Format: HBO Go on rockin’ flatscreen.
What’s the big sell of the movie Phantasm? It’s the flying orbs that kill people. Sure, you get the Tall Man, too, and the Tall Man is pretty damn awesome as a bad guy, but we wait for the flying orbs, especially because they aren’t really used that much. Phantasm II has the chance to correct that and it kind of doesn’t. The other thing that the sequel gets to correct is the fact that the first movie has a ton of ideas that aren’t really presented in a way that makes a great deal of sense. There’s the Tall Man digging up corpses, the flying orbs, and weird little dwarves that are apparently made by squeezing the corpses somehow into these new critters. It’s kind of a narrative mess.
Phantasm II picks up immediately at the end of the first movie, with our hero Mike (A. Michael Baldwin in this footage, which was clearly made at the same time as the original) be attacked by the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and a couple of dwarves. Pedophile-looking former ice cream man and Mike’s friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) coming to his rescue. Fast forward eight years and now Mike is played by James Le Gros and he’s just getting released from an institution since no one believed his weird story.
