Has anybody here ever seen the 'Phantasm' films?

[Meursault]

They're a series of four surreal horror movies - Phantasm (1979), Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1993), and Phantasm: OblIVion (1998) - directed by Don Coscarelli, the guy behind the other cult horror flicks Bubba Ho-Tep and John Dies At The End.

The Phantasm films are very strange, almost disturbing. They're sort of like the A Nightmare On Elm Street series in their emphasis on strange visuals and dreamscapes, but are much less formulaic and conventional. The plot, loosely, is about an extradimensional undertaker ("the Tall Man") who steals the bodies of the dead to reanimate them as servile dwarves in his home dimension. He turns their brains into murderous mechanical spheres.

Well, I ask because, after sixteen years, the fifth and final movie, Phantasm: RaVager, is being released this October. Which makes me very happy, as the fellow who plays the Tall Man, Angus Scrimm, is pushing ninety.

[Meursault]

=-[

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Phantasm was a great movie but for some reason I never got around to seeing any of the sequels. Scrimm was fantastic; I didn't know he was still alive and I don't think I've seen him in anything else. Was he in Bubba Ho-Tep? I've seen Bubba Ho-Tep, but it's been ages.

[Meursault]

This is one of the few horror franchises where each film is of about the same quality as the original. The series shifts tonally in the second and third pictures - they're less dreamy than the original and more slapdash black humor ala Evil Dead - but OblIVion is easily the most surreal, and features a lot of cut scenes from the original, used as flashbacks. They're all worth seeing.

I think Scrimm may have had a brief cameo in Bubba Ho-Tep, but I can't recall. I know he did in John Dies At The End.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is one of the few horror franchises where each film is of about the same quality as the original. The series shifts tonally in the second and third pictures - they're less dreamy than the original and more slapdash black humor ala Evil Dead - but OblIVion is easily the most surreal, and features a lot of cut scenes from the original, used as flashbacks. They're all worth seeing.

That's really good to know. I might seek out the rest of these.

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From what I've heard about John Dies at the End it seems like the sort of movie I'd enjoy. How would you describe its tone by comparison to Bubba Ho-Tep or, say, the original Little Shop of Horrors?

[Meursault]

I'd actually compare it to a funnier, somewhat less overtly horror-themed Drag Me To Hell - there's quite a bit of overlap between Coscarelli's style and Raimi's generally.

[Meursault]

Also, the weird thing about OblIVion and its flashbcks is that it suggests that even the parts of the film set in the 'present day' of 1998 (parts of the picture involve time travel) happen contemporaneously as the 1979 original.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'd actually compare it to a funnier, somewhat less overtly horror-themed Drag Me To Hell - there's quite a bit of overlap between Coscarelli's style and Raimi's generally.

That sounds excellent. I have various crows to pluck with some of Raimi's more recent work but his a lot of his stuff I still enjoy quite a lot.

Also, the weird thing about OblIVion and its flashbcks is that it suggests that even the parts of the film set in the 'present day' of 1998 (parts of the picture involve time travel) happen contemporaneously as the 1979 original.

I recently read a novel involving time travel in which one timeline seemed to be set in multiple different stages of Internet culture's development at the same time--by an author who was clearly familiar with Internet culture--so I'm used that sort of thing at this point. This was a book that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, incidentally.

[Meursault]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1wOobOGa4w