Phantasm: Ravager

Phantasm Ravager is the most recent(and final?) installment to the Phantasm series. While the film is very low budget, as a fan I enjoyed this quite a bit. It has been a while since I saw the last couple of direct to video sequels and seeing this makes me want to check them out again. This film takes us full circle with the original cast of Reggie, Michael, Jody and of course The Tall Man. This story is taken from Reggie's perspective on his search for Michael and his hunt for The Tall Man. This film jumps around to multiple realiities/universes, which ultimately leaves it up to the viewer to decide what is real and what is a dream. Reggie gives a great performance as lead and aging action hero at battle with the forces of evil. In the little down time that he has, he still plays a mean guitar and has some game with the ladies. There are nods to Bubba Ho Tep and while I can't say this film blew me away, as a fan of the series I was satisfied and entertained with this. Reggie Bannister is a very charismatic leading man, his performance here is great and is very under rated in my opinion.

With so much time between movies, I hardly remember anything from Phantasm, but I do recall I liked some of the films enough to watch this fifth and probably final part of the series. But it was completely disappointing.

The movie is more like a collection of shorts that blend into each other as Reggie is either in a mental asylum, or a on his death bed or in a house trying to score with a redhead or in a hellish world taken over by Tall Man. Since it retains that dream quality of the previous movies, you never know what is real, especially since some of the scenes seem to be previously recorded but unreleased footage. Some extras are brought for no good reason and Angus has just a few scenes. The actor died this year, so RIP for him and probably for the series.

The problem laid with the lack of emotional impact for any of these scenes with disjointed action and characters that never develop and one barely remembers from previous films. Frankly, a waste of time for everyone involved.

Not at all what I expected. At first I was all enthralled, but then as I saw what they were doing with the story I was more like "What the heck, guys?"

For this being the "last" one, they sure didn't tie up any loose ends. I felt the general theme was a cop-out. I waiting for it to resolve, but it never did. Well, it kind of did. Too much bouncing around and not enough substance. Perhaps if it were another 20 to 30 minutes of substance, it would have been an awesome movie. Substance as in meaningful human interaction, dialog, dynamic plot devices... cutaway scenes to previous movies did not help.

Don Coscarelli did not direct it and I hear it had a really low budget, so maybe that's what happened??

I thought Reggie Bannister did a good job.

I can't go into details as I do not want to generate a spoiler alert.

Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is wandering through the desert seeking out his friend Mike and the evil Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Along his journey, he is hunted down by the dangerous spheres and stumbles upon the gorgeous Dawn.

I have to talk about the actors. Reggie and Angus were fine, of course, as they know exactly who their characters are. Dawn Cody is the worst part, with awful acting as Dawn (though she seems to be better as Jane, strangely enough). Daniel Roebuck is a nice addition, even if he seems out of place.

Joe Leydon and Marten Carlson both criticized the film's narrative cohesiveness. Leydon speculated that the film's troubled production may have cause this, and Carlson more directly blamed the film's origin as a series of shorts. This is a legitimate concern. The film is quite a mess, even in a series that has some bizarre continuity. Anyone going in to this without knowledge of the series will be completely confused. (But, of course, it seems obvious not to watch "part five" without seeing earlier chapters.)

The people who watch this film are the hard core fans who were entranced by the disorientating chilling imaginative world of the First Phantasm Movie. Most likely viewed multiple times at late night triple features in actual cinemas, like me. So when the franchise lays this confusing mess in your lap it is with sadness we view the results rather than dismissively as consumers of media. This was the last chance Angus Scrimm got to play his iconic Tall Man roll, and he totally delivered on his lines yet again, creepy, with a plan we can't understand, everything we could ever want from him. But how those nuggets fitted into an overlaying story, well, really they don't. There was nothing there for them to slot into, for them to make sense in. Granted, part of the original movies charm was how sense was tossed out the window; but everything in the original movie fitted within the universe of Phantasm; everything had a point, and a result to that point.

In this 5th installment most things that happened went nowhere; were smoke and mirrors; a collection of disconnected setups; some with style; many executed with cringe-worthy cheesiness; naff effects, and an edge of unintended sadness, as they chipped away at the legacy of the original.

What was it all about? I don't really know and it gives the feeling that no one, particularly the director did. It didn't make any sense, and not in a good way, just looping round some vague concept of "is Reggie dreaming, or is it real"?, but it's done so poorly the end result is a wasted opportunity to do something solid with an all-original-cast back together to pay tribute to a legendary movie franchise.

Reggie was OK as a disposable side man, but it was the 2 brothers that were the interest factor in the original. To be honest, it was kind of boring,....

.... of note, the music was a reasonably decent reworking of the original catchy score orchestrated excellently, although the original did use non classic orchestra sounds and rock instruments well, so it deviated from that innovation. The only jarring thorn in an otherwise stellar soundtrack was the cringe-worthy Ravenger rap over the score as the credits rolled. Utterly awful.

Either the director has no understanding of what was good about the original , or Coscarelli totally 'George Lucas'd' his own series, and also didn't understand what he got right in the original.

Farewell Phantasm. I wish you could have had a better send off than this. Thanks for the original though. A true iconic milestone in disorientating creepy cinema.