Movie Thread

[Guest]

By the way, CHUD is officially shook now. Name changed to Trouble City.

http://citizens.trouble.city/

[Kugelfisch]

For what reason?

[rabidtictac]

They're probably trying to rebrand so people forget about their reputation.

[Rushy]

Saw Phantasm and Phantasm II. The first one is an atmospheric, surreal classic, sadly with a really shitty and confusing ending.
Part 2 is a bit more pedestrian though I did appreciate the sawed-off quadruple-barrelled shotgun.

[Rapeculture]

Saw Phantasm and Phantasm II. The first one is an atmospheric, surreal classic, sadly with a really shitty and confusing ending.
Part 2 is a bit more pedestrian though I did appreciate the sawed-off quadruple-barrelled shotgun.

I saw the entire series recently on DVD. Part 3 is the most fun out of all of them. Part 4 is a slog, unfortunately. Part 5 is surreal and disjointed due to the fact that it started out as a webseries, but is still strangely appealing. Special effects are terrible, but it was made on the cheap, so it's understandable.

Best zombie movie was Resident Evil. Full-frontal Milla Jovovich bitches.

She's done actual act pictures and her tits are a real sad sight. Shit taste.

Holy fuck tell me about it. I saw Stone a few years back and there's a scene where she's getting railed by some random guy. Her flat, terrible tits are on full display, her chest is that of an 8-year-old boy.

Anywho, as far as zombie movies, I still quite like Re-Animator. When David Gale's decapitated head eats out that girl, that brought it home for me.

[Rushy]

Phantasm 3 was a massive improvement over 2, probably due to the lack of studio interference. They brought back aspects of psychological and surreal horror, reunited the OG cast and added some twists to the mythos, which was needed.

Honestly, the only problems were left over from 2, namely the unnecessary action(I love good action, but in this franchise, it just feels like padding that slows down much better and more complex movies with 80s excess) and the use of Reggie as a protagonist even though the main conflict is between Mike and the Tall Man. It kinda feels like this movie mixes two versions of the franchise: one, which is about a child's nightmare becoming real and one in which a balding ice cream man wields a quadruple-barrelled shotgun. It's like oil and water. I like Reggie a lot, don't get me wrong, but he worked a lot better as a comic sidekick rather than the driving force of the story.

[Guest]

By the way, CHUD is officially shook now. Name changed to Trouble City.

http://citizens.trouble.city/

Shame. Naming themselves after a group of inbred cannibals who live in the sewers was so appropriate.

[Cuckara]

My ranking of the Phantasm franchise: I > II > IV > III >>> Ravager. I is a fascinatingly surreal horror classic. II tries a bit too hard to be Evil Dead 2 but it's fun. III isn't bad but I think parts of it are too cartoonish. IV is the closest the franchise ever came to returning to the atmospheric surrealism of the original film so I have a soft spot for it. I hate to be mean towards Ravager since you can tell it was a labor of love but all of the technical aspects of it are painfully awful. Rule #1 of indie filmmaking is write within your budget and the makers of Ravager very clearly didn't listen to that rule.

[Rushy]

Phantasm 4 kicked ass, easily the best entry since the original. With the budget steadily decreasing, Coscarelli was forced to abandon the action elements of 2 and 3, instead focusing on actually advancing the plot, building suspense and showing us the Tall Man's backstory(which, given that this franchise is the movie equivalent of Lost with all its endless questions, was much needed and doesn't come across as trite or forced) and harkening back to the superior first film a lot.

If this was another film, the endless use of flashbacks would be tiresome, but here, it works brilliantly. Partially because they're deleted scenes we'd never seem before and partially because, until now, the first film was really the only one to actually have some kind of a point, if you asked me. I especially loved the ending.

My current ranking would be I > IV > III > II.

[Rushy]

Anyway, just to explain my feelings on the franchise as a whole: I love the first film. Unlike Elm Street, where Craven's intention on having the whole movie be a dream feels disappointing in a "it was all just a dream!" way because the story was so straightforward, here it actually works as a boy's nightmare to cope with his parents' death. My only real issue is with the ending, both the switcheroo of randomly killing Jody plus bringing Reggie back, and with the final jumpscare. They could've had one or the other and I would've grudgingly accepted it, but it feels very muddled.

Since the dreamlike atmosphere was what made me a Phantasm fan. I don't really appreciate the sequels, because it kinda spoils the point(and on a personal note, Jody was my favourite character and I'm kinda miffed he barely shows up in the other films). As said above, IV is my favourite so far since it works as a companion piece to the original. But I still feel that, should the ending be re-edited to make more sense, the original stands alone just fine.

Which is kinda ironic, because horror sequels are usually my jam(by all means, let's make Halloween X and bring Jamie Lee Curtis back to fight Michael one last time... again). But Phantasm just doesn't have a bankable formula like that.