Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead Review (Film, 1994) #31DaysofHorror
content warning: gore, sexual content, violence against women, foul language
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead picks up right where Phantasm II left off. Reggie and Mike are simultaneously running away from and hunting for The Tall Man, a mysterious figure who is robbing graves to build a (literal) small army (they’re tiny fighters, about half as tall as the living adults who encounter them). They bleed embalming fluid and don’t stay dead. Now Mike’s brother Jody is back, only he’s returned as one of those killer orbs. The Tall Man is also just harvesting entire towns now, living and dead, to grow his forces. He wants Mike for whatever reason, claiming it’s time for him to go back. Also, Reggie picks up a preteen sidekick named Tim who is wicked with some homemade deadly weapons and a revolver. He also tries to hook up with a former soldier name Rocky who can destroy anyone with her nunchucks and self defense training.
Phantasm III is camp. It’s self-aware. It has interesting things to say about the series but we’ve now added in the afterlife (after being told there is no afterlife in the series), people being trapped in the floating orbs if they’re not turned into the minions, and just shapeshifting everywhere. It’s a hoot.
Writer/director Don Coscarelli gives the fans what they say they wanted in this film. A. Michael Baldwin returns as Mike and does an excellent job picking up the pieces of James Le Gros’ very different approach to the character. Bill Thornbury also returns as Jody and has to do a lot of the heavy lifting in the film. His voiceover work as an orb is excellent and his physical presence is a strong grounding force in a silly film. Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm continue their roles as Reggie and The Tall Man, giving you more of what made their characters so endearing and terrifying, respectively.
There is a heavier thesis to this film that clearly puts into words what the series is actually playing with. Essentially, you can’t trust what you see because nothing is ever as simple as it seems. For Phantasm III, that means a whole lot of world building that makes the survivors question everything they know so far. For the series as a whole, it forces a reevaluation of what you’ve seen in the past.
Take those orbs, for example. I believe this is the first film where they call them Sentinels. The Sentinels are a weapon controlled by The Tall Man, sort of. We learn through the return of Jody that The Sentinels are the people taken by The Tall Man. Jody is able to transform between human and Sentinel for unspecified reasons, but each floating murderous orb aiming for the head is a lost soul. This implies that they go after the living to try to get a body back any way they can.
The Tall Man can control the Sentinels. That’s not all he can control. He can control the living and the dead. His signature glare is a sign that he is manipulating the world around him, and that can include just freezing a person in place and carrying them away without lifting a finger. He doesn’t always have to, but special cases who’ve fought back like Reggie and the gang are an exception.
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead really is a Don Coscarelli film about perspective. That’s the central idea exemplified by Jody. Only Mike can hear Jody when he’s in Sentinel form. Everyone else has no idea what is going on other than one of those orbs isn’t just trying to kill them. No one else believes what is happening until they see Jody transform back into his human form or randomly use one of the Sentinel’s powers as a human. He can’t stay a human forever because The Tall Man can track him, but he can’t help his friends as easily if he doesn’t change forms to communicate.
Rocky’s role in the film is introduced as another way of bringing home the play on perspective and not believing what you see. She and her friend Tanesha knockout and handcuff Reggie in the mausoleum. Their entire world has been destroyed. Everyone else in their town is dead or gone and they want answers. Reggie is a threat to them because he shows up out of nowhere after the disappearance. They do not listen to him when he tries to warn them about the Sentinels; Rocky gets a chance to learn what happened to her town as she sees her friend attacked in the blink of an eye. She’s naturally upset, fighting back anyway she can to stay alive as her understanding of what is real and what is not is forever changed. Even when she joins Reggie and Tim, she doesn’t trust Reggie at all and tries to hold up a tough and intimidating appearance at all costs.
Another large factor suggested in this entry is the role of children in The Tall Man’s plans. Entire towns are just being abandoned and no one knows why. Well, Reggie and Mike do, but they can’t go on about The Tall Man and the Sentinels without risking another trip to a psychiatric hospital. Reggie is rescued by Tim, who kind of Home Alone but with murders their way out of an attack from a trio of hardened criminals pillaging the town. They discover a makeshift orphanage a few miles out of town where 20 or so of the children from that ghost town have emerged with no parents and no believable explanation for what happened.
Despite his ingenuity, Tim is a child. His makeshift weapons are things like razor blades shoved into a frisbee or a small camping axe. He is immediately in danger if anyone who wants to harm him gets close as he’s literally a child. Tim can’t physically fight them off. He can attack from a distance or run away.
We know The Tall Man has no problem attacking teenagers. In Phantasm, we see the Fortune Teller’s Granddaughter get taken in the mausoleum. Mike is also chased and attacked the whole way through. Phantasm III is the first time we see younger children and they are left alone unless they go after The Tall Man themselves. The Tall Man even tells Mike at one point that he’s lived long enough and it’s time to join him. Why a character as merciless as The Tall Man is so compassionate towards younger children is not explained directly. The film does go into more of the lore about his little minions, however, and it seems like The Tall Man views them as his children and his responsibility. Curious.
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead is a fascinating film for Phantasm fans to dig into. In half the film, it is a silly, over the top action/sci-fi/slasher about fighting The Tall Man who is trying to take over the world. In the other half, it’s a deep meditation on the perception of reality, life, death, and everything we’ve learned about the world of the series so far. Part of its charm is just the random tonal shifts, which do, eventually, start to make sense about halfway through.
Phantasm III: Lord of The Dead is streaming on Shudder.
