30 Day Horror Challenge Strikes Back Day 8: Character you would want as your best friend.

Ok, let’s see here, who would I want as my best friend? By the way, I refuse to use BFF or any other ridiculous text abbreviation in actual conversation because that’s just idiotic. Anyway, it would have to be Reggie Bannister from the Phantasm series. He just seems like a really cool guy. He’s always got great cars. Maybe he’d let me take that beautiful Hemicuda from part 2 out for a spin. He’s a pony-tailed, guitar playing aging hippy. This means two things. First, he’s mellow and laid back, which is a quality I like. Second, he most likely knows where to get really good weed.

When the ca-ca hits the fan though, he’s a good guy to have on your side. He’s loyal as hell. Honestly, take a look at your friends. If suddenly the Tall Man, his legion of demonic jawas, and those flying death spheres were all gunning for you, how many of your friends would step up and say “You’re gonna have to go through me to get to him?” If you said none, then you’re probably right. Reggie was there for Mike though. He fought side by side with him even before the Tall Man killed his family. At first, his only motive was friendship. That’s loyalty right there. Going out of your way to help a friend is one thing. Taking on the Tall Man is a whole different ballgame.

He’s damn good in a fight too. He holds his own, thinks quickly on his feet, and knows some pretty useful tricks. I wouldn’t have thought to build a four barreled shotgun, would you? That shotgun is bad ass though. Watch the expert way he sets all those booby traps in part 2. Where did he learn this stuff? Who knows? Who cares? All I know is that I want this dude on my side.

As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also another brother of the saw. In Phantasm 2 he even has a chainsaw duel with one of the Tall Man’s minions. I have a special place in my movie geek heart for chainsaw duels. Hell, I can only think of three that ever happened, and Reggie was in one of them. He carries one everywhere throughout that flick. See yesterday’s post if you need an explanation of the whole “brothers of the saw” thing. His only weakness seems to be women. The ladies lead to his downfall every time. I can’t fault him for that though. I already have plenty of friends this is true for. Hell, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. He seems like he’d be fun to just hang out with, and a great ally in battle when necessary. I don’t know about that ice cream truck though. You keep that thing away from me Reg.

30 Day Horror Challenge Day 26 - Your favorite horror film to watch as a child

I didn’t watch horror movies as a child. I was a brainwashed little holy roller and thought they were evil. When we talk about horror flicks I watched as a “kid,” we’re talking about my teens. I didn’t have a VCR until I was 16, so I couldn’t really rent movies. When I got one, I taped them off of TV. There was one tape in particular that I watched all the time. It had 2 movies on it, both taped off of Monstervision. I know I’ve talked a lot about Monstervision in the last couple of posts, but I’m going to do it one more time. I can’t help it, it figures into a lot of my favorites. One of the flicks on the tape was the remake of Night of the Living Dead, but I already used that for Day 17. The other was Phantasm 2.

Phantasm is one of a handful of series where I like the second one best. We won’t go into the others, because that’s a controversy for another time. I’m not going to even attempt to give you a plot summary for this one. Why? Because it doesn’t make a damn lick of sense! It doesn’t matter though, because as Phantasm fans know, trying to figure out what the hell is going on is half the fun. First of all, one of the leads is recast for this one, Tuesday Knight style. James LeGros is a pretty good actor, but he just wasn’t right for the role of Mike, played in the other 3 films by Michael Baldwin. He was a little too buff and a little too tough. Sorry. The incomparable Reggie Bannister is back though. Since this movie came 8 years after the original, he gets the films “Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween 2” moment. Reggie and Mike are sitting by the fire. Mike goes upstairs and is grabbed by the Tall Man, thankfully still played by Angus Scrimm. Reggie hears a noise and gets up to investigate, magically looking 10 years older than he did 20 seconds ago. It’s a Phantasm movie though, so we don’t question it. Whatever you say Don.

It seems like Don Coscarelli came up with a bunch of ideas for cool scenes and came up with a way to string them together later. Those cool scenes, though, are cool enough that the incomprehensible plot is forgivable without a second thought. We have Reggie and Mike getting all A-Team in a hardware store; building a giant homemade flame thrower and a four barrel shotgun. I’ll repeat that, A F’N FOUR BARREL SHOTGUN! That flame thrower gets used to light a fireplace by the way. There’s an epic chainsaw duel. I love a good chainsaw duel. There’s a bad ass car. There are cool vast empty graveyards. There’s one of the funniest sex scenes of all time. The demon Jawas are back. The silver balls are back. Ever since I was a young boy...nevermind. This time, though, there’s a gold ball. No, I’m not going to tell you, you have to see for yourself. I mean hell, look at that picture. You definitely don’t want that ball in your mouth. Sorry folks, it’s impossible to write about Phantasm and not make one ball joke. Anyway, it’s got everything you expect from a Phantasm flick, with some 80’s action flick tropes thrown in. Who could ask for anything more?

This tape was made extra cool by the commentary of Joe Bob Briggs. Just ‘cause I’m a nice guy, here’s the intro and commercial break commentaries.

I used to be able to recite both Hemicuda speeches word for word.

I was little schoolgirl level excited when I heard that this was finally coming out on DVD. I already had Phantasm and Phantasm 3, and the discs were loaded with extras. I had read about all the cool stuff on the Region 2 release. They got commentary, convention appearances, TV spots, bios, trailers, photo galleries, the whole 9. Imagine my pissedoffedness (it’s a word ‘cause I say so) when I saw that in the US all we got was a lousy trailer. The DVD release blows, hopefully they’re gonna double dip on this one, ‘cause I’m waiting for a good release to update my VHS. Two severed thumbs up for the movie itself. Nathan says check it out. Or, if you’re like me, check it out again and again and again…