Movies discussed: Phantasm 2, John Dies at the End, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.
Don Coscarelli gives us our three movies for the week. Phantasm 2 continues to be a it of an enigma, John Dies at the End is a hell of a ride, and Incident On and Off a Mountain Road divides us a bit.
Next weeks assignments: Home Invasion Movies!
Josh’s pick: High Tension
Adam’s pick: The Strangers
Matt’s pick: The Collector
Watch along if you like and we’ll see you next week.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
so, i didn’t watch “incident” but i did catch the other two.
can i completely Chud Out over “john dies at the end?” that was amazing! it was funny, it looked good and (finally) coscarelli found a way to make his narration fetish almost work.
the narration thing is (imeo) by far the weakest aspect of any given coscarelli film except possibly in phantasm 2, where it was beaten out by massive, massive plot failures. i’ll get to that in a minute.
but, yeah! great characters, decent plot, good effects – i especially liked that there was obviously stuff going on that the protagonist never figured out. we know that the cop took the soy sauce, for example, but we don’t know how he got involved, what his connection was to flying moustache guy or why he seemed to abruptly switch sides not once but twice! that’s good first-person cinema.
phantasm 2, though? what the fuck?
i wanted to like this movie. i’d seen the first one, enjoyed it and was looking forward to this one. i was willing to ignore the nonsense with the multiple narrators, the unexaplained psychic connection with turtleneck girl, reggie’s trying to pretend that the first movie never happened and so on but at the 69 minute mark the movie completely fell apart.
first of all, the town is basically emptied out and has been for a while. right at the 69 minute mark we’ve got mullet-boy one doing regular mortuary work – putting the ashes in the bag and so on. why is he doing that? to maintain cover? at that point? what the fuck for?
then turtleneck girl crotch-poles him. mullet-boy has a delayed reaction. weak. how come he couldn’t roll off those rollers like the girl did? why wasn’t she tied up? they knew she wasn’t dead.
then mullet-boy part deux gets his hand trapped by the sentinal and those two are just sitting there! not-baldwin doesn’t shoot him. why not? why did they sit there so long before getting up and running?
the sentinal shoots a rat – a tiny little thing that moves fast – in like nothing flat. then, somehow, turtleneck and not-baldwin are able to run past it. lame! really fucking lame! and then the sentinel flies after then instead of just blasting it’s laser or whatever through those flimsy wooden doors and killing them. really lame!
the final kill of mullet boy part deux was great, but why was the sentinal killing him in the first place? i mean, yeah, maybe it couldn’t see him behind the door but why did it keep after him?
around 78:18 we’ve got the graver fighting reg with the bigger chainsaw. reg runs up the stairs and instead of bringing down the chainsaw that has way longer reach than just his arm the graver grabs reg’s leg! what the FUCK?!?
and then reg ditches his gun even though he only dropped his shells like fifteen feet from where he was standing. i mean, he should have at least loaded up one more time even if he did somehow forget that he had at least six pockets. (ah, i hear mike bringing this up. well done, sir!)
at 80:38 we have a sphere trapped behind a door. that it somehow can’t burn through, although it was established not five minutes ago that they could. and then long-bangs hotwires the hearse, which conveniently has the plate on the steering wheel column already removed and the wires accessible. my ass.
i had to watch the next two after this one, and was much happier with them than i was with 2.
anyway, sweet episode guys! see ya next week. do watch phantasm 3 & 4 if you get a chance!
Love is the law, love under will.
Great observations. Turtleneck and Not-Baldwin is my new Captain and Tennille cover band. I’m gonna try to get through the other two Phantasm movie asap. I’ll mention it once it do.
I haven’t seen this yet but with The appearance of litlte hooded dwarfs, deadly flying spheres, and strange interdimensional portals are amongst the spectacles at the funeral home. I’m definitely going to watch it
one more thing – mike, the reason why magicians and psychics and whatnot don’t go get rich at casinos is because that’s a fast and awesome way to get your thumbs cut off.
Now I REALLY want to watch John Dies. It sounds like Fear And Loathing in Dude Where’s Bill and Ted’s Excellent Car?
I had watched Incident months ago, and I totally have Adam’s back on the Bree Turner love. She’s in Grimm if you want a reason to watch that show. Anyway, I enjoyed it. You guys pretty much had all the thoughts I had on it and more.
I think I saw part of Phantasm 2 once, and my reaction was, “What is this crap?” Perhaps a proper viewing of it would help, but I’m thinking probably not.
I may try the ham-fisted drinking game in two weeks if Matt can get the podcast posted early enough on Thursday…
There are some practical limitations to when I can get the show posted unfortunately. We record from 12PM – 2:30PM CST, and I basically post it as soon as I cut it together afterwards. I believe we are moving up our recording time to 10AM next week, so there is hope.
No worries, man. I can always save it for Saturday.
Oh, and I forgot Mama comes out today. If you any of you watch it, could you give a brief review (even if it’s just a rating) of it? This got me really excited about it: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/18/169607825/mama-a-good-old-fashioned-horror-movie
Mama does indeed look amazing. I’m all over that.
Troy i am very interested in mama. I think I may check that out before I head to California (if i get some spare time) if not i will try my best to use my friends for a screener or something. Basically I will do my best to find it and watch it.
At around 1:40:00 was that an Inflationary Language reference? Awesome!