I’ve written before of being terrified way back in 1979 or, more likely, 1980 when I saw the original Phantasm (the movie was released in 1979 but I must have seen it at least a little after its theatrical release as I wasn’t in the U.S. at the time).

The movie was incredibly creepy and downright shocking to my then 13-14 year old mind.  The scene with the flying ball-o-death, in particular, had me shaking.

The memory of the film stayed with me but it wasn’t until many years later that I got to revisit the movie.  By then, there were at least three sequels (Phantasm II came out in 1988 and is probably the best of the sequels.  Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead came out in 1994 and Phantasm IV: Oblivion came out in 1998).  All four of these films were written and directed by Don Coscarelli and feature (for the most part) the same recurring characters, protagonists Mike (A. Michael Baldwin, though he was temporarily replaced with James Le Gros for Phantasm II), Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Jody (Bill Thornbury), and, most importantly, the movies’ villain: the very sinister Tall Man (Angus Scrimm).

The plot of that first film played out like a beautiful, unsettling, and ultimately terrifying nightmare: Young Mike, his brother Jody, and best friend Reggie lose a good friend (this happens in the movie’s opening act).  During the funeral, Mike witnesses a strange sight involving the Tall Man, the funeral’s director, lifting without any apparent effort a coffin with their friend’s body in it.  What is this sinister -and clearly superhuman- man up to?

What follows is Mike’s attempts to get his brother and Reggie to believe him that something is most decidedly up at the funeral parlor.  Eventually they face the Tall Man and, more terrifyingly, the strange flying metal balls which serve as security in the funeral home.  These ball ram a victim in the head and impale themselves into a victim’s skull via razor sharp blades.  Once impaled, a drill opens up the victim’s skull and sucks out their blood.

I’m tempted to show the movie’s most famous sequence here, but for those who haven’t seen the film, give it a look.  While the original movie has aged some it remains, IMHO, a decent watch, especially since it was remastered this year.

Phantasm II, as I mentioned before, is probably the best of the sequels though by the time it was released I couldn’t help but think The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) had an impact on that feature.  Ironically, it wouldn’t surprise me if The Evil Dead, which came out a couple of years after the original Phantasm, was inspired to some degree by Phantasm yet It seems to be the case that Evil Dead II, which came out a year before Phantasm II, proved something of an inspiration to that movie.

In Phantasm II you had a little more humor and a “hero” in Reggie who armed himself in a semi-goofy manner not unlike Ash did.

Phantasm III, to my eyes, felt like a half-baked work.  It wasn’t terrible by any means but it just felt far from complete.  I’m not certain if I’ve seen Phantasm IV but if I have, it clearly didn’t register all that strongly.

Which brings us to Phantasm: Ravager, the fifth and, most likely (I’ll get into that in a moment), last Phantasm film.  Don Coscarelli co-wrote the screenplay of the film but co-writer David Hartman took on the directorial reigns.

The film follows Reggie as he appears to move from alternate world to world, seeing himself as an old man nearing his death in one world to the fighter he always was taking on the Tall Man and his menacing silver balls in the next.  He also gets to meet up with the mysterious Lady in Lavender (Kathy Lester), a still sexy incarnation of the Tall Man.

In the retirement home Reggie finds himself in he is visited by a now grown and much older Mike who listens to his friend’s stories of confronting the evil Tall Man but barely believes them.  In another reality, he wanders a desert area, meets up with a beautiful woman, and is confronted by the menacing silver balls.  In a third reality, he faces a world in flames and under the thumb of the Tall Man.

The story, as one suspects, is presented in a fragmented manner and the viewers are possibly dealing with a elderly man who may be losing his mind as he draws nearer and nearer to death.  The original Phantasm was essentially a meditation on a young man’s mental breakdown following the death of (I’ll try to be delicate and non-spoilery here) a very close family member.  When that film is done, we’re not certain how much of what we saw was real or not.

Subsequent Phantasm films, especially the second one, tried to straddle the reality versus fantasy elements to varying degrees and its fair to say the more that was revealed the less successful the films were.

Phantasm: Ravager inverts the original film’s formula and, to my mind, this is where it is at its most clever, especially after all we’ve experienced in 2016.  Instead of a young boy working out the trauma of death, we have an older man whose best years are behind him dealing with his approaching death (again, so 2016).  Has any of what he’s done before been real, or is he suffering from age related dementia?  It’s heavy stuff which could have made for great drama but…

…the film simply doesn’t stick the landing as well as I hoped.

The sequences of Reggie in a nursing home are, in my opinion, the best the movie offers.  When Reggie talks of his past to the grown Mike and Mike nods and patiently lets his good friend vent (noting at one point he’s heard these stories before), as a viewer I couldn’t help but feel touched by Mike’s caring and Reggie’s confusion.  These scenes were handled quite well by the actors.

Angus Scrimm, who played the movie’s villain The Tall Man, appears here for the last time in the various movie timelines in his most famous role.  Mr. Scrimm would pass away before the film was completed but his presence in this movie proves most welcome yet again, though the fact that the actor has passed may well indicate the movie series has reached its end.

While I enjoyed much of what I saw in the film, what seriously hurts it, IMHO, is its climax.  Set in a Tall Man created apocalypse, these scenes could have been very grim but instead are goofy thanks to the introduction of another character (I won’t go into spoilers but this “tough as nails” character was too late an addition and his “smart ass” quips felt out of place with what we had going until that moment.  I can’t help but wonder about the wisdom of going in that direction at the tail end).  It also hurts that these sequences show the film’s very low budget in a very unflattering way.  What does it say when the best scenes in the film have Reggie and Mike talking in a nursing home with no special effects at all?  I can’t say Phantasm: Ravager is an outright terrible film.  It works well enough and provides fans of the series several things, particularly the touching idea of this hero we’ve followed for so long being laid low by the ravages (pun intended) of time itself.  Others who are not as familiar with the world of Phantasm will surely not enjoy the material as much and should probably try the first two films to see if they like them before dipping their toes into this one.

In the end, I can only offer a tepid recommendation for Phantasm: Ravager.  If you’ve been around since the beginning and want to see the end, its a decent enough bookend flick that could have been, with a slightly different focus, a stronger overall work.