When I was 9 years old I went to a overnight birthday party at my buddy Dave’s house. We had the typical birthday activities during the sunlight hours, tag, kick the can, and army. We also consumed large amounts of sugar and caffeine… ya know to “keep us frosty if Charlie ambushed us.” At night we settled down in the basement for watching a movie on his vintage big screen TV.  His older brother had his girlfriend over and they decided we were all going to watch a horror film. Keep in mind the most scary thing I had seen up to this point were some old Gumby and Pokey episodes, so imagine my excitement, and fear when I heard it was “R” rated. It’s like being told you were being allowed to play with the big kids but they’re going out to play chicken with a train. So they slapped the VHS tape into that vintage  top loading VCR deck we began to watch “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.” Unfortunately I watched most of the movie while covering my face with the sleeping bag, but what I did see was forever etched in my psyche. To this day I still don’t wear a Halloween mask, and I always check the back for a Silver Shamrock badge…you know, just in case.

I decided recently to watch it again for the first time since then. I can’t imagine any parent letting a bunch of 9 year old kids watch this film but hey it was the 80’s. We drove giant cars with no seat belts, nobody wore helmets, and everyone ate steak with butter for dinner. So in honor of our website relaunch I bring you my review of my very first horror film. Also a big thank you to Davey’s big brother for helping turn me into the big twisted weirdo that I am today. Don’t worry Joey, I’m sure the recent charges won’t stick, and you’ll be making bale soon.

“Halloween III: Season of the Witch” decides to forgo any box office logic, and kick Michael Myers to the curb for this round of terror. After raking in the money with the first 2 films they decided on no Jamie Lee Curtis, no Donald Pleasence and no escaped psycho from the mental ward on vengeful killing spree. Nope, now you’ve got to worry about Halloween masks that turn your skull into jello mush ( just when I was getting over my fear of the rubber band masks snapping me in the eye.)

Tom “It’s my Diet Plan” Atkins plays Dan Challis a divorced doctor who likes impressing the ladies with his well formed mustache and plaid shirts. Late one night a stranger clutching a Halloween mask is brought into the ER shortly after nearly getting crushed by a K-car. He’s spouting gibberish about how everyone is going to do die, it’s the end of the world, about how Oprah foretold it. Unfortunately nobody listens and he gets his eyes gouged out by a Mormon in a rental suit… an apparent victim of poor health insurance. Dan chases the killer back down to his parked car where the guy drenches himself with gasoline and lights his polyester suit on fire. The cops later blame it as a drug induced suicide but is more likely from his deep shame of owning a Chrysler. Dan finds it all a bit too coincidental…a Halloween mask, Mormons, Chryslers.. it’s all obviously apart of an evil mass murder conspiracy that must be investigated. Dan’s investigative skill mostly involves him sitting at the bar watching TV and drinking beer at least until Ellie, the daughter of the recently eye gouged shows up. Remembering her from the hospital, he invites her to go check out the mask makers hometown. That’s a sorta creepy first date.

They drive out to “Santa Mira”  home of Silver Shamrock masks, where the leprechauns run free and  the shamrock milkshakes flow like wine.  The town folk are your typical Midwesterners… creepy, cold to the touch, and don’t take kindly to strangers. Ellie and Dan suspect there might be some shady dealings going on when a lady at their hotel gets her face burnt off by one of the mask’s electronic badges, a victim of botched home laser hair removal. The body is then whisked away in a corporate van by a gang of lab coats faster than you can say corporate lawsuit. Dan, and Ellie decide to visit the heavily guarded main factory outside of town where she was supposedly taken. Inside they meet the Bossman Mr. Cochran, a charming Irish grandpa type who surprisingly isn’t drunk but does have an insatiable thirst for death and pagan sacrifices. He takes them on a quick tour of the mask assembly line along with a family of annoying Corn Chuckers who eventually get locked up in a sound proof test room. The  mask the kid is wearing inevitably goes Chernobyl causing snakes and other icky things to crawl out of the kids noggin and kill the parents. It’s a Pepsi taste challenge gone horribly wrong.

Ellie is kidnapped later that night while back at the hotel and Dan gets the smack down by some robot thugs when he tries to save her. Mr. Cochran. In typical bad guy fashion explains his evil plans to Dan blabbering on about how they’re pagan druids chipping out demon pet rocks from a wedge of Stonehenge and they’re putting a little piece of that evil in each mask to sell to millions of kids. “We’re slashing prices on possessed mask and passing the killings onto you.”

Dan must escape the evil clutches of the corporate Cult so he can warn the rest of the world before a commercial plays that night triggering the masks kill switch. This would cause millions of kids heads everywhere to blow up like  pans of Jiffy Pop and who wants that cleaning bill.  Dan gets dragged, punched, kicked and covered in robot goo and eventually ends up tied to a chair and forced to watch horror movie marathons all night long…as if that’s some sort of bad thing. Nevermind about a few rugrats getting their heads liquefied, there’s a zombie marathon on!!

Having been a good 27 years since I seen this film it’s doesn’t really hold up on the scare meter as much as I remember but it’s still an impressive horror flick. Yeah, I know I’m in the minority on this one as a lot of horror buffs pan it as the worse in the Halloween series. Seriously? Did you see the one with Busta Rhymes? Also you’ll dig the amazing soundtrack from John Carpenter and Alan Howarth. Retroman Steve  says check it out and always store your druids in a cool dark place.

Who knew hospital crime scenes were such great places to meet chicks.

1 eye gouging 1 ear drilling Short circuiting kill-bots Disembodied attacking hands Snake cricket combo kill Whine-o-neck snapping with blood gysers Combustible robot Mormons Extreme laser oral surgery Druid Cultist Inc. Vaporizing old guys Robot grandmas Bionic goo Stonehenge rock carving	7 BLOOD mask kills and robot goo. 6 BEASTS kill-bot Mormons in rental suits 7 BREASTS minus a point for Tom Atkin’s butt 8.3 OVERALL

Check out the trailer for Halloween 3: Season of the Witch

There’re two certainties in life..death and taxes. And unless there’s itemizing going on in Hell, I suspect death is a bit less time-consuming. Yes, it’s tax season once again so that means it’s time to gather those crumpled receipts from the shoe boxes and try to remember how little money you had before you didn’t have any money. It’s kinda like you’re being forced to give a loan to that crazy uncle that says he needs the cash for groceries, but you know he’s just going to blow it at the race track, always betting on the horse with emphysema. Still you hope you might find a loophole somewhere and get some money back: “Could I actually write-off dog grooming?” “Is beer deductible?” “If I get my wife pregnant, can I claim the kid this year?” These are just some of the questions you might ask, but you can take comfort in knowing your cash will go to good use in the community. It will be invested in deserving projects such as the secret underground testing labs where they train monkeys how to open pickle jars. Large portions will go into technology investments like $12,000 coffee makers for Area 51, or eco-food preservation. Maybe they can finally fill in that big pothole they call the Grand Canyon with some of the money that’s left over. I’m counting my receipts and checking them twice because if the IRS Fairy ever does ever visit me at night, I want her to leave me a nice little tax return, and not pimp slap me and steal my wallet again.

Speaking of life-sucking vampires: Mathilda May may have induced many boys into puberty in the mid 80’s when she gallivanted around as a naked space vampire vixen in “Lifeforce.” A giant evil-looking space thistle is discovered in the tail of Haley’s Comet, and instead of just nuking it and asking questions later, a group of curious, dim-witted astronauts decide to go check it out. While inside they find a bunch of giant dead space bats floating around, and 3 naked people frozen in display cases. Is anyone in the crew mildly concerned for their safety yet? Nope. So they decide it’s an even better idea to haul the aliens back to Earth in their cargo hold.

Months later a rescue shuttle from Great Britain’s bustling space program is sent up to intercept the now adrift shuttle. Much to their horror they discover most of the crew burned beyond extra crispy. An apparent fondue party gone horribly wrong. Fortunately, the space nudists are still well preserved in their see-through tanning booths, and they swiftly get hauled down to London to be studied at a minimum security community college. Suffice to say alien shenanigans occur, as the formerly freeze-dried alien girl wakes up and starts making out with strangers, sucking out their lifeforce like soda through a straw. She then goes streaking through the hallways, distracting everyone with her space melons, only being confronted briefly by a security guard with the lure of a potato chip. No one can resist the fever for the flavor of a Pringles. Once free she goes on a London whirlwind hitchhikers tour of soul suck-i-tude, with her consciousness jumping around between bodies in an attempt to recharge her lifeforce batteries.

Meanwhile back in the lab, her first victim, now shrunk up like a used Capri Sun bag, gets up from the autopsy table and starts attacking the doctors to absorb their soul juice. Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback), the only survivor of the doomed space crew, suddenly shows up back on Earth in a mercury escape capsule (he must have been stuck in traffic), and he’s debriefed by a NASA British agent, who learned that he has a psychic connection to the female alien. They decide to hypnotize him to learn of her whereabouts, because that’s what NASA does best. His unique powers give Tom a Google Earth street view of license plate #’s, and he soon learns she’s traveling with a poor sheep herder in a Volvo. It’s as if the DMV suddenly became omnipresent.

Along with a Special Air Service operative and a wormy little doctor named Professor Fallada, they track down the partially possessed people, using them as a sort of compass to her main squeeze, a balding British doctor played by Patrick Stewart. They decide to pimp slap around Captain Picard for a while, and then pump him full of more narcotics than are in Mark Maguire’s butt cheeks, thus trapping the alien’s consciousness in his body. On a flight back to London, the space chick escapes via some nasty nasal discharge, materializing in front of them, and then crop dusting the whole of downtown London with her space vampire electric mojo. Warning: Side effects of vampire mojo may include dizziness, vomiting, and turning into an undead zombie who sucks out human souls.

Your typical zombie plague occurs, putting London in a quarantined war zone, while Caine and Carlsen race to destroy the source, and try to stop the vampire ship that’s attracting souls like flies to a bug zapper. It all leads up to a big showdown in a citadel with naked vampire chick, a Conan sword, and a whole lotta cheap special effects.

Tobe Hooper, after his little stint with “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, decided to make this sci-fi/horror movie, and it never quite decides if it’s an alien film or zombie film. Maybe it’s just an excuse to have a lady walk around naked for a half hour. Either way it’s a win-win. Retroman Steve says check it out and remember, only store your vampires in official Gladware containers. They help avoid freezer burn and lock in freshness.

Giant space thistles Soul powered light beacons Explodo vampire-zombies Freeze dried space bats Patrick Stewart pimp slappin’ Extreme sinus drainage Multiple face suckings Multiple impalements Capri Sun soul bags Death by flare pistol	7 BLOOD blood fountains through nostrils 8 BEASTS plenty of zombies and space vampires 9 BREASTS half the movie is a naked vampire chick 9.7 OVERALL

Lost Highway is proud to partner with Crackle.com in providing you the ability to watch “Lifeforce” online for Free! Check out the link to launch the website and video.

Everybody has to deal with fear. There’s the fear of snakes, fear of fire or dark places, and more people are more afraid of public speaking than actually dying. Strange how someone would rather be the person in the casket than the one delivering the eulogy, but there are a few lesser known phobias that are just as terrorizing. One such condition is Arachibutyrophobia, the overwhelming fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth and causing instantaneous death. There’s also Mulletphobia the fear of mullets and hockey hair. It’s a phobia approaching epidemic levels in certain parts of Canada. Some people also sufferer from Bananaphobia and won’t even be in the same room as the menacing yellow fruit referring to it as the “Devil’s Snack Food.” To them eating a bowl of fruit salad would be a dance with death.

Unfortunately there’s no help for me and my rare condition. I suffer from LaBeoufophobia…….it’s the irrational fear of the actor Shia LaBeouf. Ever since I saw Transformers the guy just gives me the creeps. He’s like a tiny man stuck in a teen body with facial hair and the mere thought of seeing his giant man-boy face on a 30ft screen makes me want to curl up in the fetal position. Even actors that have French sounding names make me feel queasy.

I’ve taken precautionary measures though, so as not to trigger an all out Shia-attack. I  avoid all movies starring giant talking robots. I steer clear of McDonald’s Playlands for fear a tiny Shia is hiding in in the ball pit. He’s well under their height requirement and has ninja like hiding skills. I’ve also put away all my vintage transformer toys into secure boxes for fear they will report back telepathically to Shia with my location and activities. So take heed my b-movie fans, the LaBeouf walks among us and he’s hungry searching for souls to steal. Only then can he remain perpetually 15 years old and still make movies with Megan Fox. It’s the perks of his deal with the Devil or as the unknowing public refer to him as “Michael Bay.”

Speaking of dealing with phobias. Allison (Jillian McWhirter) just signed up for a class in fear headed up by professor tall dark and creepy. After “pissing off” a frat guy by playing some Russian roulette, and threatening campus wide keg bans, Professor Derek pulls an Elvis and fakes everyone out with a staged suicide. This gets the college board of trustees’ undies in a bunch and they force him to conduct private classes in his home as punishment. Allison and her friend Cheryl along with a few others college kids who can’t find a kegger head to his house for some private tutoring. While I was holding out for virgin sacrifices or blood orgies for the extra credit, instead they get to sit around and tell scary campfire stories.

The first story told revolves around a couple out for a birthday celebration that decide to take the scenic route home only to get the inevitable flat tire in front of the spooky mansion. Seems that always happens in horror films. Car warranties should really cover drive by hauntings. They decide its safer to go into the house where there had been a vicious murdering spree rather than wait for a tow truck. The wife disappears upstairs, and the husband who has all the kahunas of a Don Knots starts freaking out, and sword swinging at anything that moves. Sufficient to say heads roll and the birthday bash ends on a big bummer. But hey at least he won’t have to deal with marriage counseling anymore plus he still gets cake.

After the tale of birthday beheadings we get stuck with a story about a bunch of whiny teen girls who haven’t discovered texting or the internet yet. They instead head out for a night of downtown clubbing in their 84′ Chrylser LeBaron. While trying to find a club that allows high school girls dressed like hookers, they get held hostage at an abandoned Gas n’ Go by some guard dogs, and a bum who looks a lot like Tommy Chong. Completely out of their weed stash the girls escape in their “teenmobile” which can easily achieve top speeds in the low twenties. It gives the bum plenty of time to hitch a ride on their roof to go get some snacks for his munchies. Fortunately, the girls innate driving skills slam them into a parked car sending the bum through the windshield like a test crash dummy. The relief that they’ve helped with downtown vagrancy is short lived though as the hungry guard hounds show up and turn one of the panicked girls into a doggie chew toy. The rest of them see that as the perfect time to get away but actually run out of gas, and have to hoof it to an abandoned warehouse instead. In the final standoff of lame they try to outsmart the hungry hounds in a battle of wits and hide and seek. It’s hard not to root for the dogs at that point.

The third and final story is about a  pre-CSI Marg Helgenberger who plays Alex. She’s works at a late night call center hoping around on crutches because apparently nobody had invented message machines in the 80’s. She starts getting crank calls from a psycho with a fetish for heavy breathing, and phone cord strangling who just offed one of her only customers. Alex’s mild apathy grows to terrified victim mentality as the psycho easily takes out her best friend, and uses her as a elevator door stop. Alex starts frantically hopping around knocking out incandescent light bulbs like some sort of photo sensitive jack terrier, and winds up falling down the stair well and impaling a security guard with a wood stake. This eventually leads to a showdown back in the main office. It’s all just an obvious assassination attempt from the phone recording machine industry. AT&T workers probably tell this story to their kids at night.

Back in reality the college kids are now all effectively creeped out and cranked up on caffeine, and Jujubees. A power blackout forces the professor to “check the fuses” in the basement where he gets strung up like a Piñata, and is about to get flame-broiled by the frat boy he had humiliated earlier. But things go sour as frat guy chickens out, and Edward emerges from the flames as an evil skeleton with a hankering for chopping on Greek pledges. Amongst the fiery chaos Allison ditches her friends, and high tails out of the house across multiple movie sets of all the previous stories while professor “Skeletor” is in hot pursuit with an axe to grind. Yeah it started getting a bit weird around then.
“After Midnight” is not one the scarier films to come out during the anthology band wagon of “Creepshow”, and Tales form the “Darkside” but it’s still a pretty entertaining ride. Hard to believe this movie was directed by the same guy that made the Ewoks film.

Retroman Steve says check it out, and never trust a professor who wants you to stop by his place for some “extra credit work.” They inevitably turn into blood thirsty undead skeletons that will try to steal your soul. It’s all right there in the fine print of your syllabus on page 24.

1 accidental beheading party 1 headshot Multiple heads rolls Pants wetting Homeless joyride stunt spectacular Flame broiled attack dogs Teenage doggie chew toy Professor Piñata Body chopping with axe	6 BLOOD a fake headshot with exploding brain bits 5 BEASTS the professor I think qualifies 0 BREASTS no naughty bits 7.7 OVERALL

I believe Shia LaBeouf roughly translated in the ancient french dialect means “Hungry Like the Wolf” or “Shy of the Beef.”

Check out the trailer for After Midnight

I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. Normally I’d attribute it to the 2 liters of Monster Energy drink I normally consume while watching schlocky late night cinema, but I’ve been cutting back on that. So now when I finally do fall asleep I have some really weird dreams. One in particular I keep having is where I’m being chased by zombies in a city and when I try to drive away my car will only go 10 mph. Sure it looks like a Lamborghini but drives like a Prius. Then I realize that I actually have the mutant power of Spiderman and used my web slinging ability to climb to the top of the Sears towers. That’s where I discover Oprah Winfrey perched like a vulture in her pants suit gnawing on a chicken leg. It figures Oprah would be the one person to survive the zombie apocalypse. So she gave me keys to a free car and a Oprah book of the month club membership and I go swinging back to down to my car. It all ends when I try to peel out, and I find my tires have been replaced with large sprinkled doughnuts and there’s a monkey dressed as a bellhop in the passengers seat singing Celine Dion songs. That’s when I wake up in a cold sweat. Sure zombies and a benevolent Oprah I can handle, but not monkeys singing “My heart will go on”. Guess I should ease up on the Chinese food before bedtime.

Speaking of bad dreams. Dennis Quaid plays Alex, a psychic womanizer who uses his gift to predict the future, bet on horses and read girl’s minds. A former associate Dr. Novotny (Max von Sydow) hates seeing him squander his money on effeminate casual wear from the Penny’s catalog and gets him to join his classified government dream project instead. And you know when it’s secret and the government is involved someone is going to die. The military is using psychics to enter people’s dreams all in order to advance military science or in-dream banner ads which ever is more profitable. Alex, when he’s not gallivanting his boney torso around in his Underoos likes to play the saxophone Clinton-style and hit on lab technicians. Jane (Kate Capshaw) plays the queen of the babe lab technicians and works with Alex to sharpen his dream linking skills. They play card games, he reads her mind for a quick lite read and they get right to some train shagging during Jane’s power nap.

Alex starts warming up his dreamcatcher skills through some subconscious marital advising and construction stunt work all leading up to a big snake hunt in some little fat kids head. This was apparently during a time when science didn’t really need a specific purpose. Buddy has been having bad dreams of being stuck in a Tim Burton movie while being pursued by the Boogeyman and it’s been really cutting into his eating time, so Alex plugs his mind into Buddy’s brain and they do battle with a big demonic snake creature who wants to make little buddy into ground round. It’s a sort of Anne Coulter of the subconscious. Buddy succeeds in chopping the creatures head off with a big kill axe while Alex gives it a nice bear hug. I believe Buddy’s been doing a lot of free weights in his spare time.

Meanwhile back in Washington the president has been having nightmares of kids with bad acne jumping out of broom closets while nuclear blasts are going off all around them. The dreams are so bad that the president decides he wants to disarm all the nukes at the next Geneva convention. It’s obviously a plot by bunch of commies, so they must be destroyed, and the president is rushed into the dream institute to have him studied to end this horrible threat. The military dream program is headed up by Bob Blair. One of the most politically evil character’s ever to wear a polyester suit and yet they named him Bob. “Oh no!…tremble before the fear of…. Bob!” But Christopher Plummer can just ooze evil out of any character even if you stuck him in a Barney suit he’d still make children cry. Bob also has a hit squad in rented suits ready to run over phone booths on a moments notice, and his own pet psycho psychic, Tommy played perfectly by David Pat Kelly. Tommy enjoys stuffing his face with food while harassing Alex about whose the better dream-linker, and when he’s really bored he kills patients “Just for the kicks man.” Bob doesn’t want the military machine to stop churning out nukes, so he hires Tommy to try to dream assassinate the president at nap time.

Alex discovers the assassination plot thanks to the cunning investigative reporting by Norm from Cheers but then gets rick rolled out of a moving car before he can get the news back to Dr. Novotny whose already been killed by Bob’s goon squad. There’s a motorcycle road race and Alex gets chased down by Lincoln Continentals at the race tracks narrowly escaping into the back of a horse trailer. That’s a lot of horses a** for one trailer. Alex works his way back to the institute just in time to remote link up with the president who is dreaming he’s on a Amtrak in Hell, next stop downtown Armagedonville. They fight subway zombies, ninjas, and radioactive wolf-beasts while being pursued by Tommy who just impaled the train conductor with freddy fingers and turned into a giant Snakeman. I had that exact same dream once but I was in high school and I was in my underwear. Oh wait… maybe that wasn’t a dream.

Dreamscape’s a pretty fun little 80’s flick with big nods to influencing Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm St., complete with a bad guy sporting Freddyish finger blades, and a giant nightmarish snake creature. I saw this movie when I was 10 years old and back then the Snakeman scared the heck out of me, but this time around I found it rather goofy. Dennis Quaid without a shirt was the most horrifying thing about it. Retroman Steve says check it and be sure to not eat Chinese food before bedtime.

- 1 motorcycle chase with crash and bale
- 2 nuclear explosions
- 2 Snakemen
- Multiple radioactive mutants
- Norm from Cheers cameo
- Steel beam circus acts
- Train shaggin’
- Emergency heart removal
- Lee press on Freddy nails
- Numchuck chucking
- Mutant dogs

7.1 out of 10

“it’s Dennis Quaid-tastic”

Check out the trailer for Dreamscape

It’s not too early to sharpen up your pinball skills. In April Pinball at the Zoo’ returns with all the flashing lights and dinging sounds your senses can handle. Now I wouldn’t really consider myself a pinball wizard. I’m neither deaf, dumb, nor blind… well…. o.k 2 out 3 ain’t too bad, but I do play a pretty mean pinball. I rate my pinball playing skill at a “David Blane” level. It’s lots of hype with no really big payoff. Mostly it’s just  me jumping around and yelling obscenities at the ball. But I can’t help it, I’m addicted to the game. The combination of precise skill shots and random chaos, the lights, the cheesy digital music, the way the arcade owner gives me an evil glare when I tilt the machine on it’s side. It all makes my fingers twitchy just thinking about it.

This year the Zoo’ will have the usual assortment of vendors to buy some cool pinball swag but the big draw has got to be that tournament trophy and 1st place pinball machine. Oh that would look great in my living room right next to that leg lamp Santa brought me. There’ll also be an arcade auction where you too can take home a piece of your childhood memories minus the pubescent humiliations and locker stuffings. Hundreds of arcade and pinball machines going cheaper than what you’d pay for a Playstation, and just like a cheap hooker if you overlook some cigarette stains you can get yourself a good deal. So come all ye pinheads and basement Game Room dwellers. Pilgrimage forth squinting in the sunlight to play with ye balls and flippers. You might just go home with a trophy to impress the ladies or at least a used game. Good luck fitting it in the back of that 83 Pinto.

Speaking of evil silver balls hurdling at your face, Phantasm II continues the fine tradition of flying death spheres ready to impale and dismember. The Tall Man, Angus Scrimm, is back to work digging up corpses and shrinking them down to evil dwarf monks for his army of the dead. Mike (James LeGros) has recently been let out of the insane asylum and is heading back home with his old pal Reggie from Phantasm I. Reg is a balding unemployed ice cream truck driver and ever since the ice cream market tanked he’s been living at home with his family. He refuses to acknowledge the events of the first film ever happened until The Tall Man kills his whole family in a spectacular gas explosion that would make Michael Bay weepy. All those gallons of ice cream lost forever… oh the humanity!! Hungry for revenge and Rocky Road they take a road trip in their Hemi Barricuda searching abandoned towns and dug up graveyards for the evil mortician.

The two take a pit stop in a creepy abandoned town where Mike communicates telepathically with his out of state girlfriend Liz when he sleeps. She’s a squeaky voiced bimbo whose in love with Mike even though they’ve never actually met. It’s sorta like Internet dating only with ESP. Liz’s grandfather just kicked the bucket recently so she’s been hanging out in mausoleum filing her nails, and getting tossed around by the tall man like drinking night at Ike Turner’s house. Soon her recently buried and now zombified grandpa tries out his new door to door sales job on the local town’s priest knocking at his door and giving him a good scare then crawls into bed afterwards with grandma. Dang! Grandpa didn’t get this much action when he was alive.

Liz heads to the mausoleum where grandma’s already been Shrinky Dinked down into a Star Wars Jawa and proceeds to viciously attack Liz’s knee caps. She easily put her down with a china vase to the noggin’. This sort of begs the question, why would the tall man raise an evil army of weak midget monks with thin skulls? Doesn’t seem like the best way to take over the world. Maybe he could have stretched them out instead of leaving them in the oven so long.

Meanwhile the priest catches a bad case of van Gogh-itis losing an ear and gets his head drilled in by a flying Cuisinart. This barely gives Liz enough time to escape into the nearby cemetery tripping over Mike and Reg already hiding out in an open grave. They all run like little girls and barricade themselves in a nearby abandoned house where they make S’mores, sing Kumbaya, and rig up grenades with Budweiser cans. Reggie then puts his moves on the nymphomaniac hitchhiker they picked up earlier whose got a thing for balding hippies who play guitar. Wow what are the odds? While those two are doing the naked lambada upstairs, Liz is left alone so she can be more easily kidnapped through the a convenient plate glass window. At this point she’s probably feeling like she should’ve just stayed in bed.

So it’s back to the mausoleum again where Reg and Mike battle evil henchmen in gas masks with giant chainsaws and shoot up dwarfs for target practice. They also get attacked by more flying drill spheres with upgraded seek and destroy lasers and then wrestle with some pasty white guys in rented tuxes.  Seriously guys some blondes just aren’t worth all this. But they do eventually free Liz from a pre death embalming and get sucked into a cross dimensional gateway…all because Mike had to be all “wonder what this button does?” Turns out the “other side” looks a lot like an abandoned beach in Jersey complete with red skies and mutant dwarfs in toxic waste barrels. One of the baby dwarfs nearly eats Reggie’s face when it’s turkey pop up timer goes off. This all leads up to a big showdown back in the real world with the tall man, a embalming needle, and some sulfuric acid and that’s when you know you got a party.

In typical Phantasm fashion the ending doesn’t make a lick of sense but who really cares. It’s such a fun ride just getting there. Any movie that has four-barreled shot guns, 5 foot long chainsaws, and homicidal dwarfs gets extra bonus points in my book. The director Don Coscarelli really out did himself on this one with some obvious nods to “Evil Dead”, and  ”The Beyond” and it also gave us more of The Tall Man and his evil scowl of creepiness. Phantasm II is one of those rare films where the sequel really out performs the original. Retroman Steve says check it out…. but only during visitation hours. Also be sure to keep your coffins stored in a cool dry place for freshness.

- Exploding house
- Exploding rats
- Ear choppin’
- Embalming-fu
- Chainsaw to the groin
- Corpse stabbing
- Forehead drilling
- Exploding Cudas
- Hand choppin’
- Flame-throwers
- Sawed off double barrel shotguns
- Dwarf tossin’
- Head drillin’
- Embalming acid
- Barrel-o-dwarfs

9.5 out of 10

“it’s Phantastic!”

Check out the trailer for Phantasm II