Class of 88: PHANTASM II – The Ball is Back and There’s Gonna Be Trouble

Full disclosure: Phantasm II is my least favorite Phantasm movie. Fuller disclosure: the Phantasm movies comprise my favorite horror franchise, making the first point irrelevant to anyone else except my feeble little mind. So, even though it sits last on my roster, it’s still one of ’88's best horror movies, loaded with non-stop action, top-notch effects, and another towering and glowering turn by Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man. This is the super-sized and slick Phantasm movie that a lot of folks turn to when they have to scratch that graveyard itch.

To be honest, I wasn’t even aware that a sequel was on the horizon when I opened my local newspaper that hot summer night in ’88 looking for something to watch on the big screen. Yet there it was in the ad: the unmistakable glare of Scrimm, two unrecognizable teens, and series mastermind Don Coscarelli’s name plastered all over it. I ran for the bus so as not to miss the show, settling in with possibly twenty other theatergoers to let Mr. Coscarelli tell his story:

A young woman, Liz (Paula Irvine – Doin’ Time on Planet Earth) awakens from a dream, but not her own; she holds a psychic link with our hero from the OG, Mike (played here by James LeGros, subbing for Michael Baldwin), and she sees the events that transpired at the end of Phantasm (and beyond) as Mike and Reggie (Reggie Bannister, back in action) narrowly escape the wrath of The Tall Man. Mike then spends the next seven years in an institution and finally convinces the authorities of what they want to hear—that the events of the first film were completely in his mind.

Still bent on destroying The Tall Man, however, Mike begins to dig up empty graves, confirming that the mortician’s evil trail of destruction grows longer by the day. Reggie himself has been led to believe that it was all a dream, until his family is decimated on his way home with Mike. As our two heroes hit the road to track down The Tall Man and Mike’s bond with Liz grows stronger, the inevitable march towards destiny and death looms large…

As the lights came up on Phantasm II, my very first thought was that it was… okay? I couldn’t pinpoint my disappointment until I rode my bus home, and then it hit me: it wasn’t weird enough. The original movie wallows in discombobulation and unease; this sequel nine years removed has a much more conventional narrative while still drawing on some of the original’s selling points, namely Scrimm and his silver spheres. But as someone who had nearly ten years to marinate in the madness of the ’79 classic, the linear quality of the storytelling let me down; II goes from A to B to C without jumping to Q and G in between, which is part of the original’s charm.

That disappointment was short-lived, however; once Phantasm II hit the home video market, I wore that tape down and would show it to anyone interested in watching a horror movie, probably because it was mainstream enough to attract a wider audience. (I wasn’t so keen to lean into my odder picks to friends and family back in the day.) I mean, just by virtue of the subject matter—alien harvests dead bodies on Earth to send back to his planet as slaves—it’s more than weird enough for Joe and Sally Moviegoer, and I came to appreciate it for what it was, not for what it wasn’t: a very lean action horror combo perfect for the era of car chases and explosions (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The biggest transition to the new age is the pivot away from Mike to Reggie as the hero; perhaps taking a cue from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, our beloved ice cream vendor becomes a Rambo-esque figure plowing through The Tall Man’s wasteland with a—get this—four-barrel shotgun, a mighty chainsaw, and a flamethrower to boot. Much like Ash, Reggie wavers between incompetent and incorrigible with the occasional stop off at heroism and, if he’s lucky, a touch of hedonism. This would be his path for the following three sequels, and always played by Bannister as an amusing cross between plucky and horny.

But lest you worry that it strays too far into action territory, Mark Shostrom, Greg Nicotero, Robert Kurtzman and many other top purveyors of special effects and makeup magic wave wands to create ghoulish and lively corpses, advanced sphere drilling techniques, and embalming with a less-than-willing participant. Phantasm II brings the gory goods right in tune with horror of the time. Series such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween were bringing as much grue and creative deaths as the stringent MPAA would allow, so it only made sense for Phantasm II to try and keep stride.

With a budget ten times the amount of the original (made for a measly $300,000) Coscarelli had the funds to widen and enlarge his vision, but of course with studio money comes studio strings, and he was told to make the story more linear and lose the ethereal logic. So, Phantasm II is a trade-off then: gone is a majority of the fever dream quality in exchange for a polished razor-sharp road picture.

But as much as the studio tried to scrub the weird from the project, it’s still a Coscarelli film; surprise visits from beyond the grave, creepy gas-masked grave robbers, and of course, the inimitable Angus Scrimm lording over it all. He is the haunted heart of the series, the spectral center on which it revolves; his arched eyebrow and crooked smile speak volumes about what horror can achieve. One of those goals is to entertain, and while that kid in ’88 felt underwhelmed, he now sees that Phantasm II’s streamlined approach and its modest success allowed Coscarelli to keep the crematorium fires burning until the final victory lap, 2016’s Phantasm: Ravager. So, here’s to Phantasm II; it may be the normal one in a sea of strange, but that’s grading on a curve as great as a chrome sentinel cornering a mausoleum wall.

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Be sure to check here all month long for more special features celebrating the Class of 1988!