Whoever made the poster for "Phantasm II" was smart enough to depict the movie's two drawing points: Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man, and the flying metal ball. Don Coscarelli must have felt like he'd hit the jackpot when Scrimm signed on for the first movie - and all the others. Here is an actor whose very appearance invites fear; he's like a Jack Palance stand-in. The series' attempts to give him supernatural abilities and yellow blood don't really amount to much; they should have just let him hang out in the background looking evil.
You might recall that the first "Phantasm" movie was basically a few neat schlock effects with no cohesive story or characters to string them all together. I remember wondering if the budget was spent entirely on effects that Coscarelli couldn't wait to show the world - and thus skipped writing a screenplay or developing characters.
"Phantasm II", which, like all sequels, has an obviously bigger budget, possibly proves my theory to have been incorrect. This one has more schlock effects, but makes no more sense. It also has many of the same flaws as the first one, such as pointless driving scenes with tense music giving the impression the characters are on their way to a showdown, but you never know where they're going, or why, so the scenes just play as boring filler.
The bigger budget also apparently paid for some incongruous action-movie like scenes, such as a house exploding, or a car flipping over.
At least the first five minutes of the movie actually explains what The Tall Man is up to: he robs graves to turn the occupants into zombies who kill the inhabitants of small towns. Then, he moves onto another town's graveyard, and starts all over again.
The first movie really should have made that clear.
This relatively auspicious opening makes the viewer hope "Phantasm II" might make more sense than its prequel.
Alas, it is not to be.
