Phantasm: Ravager





Undeniable
and undesirable, all good things must come to an end. Time takes and death upends the glorious and great. 2016 took many from us. That year took Angus Scrimm. This film gives him a proper sendoff. Okay, so many have and will continue to balk about that previous sentence.  I think it does. Scrimm became Legend with the career character that is The Tall Man, a Boogeyman conjured, we first thought, from the tormented psyche of a young man who lost his brother in a car wreck. Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) experiences adventures with his brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury), and together they encounter The Tall Man and his robed minions, small-sized bodies of those who have died, miniaturized at Morningside Funeral Home, many of them barreled and shipped off to the another red world, found once entered through a dimensional gateway between two poles. Introduced was Lady in Lavender (Kathy Lester), a female disguise or figment of The Tall Man, a knife ready to stab once she seduces you, and, more importantly, the silver spheres which fly towards humans, ready to drill a skull so blood can squirt from a hole at its center. In the first film, Phantasm (1979), a wonderfully odd and mad horror mishmash which doesn't feel obligated to follow any rules, it seems the film was a dream Mike was having. It does seem to operate within a type of dream logic, as interconnected events happen to a kid hoping his brother doesn't abandon him. Don Coscarelli had created some type of ever-increasingly convoluted and difficult series of films further piling on the enigma of who or what The Tall Man is and what exactly is going on to those that are his direct adversaries.

Reggie Bannister was initially a minor character, a buddy of Mike and Jody who worked as an ice cream man in their small town. He gets inadvertently involved just because of his friends, and it appears he'll serve as simple Tall Man fodder, nothin more than a warm body to bury a knife into. But he becomes so much more. So much more.

"Our paths cross again."

"When the time comes, they don't die. They come to me."

"It's a hell of a way to start a trio."

Along the way, Reggie emerged as the hero, the sawed-off shotgun packing, ponytailed, women-seeking boss, turning in the ice cream suit for the 'Cuda and jeans. The trunk had the weapons, and Reggie had the hippie vernacular to coexist with his willingness to forge ahead towards possible, most certain danger. His mission was to locate Mike and take out The Tall Man. Jody would return as a victim of The Tall Man, trying to usurp the villainous control over him and help his friends.

If you go to the Ravager message board on the IMDb, there are threads on fan theories regarding what Mike says to his dear friend, Reggie, visiting him at a hospital, regarding belief in parallel dimensions and multiple realities. The film even offers the distinct possibility that Reggie, suffering onset increasing symptoms of dementia, is losing his grip on reality...as dementia worsens, the whole Tall Man confluence of bizarre events of the past three films is merely an extension of what Mike experienced passed on to Reggie. The trio joining forces at the end and riding off in the Barracuda, all souped-up and reinforced for a war ahead, seemed like as good a way to send off the franchise, coinciding with Dementia Reggie passing away with his two dearest friends at his bedside. The film does a lot of alternating between Reggie and his travails with Tall Man and the ongoing nature of dying at a home.

This film wasn't exactly what series fans wanted. It can be a bit hostile in terms of storyline coherence due to how the direction never ceases to jerk us from fantasy Reggie-fighting-the-Tall-Man to Reggie-fighting-ravaging-dementia. And, quite frankly, does any of us want to accept that what we had been watching previously was all product of imagined, desired fantasy? And now it was all running together, reality juggling with illusion, the deteriorating mind rendering a beloved character shambles, unable to determine what is real or unreal. It'd be much easier to accept alternative dimensions run amok, and all these versions of Reggie, Mike, Jody, and Tall Man, variations coming and going, as proposed realities...not mind created fiction further interrupting a true reality, being ordinary existence now a home for the ill, and having to spend the final days losing grip on what is true as what is imagined continues come and go. Who wants to accept that there is no Tall Man, and all the delightfully wicked and absurd content concerning him was fantasy created by a mind wanting fantasy instead of the lonely and mundane. And now a mind ravaging dementia muddles it all until there's nothing left to discern truth from fiction. Only death seems to be release. But at least he's with his friends.



***

Comments

Popular Posts