Hail Angus...

..holy shit he died last month!

I actually thought it was last spring, maybe they just announced that he was having some kind of health problem back then.


What a shitty January we had this year.

Amen. 2016 sucks.

Dear lord we had no idea HOW much suckage was in store.

The original Phantasm wasn't straight to videoand is a uniquely outstanding sort of schlock.


The trouble is this kind of stuff became mainstream and got too self-referential in the 90s, very little of value happened after Scream (and Scream is pretty unwatchable, I know that's a minority opinion but I stand by it; I suffered through it when it first came out and have never made it more than half an hour in since then).

To draw an analogy between trashy horror and shock comedy, 80s schlock is Sam Kinison, 90s schlock is Dice Clay, 21st century schlock is Jeff Dunham.

The problem is where do you go with the story from #1? It pretty much blew it's wad then and there, as any good 70's horror film should.

How can you top this kind of thing just happenin'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHuOAnSeF_c

That's the high point of the series for sure, although the giant fly is a close second.

I think the whole series has done a pretty good job of capturing the feel of waking up from a nightmare only to find yourself in a worse one.

Blasphemy! You're comparing the Phantasm movies to Scream?

Scream was awful and did not stand the test of being out five years, much less of time.

Hi Arthur! How's death treating you?

I really enjoyed the first Scream movie. It was refreshing to a see a movie that was about loving movies, especially the most unlovable movies of all, the horror genre. There was a second run theater in my neighborhood that let me see movies for 1.50, and i saw Scream over and over again. I saw Scream 2 just once, and I was done. Stream 1 was meta; stream 2 was jusr "meh.

OH, Coscarelli actually made this? I thought he only really had a hand in the first two (the only ones I've seen). I thought Bubba Ho-Tep was pretty good despite all the red flags.

Phantasm 3 is my personal favorite. The main thing that bothers me about this is it looks like just about everything is green screened. I will watch this, and am sure it will be better than Phantasm 4 at least.

Cascarelli didn't make this. Though he was producing and supervising.

I know because I was in it. ( im the dude in the spoopy pipe mask @ 4:09 )

I thought Coscarelli made all the Phantasm movies thus far?

Yeah, IMBD says Coscarelli wrote and directed all the Phantasm flicks except this one.

Now I'm actually having doubts about seeing it as Coscarelli is a schlock maestro*.

*Except for John Dies At The End, which was terrible.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0181741/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1#director

And he still wrote and produced this one.

"John Dies at the End" was awesome.

True. I"m typing this at the ass end of having nursed a broken foot through a marathon of all four Phantasm movies thus far and I don't know where you go from part 4.

THe whole metaphor for the entire series is that Mike and Reggie are mourning the deaths of their families and in particular Jody.

In part four we find out Jody has been dead since at least the final minutes of Part one if not longer and the whole thing has been a metaphorical goose chase to confront death head on. The tall mean being the physical representation of death. Any alien dimension stuff is a stand in for the unknowable void beyond this life and the terror we feel at facing it.

At the end of part four, Jody is definitively dead and Mike obviously dies as he's drifting off into that memory of riding off into infinity with Reggie in his ice cream truck. Reggie, meanwhile, promises Mike the bond of friendship goes on forever and heroically chases death across the void to the other side, death being the tall man, four-barreled shotgun in hand.

I guess you could play part five as Reggie having destroyed his life in this blind loyalty and grief to and over his family and the Pearson brothers? And maybe Reggie's just too stupid to give up fighting.

I also dug how, in part four, Reggie obviously tries to leave the blonde girl alone and avoid her to avoid dragging her into their insane nightmare and fate, or the tall man more likely, decides its her time and drags her in anyway via yet another car crash.

The car crashes in all the movies and the defenestrations and broken glass that happen all the time in each movie are constant reminders of Jody's death and the death of the Pearson parents, who also died in a car crash. Reggie and Mike also drive around in the same 71 Barracuda that Jody died in for god's sake.

TL;DR the whole thing is a metaphor for Mike and Reggie dealing with death, so I'm gonna lay money on the idea that in part 5, Reggie will finally die.

Also, Angus passed away after filming and Reggie Bannister turns 71 this year.

So, I'm willing to bet you a dollar this movie is going to be about Reggie dealing with the inevitability of his own death and how he chose to spend his life, especially since Coscarelli wrote it.

I unfortunately can't promise it will be any good.