Phantasmic Breastmaster

We didn't intend on having a Don Coscarelli fest, but Phantasm II (1988) just bubbled up in our queue, so we went with it.

You may remember how the first one ended (SPOILER)  - it was all a dream the kid had. But just as he's about to leave with Reggie Bannister, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and the dwarves grab him. This one opens 5-7 years later. The kid is now a young man, James Le Gros, in a mental institution. He has been having visions of a cute girl, Paula Irvine, who needs his help. She has been having visions of him and the Tall Man, and seeing her relatives die off one by one. Le Gros claims to be cured of his "delusions" and is released to Reggie.

Reggie still thinks the story about the Tall Man is crazy, but a disaster quickly changes his mind. Soon they are in the Hemi 'Cuda (Ms. Spenser's favorite character) and heading down to Home Depot to steal enough ordinance to deal with any dwarves Angus Scrimm can throw at them. Le Gros goes with a welding torch flame thrower, but Reggie has the best tool: two double-barreled shotguns, hose-clamped together, and sawed off with an angle-grinder - at  a 45-degree angle.

So they travel the state, looking for the Tall Man. Everywhere they go, they find deserted towns with shuttered storefronts, which means he has been there, or maybe Reaganomics. Along the way they pick up a cute girl named Alchemy, who Le Gros has seen dead in a vision. Even creepier, she seems to be into Reggie, a balding, middle-aged, ex-ice cream salesman.

They get to Irvine's town, and the four of them go after the Tall Man, with mixed results. We still have the atmosphere of horror, the dwarves, the dimensional gateway, and the flying balls. There's the mix of dream, vision, and reality. But best of all, the low-rent camaraderie between the boys and their new girlfriends. I just like hanging out with Coscarelli's characters.

Believe it or not, I've never seen The Beastmaster (1982) - I didn't have cable in the 90s. It's a fun sword-and-sorcery about an evil wizard (Rip Torn) who steals a queen's unborn son and puts him into a cow's womb, to be killed later. He is saved by a passing woodsman and grows up to be a great warrior.

Now for a minute, I thought this was a Buddhist allegory - isn't there a myth that the Buddha was threatened by his uncle, and so was magically borne, not by his mother, but by an elephant? Maybe not, but this kid doesn't grow up to discover disease, poverty, and death and embark on a life of austerities followed by enlightenment. Instead he becomes Marc Singer, a very fit young man who wears very little clothing. Ms. Spenser liked this a lot - seriously, because he is fit, strong, but not pumped up in a showy way. Functional and strong.

He also communes a set of animals, including an eagle, a tiger painted black (?!?) and a pair of weasels. He does less with this power than you might expect, although it does come in handy.

We love a good sword-and-sorcery story, so of course we loved this. All the nekkid breastses and scantily clad men and women make it fun (and give it my favored nickname Breastmasher). Like so many of Don Coscarelli's movies, it feels like it could have ended about five times before the real ending, but so what, that's just more fun for us.