Phantasm II (1988)

Mike, now released from a psychiatric hospital, continues his journey to stop the evil Tall Man from his grim work.

Director:

Don Coscarelli

Writer:

Don Coscarelli

Stars:

James Le Gros, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm

2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
James Le Gros	...	Mike (as James LeGros)
Reggie Bannister	...	Reggie
Angus Scrimm	...	The Tall Man
Paula Irvine	...	Liz
Samantha Phillips	...	Alchemy
Kenneth Tigar	...	Father Meyers
Ruth C. Engel	...	Grandma
Mark Major	...	Mortician (as Mark Anthony Major)
Rubin Kushner	...	Grandpa
Stacey Travis	...	Jeri
J. Patrick McNamara	...	Psychologist
A. Michael Baldwin	...	Young Mike (as Michael Baldwin)
Amanda Gray	...	Background Player
Elizabeth Quezada	...	Background Player
Lauren Gray	...	Background Player

Storyline

Mike is released from psychiatry, when he agrees with the doctors that the terrible happenings in his past were just in his imagination. But once he's free, he contacts Redge and they team up to hunt down and eliminate the "Tall Man", who plunders the graveyards and steals the corpses with help of his terrible dwarfs. A beautiful strange girl starts to appear in Mike's dreams. He assumes she's in danger and needs their help - will they find her before the Tall Man can do her any harm?

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Plot Keywords:

sequel | second part | number in title | funeral home | coffin | 

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Taglines:

This summer, have a ball.

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Genres:

Action | Fantasy | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 July 1988 (USA)

Also Known As:

Fantasma II

Filming Locations:

Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$3,012,285, 10 July 1988

Gross USA:

$7,282,851

Company Credits

Production Co:

Spacegate Productions, Starway International Inc., Universal Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This was the lowest-budgeted film Universal produced in the eighties.

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Goofs

(at around 1h 27 mins) When Mike and Reg are sucked through the pillars, there are two shots of Reg in the alien world. His feet, which should be hooked around one of the pillars, are visible in the shot, wholly in the alien world. Reg is also lying on his stomach, with his feet side by side on the ground, when his feet should be vertical, hooked around the pillar back on his world.

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Quotes

Reggie: You knew... before it happened.

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Crazy Credits

With the exception of the title Phantasm II, there are no opening credits.

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Alternate Versions

Television version is very heavily cut and removes nearly all the gore. Differences in Television version are:

• When Mike storms into the Embalming Room in the old abandoned Mortuary, the dead Woman's body has a cloth sheet over her.
• The Worm creature instantly pops out of the fake Liz's back and the scene where he crawls out is completely cut.
• Father Meyers' sphere attack is almost completely cut. The shot of his ear flying is removed as is the drilling on his head.
• Alchemy doesn't remove her top when walking up the stairs with Reggie.
• When Reggie & Alchemy are having sex in the room in the abandoned Manor, Alchemy has a top on and the shots of her in her panties are completely removed.
• When Mike & Reggie are chasing The Tall Man in their car and Reggie points his 4-barreled shotgun at The Tall Man in his Hearse, Mike hollars "Shoot Him!" instead of "Shoot The F**ker!"
• The shot of the Caretaker burning to death in the Furnace is cut completely.
• The silver sphere drilling the Caretaker's hand in the Hallway is also cut.
• The gold "Ripper" sphere sawing it's way into the Caretaker's back is cut. However, we do see the gruesome shot of the drill in his mouth after Mike pulls him back.
• The Tall Man's death is cut very heavily. The shots of his skin peeling off and his eyes exploding are completely removed.

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Connections

Followed by Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)

User Reviews

creepy as hell

Well well well...here's something rare: a decent sequel (in my opinion).

Here's something else that's rare: the movie succeeded in being creepy, which a lot of other so-called "horror" movies fail to do. They either claim to be "scary" by having (this is kind of hard to explain here in text) a person in a scene back up, not being right in the center of the Point Of View of the camera, but off to the side...so the filmmakers will hope we won't see someone grab them from offscreen and that we'll be scared, which has been done about a billion times since the first horror movie ever came out (whatever it was), or they throw in a bunch of gore and claim that it's "scary" that way. (Some people also don't know what scary is, like when a friend of mine once said she didn't like them scary movies, like Freddy Krueger and all...come on, Freddy wasn't scary, he was just cool!)

Actually, I didn't think this movie was scary either, but creepy, as I kind of liken the atmosphere of this movie to Steven King's Children of the Corn short story, which I thought was really creepy due to a town being totally empty, for some reason...except for the weird children. Well, it wasn't creepy onscreen, since an empty town with nothing going on made it...BORING. Here the towns are empty...and so are all of the graves; they looked like they were freshly dug for the newly deceased to be placed into, but it was actually just the opposite (and by the way, was I the only one to notice that every SINGLE small town had absolutely HUGE graveyards?!).

Granted, some of the script bites, I didn't think the new Michael could act (some people on here thought he could, but he just seemed to only have one facial expression and only said his lines with only one or two [mono]tones...THAT'S acting?) and some of it didn't make any sense...and I don't mean in the ways as to why the Tall Man is compressing humans into the evil dwarf minions, what the spheres are, etc., but I'm talking about what that priest had to do with it and all; his scenes are confusing and unexplained and should've been left out or explained as to what exactly he was doing (or what he was hoping to accomplish).

Some people have complained about how the atmosphere isn't the same as the first one, but I can't really comment on it, since I only saw the original about 15 years ago on tv, but rest assured, I WILL be re-renting it in the near future! All I can say is that this sequel was pretty brightly lit--rather than making it dark so we can't see who or what is going to pop out from the shadows, hoping to scare us (oh PLEASE!)--yet it was still creepy. So a new atmosphere was added! I'm just looking forward to Phantasm's End, slated for release in 2002!