Yeah, this is a lousy piece of crap. I stared at the screen trying to figure out why in the hell this movie was made. Watching this franchise is sort of like watching a dandelion on a very windy day; it starts out pretty enough, but eventually pieces of it keep flying off leaving an ugly thing in its place.
Phantasm III (which does not have the subtitle Lord of the Dead either time the title is shown) starts off with the same flashback to the first movie that was at the beginning of the second one. Only this time it includes parts from the second film, carefully leaving out James LeGros, who played Mike in the second. That is because A. Michael Baldwin has returned for the role (so has everyone else that were in the other 2). After the flashback we pick right up at the end of part 2. We see the Tall Man who was “killed” come out of the doorway to the other dimension and take his own dead body back there. There is a boring “showdown” in the graveyard with Reggie and the Tall Man. Mike ends up in the hospital where he has a dream about Jody, his brother that died in the first film. Jody apparently is now a sphere that can change from sphere to Jody and vice versa at will. Some piss poor acting goes by and the Tall Man takes Mike. Thus begins Reggie’s journey to get Mike back. Along the way, he picks up a kid named Tim and a woman that looks like Wesley Snipes. Her name is Rocky.
This movie was just really really bad. Not The Children bad, but not far from it. There were way too many “dream sequences” and I put that in quotes because I think they some weren’t dreams, just hallucinations induced by the Tall Man. A couple of times we hear, “Don’t believe everything you see,” implying that they are visions. The main thing that bothered me about this one is that there was a lot of comedy in it. Too much in fact. It was distracting. It was also shitty comedy that was not funny which ruined whatever Coscarelli was trying to do by inserting that much of it in the film. One thing that was hilarious, and I am not sure if it was intentionally funny, was a sign at a gas station. It listed several guns, which I assumed were sold there like, Baretta and Colt. At the bottom, it said “Q-Tips.” Once again, not one person can act. There’s even those cheesey lines. Something about, “Don’t lose your head,” when someone’s head is cut off. Just nothing like the first one. Also, some pretty poor writing. Tim brutally murders 2 people of this 3 person gang. After witnessing this and getting a gun, the third person still does not kill him. Rather he tells him to freeze or something, leaving himself wide open to be killed, which he promptly is.
This is not a good installment. I am glad that there is but one left, as I can’t say that I even liked watching it knowing that I could rip it apart later. The story is a bit worn this at this point, and frankly should have stopped at the first film.
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