ply their trade by robbing the house from HOUSE (1985),Īnd only succeed in being dismantled by Tim (Kevin Connors), a survivalist child armed with a razor frisbee. ![]() You see, Coscarelli is also endeavoring to build an apocalyptic universe where America's Main Streets have fallen victim to a combination of Reaganomics and the Tall Man, all of which feels a little tonally similar to, say, Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER or THE STAND. He quickly introduces a gang of criminals (Brooks Gardner, Cindy Ambuehl, and John Davis Chandler) who clearly escaped from an early John Waters flick and appear to represent the tackiest/greediest elements of late stage capitalism. I think it's because Lynch and Coscarelli have both dipped deeply into the shared imagery pool of 20th Century surrealists like Dali, Escher, Magritte, Ernst, and Miró (and Cocteau and Buñuel, of course).īut Coscarelli is not merely content to make a surrealist, arthouse-horror picture like the original. There's something very visceral and elemental here in Coscarelli's use of electricity, contorted reflections, fabricated/unnatural objects, and liminal spaces. In a twist (?) that presages Lynch's use of tulpa-spheres in TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, or David Bowie's steam-kettle reincarnation in that same series. The original PHANTASM's Jody (Bill Thornbury) reappears as one of the iconic spheres ![]() In its David Lynch-inflected surrealist mayhem, it feels both post-TWIN PEAKS and pre-LOST HIGHWAY. Michael Baldwin––the original "Mike" from PHANTASM and famously replaced by James LeGros in PHANTASM II––reappears fifteen years later, having aged into "if young David Patrick Kelly were a New Wave musician." The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) broods in his lair, contemplating his orb like Saruman.Ī. ![]() Therefore, Don Coscarelli has assembled a true Frankenstein's monster of his favorite things: it's Buñuel's UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Cocteau's ORPHEUS, Malick's BADLANDS, Lynch's TWIN PEAKS, Golan & Globus' NINJA trilogy, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Waters' PINK FLAMINGOS, and a Lloyd Kaufman Troma flick, all shaken and stirred into the PHANTASM universe, where truth is a hallucination, and the only logic is dream logic. This is the handiwork of a filmmaker who was certain this would be the last film in the series and, damn the torpedoes, intended to go down with the ship. and that, somehow, against all odds, it works. that PHANTASM III is one of the wildest collection of happenings and imagery and disparate tones to ever inhabit a motion picture.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |