Troll (1986)
Jim Henson horror; not enough crazy Michael Moriarty. (5/10)
[watched with P]
Troll 2 (1990)
Worst acting and SFX I have ever seen… and I own a lot of Troma movies. (3/10)
Lust for Dracula (2004)
Erotic horror without the horror or eroticism; nice Misty Mundae performance. (5/10)
Saw (2004)
Cool extension of Se7en, but the last half is weak and could've used more traps. (7/10)
Tales from the Crypt: "The Man Who Was Death" (1989)
William Sadler and Roy Brocksmith ruled, but the plot was nothing special. (7/10)
Six Weekends of Movies:
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That's it! That's everything Mr. Coscarelli has directed so far. I may just be subscribing to expensive Showtime, just so I can see his newest effort in the Masters of Horror. Waiting for the DVD sets for that would be hard.
The Phantasm quadrilogy is probably my all-time favorite horror movie series. I love the fact that Coscarelli wrote and directed each and every installment. I love that -- except for fake-Mike and no-show Jody in P2 -- the four main characters stick around for the entire series. I love Reg's everyman hero. I love the surreal aspects of P1 and P4. I love the "road trip through a post-apocalypse" theme of P2-P3. It's truly a unique series. I'm saddened that it seems -- like every other horror series -- we will be getting a remake instead of P5. Worse yet, Coscarelli will not be directing the new trilogy. Because of this, I doubt very much that these new films will have a fraction of the magic of the originals. Ah well. We're lucky to have the four that we do.
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1998 - Phantasm IV: Oblivion - A welcome return to the surrealistic style of P1 and a welcome return of the Reg-Mike friendship started in P2. The emptiness of the world of P4 is subtle. Coscarelli doesn't announce it, but by the end of the film it's fairly clear that the Tall Man has been consuming the country unabated, despite 20 years worth of interference from Reg and Mike. There are only six characters in the entire film, and only two (one?) are actual human beings. Tantalizing glimpses of potential futures, definite pasts, blurry faces, and the psychic from P1 all add to the fun. A bittersweet, but appropriate, ending to the series (if this is indeed the last).
2002 - Bubba Ho-Tep - Hellishly good idea for a movie, though executed a tad slowly. This is probably due to stretching out a short story into a full movie. Bruce Campbell absolutely disappears into his role. I love the design of the mummy and the fact that he speaks in hieroglyphs. It's also nice to see Joe R. Lansdale get some movie love; he's one of the best horror writers no one knows about. I wasn't blown away by this movie as I was expecting to be, but it was a lot of fun.
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1989 - Survival Quest - Beautiful scenery, but nothing terribly special. Lance Hendrickson, as always, does a bang-up job as the Survival Quest master. He's essentially the Mr. Miyagi to his group's Daniel. Their rivals, the military boot camp sharing their woods, are essentially the Cobra Kai dojo. Similar lessons are learned. Also: man, Catherine Keener has aged very well since this.
1993 - Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead - Not as annoyingly goofy as I'd remembered. Clearly, Coscarelli is a fan of Sam Raimi. I think he was going for the Evil Dead 2 style of horror-humor in this one. Doesn't stray too much from the path P2 blazed; it's a road trip movie with a mausoleum. However, we're thrown some juicy info concerning the Tall Man and his interest in Mike. A satisfying Phantasm film.
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"a total, unadulterated maniac"
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