What you bring to a movie viewing is just about as important as what the movie contributes. There are many reasons why movies are bad. Some are clearly unredeemable, but for some unliked movies all that is missing is a mental adjustment and voila, bad into good. There are numerous examples of movies that were originally flops and then some change in the audience mindset turned them into classics. For Plan 9 from Outer Space we learned that if you expect the worst, it becomes the best, for It’s a Wonderful Life we learned that if you repeat it for years during Christmas, you too will cry when they sing Auld Lang Syne. From the Rocky Horror Picture Show we learned that if you move it to midnight and add audience participation, it becomes the funnest movie ever made. And so on.
Phantasm II is generally regarded as a terrible sequel. Director Don Coscarelli, himself, claims he had no idea how to write a sequel and didn’t want to (I don’t believe him). Rotten Tomatoes has it at 38%, Roger Ebert: one star. General consensus: “meaningless” (Variety), “a waste of time” (Sun-Sentinel), and “indecipherable” (Fearnet).
In this It’s Good, Actually column, I offer step-by-step instructions you can follow in preparation to watch Phantasm II. If you follow these nine not-easy steps I guarantee, or your money back, that you will experience one of the greatest cinematic achievements and will never be the same.
Step 1: Read Raymond Roussel’s New Impressions of Africa, a 1200+ line poem made of parentheses inside parentheses inside parentheses inside parentheses.
Let me rephrase that: New Impressions of Africa is a 1200+ line (though less lines ((due to the use of parentheses inside parentheses (((which render a beginning ((((a big bang)))) in the center))) which invariably end)) and more of a circle) poem by Raymond Roussel.
Step 2: Read Alan Moore’s Watchmen focusing on Dr. Manhattan’s way of seeing. As he explains it to Laurie Juspeczyk on Mars, Dr. Manhattan reads atoms. “Things have their shape in time, not space.” “Reality is just a matter of assembling the components in the correct sequence.” For him, everything blurs into everything else in one continuous flow of atomic energy. Imagine what that looks and feels like.
Alternate option: Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five focusing on how Tralfamadorians experience time.
Step 3: Spend at least five continuous minutes (the more the better) staring at Francis Bacon’s Head VI. Absorb the image into your being. Imagine everything looks like that. Get that feel. This will not only assist you in visualizing Dr Manhattan’s perspective, but it will also help you get into the right mood for watching Phantasm II. If you get a similar feel as the one your got while reading New Impressions of Africa, then you are on the right track. Bonus for repeating exercise with Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Step 4: Move to (or visit) some sprawling modern major city such as Houston, LA or Orlando (not NYC or any of the old cities). Bonus points if the city is so humid that posters droop on the walls like they are melting as they absorb water molecules from the air. Double bonus if you are experiencing the water molecules Dr. Manhattan style.
Step 5: In your chosen city, find a flophouse to rent for at least two weeks. The dingier the better. Rent rooms in the flophouse to five or six hippie/punk struggling artists. Spend time with your new friends painting on walls, doing performance art and staying up all night discussing things like Piero Manzoni’s canned Artist’s Shit, and David Lynch’s Eraserhead. This step will be even more effective if you bring your own artist friends along, instead of using found ones in the city of your choice.
Step 6: The Instigator. One of your friends will be the Instigator. Unlike the others, the Instigator’s taste must veer very mainstream. The Instigator should validate why they like things like that Color Me Badd song by saying things such as “I like what I like,” thus immediately halting any debate on the matter.
Step 7: You should pre-arrange for the Instigator to be the one who brings up the idea of viewing Phantasm II. Allow for some argument and dissension from the others who will initially not want to see some cheesy horror flop from the 80s. Some of them may suggest seeing the original Phantasm. “It’s much better,” they’ll say. Resist the temptation. In the ideal setup, you have not seen the original. If you have seen it, try to forget about it, it will only decrease your experience of Phantasm II. No matter what the housemates say, the Instigator should insist. Eventually, you will agree that what the hell, what else are you going to do? Sit around all night again? “Let’s watch this movie,” you’ll say. You and the Instigator must now convince at least four others in the group. If you can’t do this, go back to step 5 and find a new group and new Instigator. If you convince at least four people, go on to the next step.
Step 8: The viewing environment should be setup in advance. Phantasm II should be viewed on as big a screen as you can find. The experience should be immersive. Quadruple points for an actual theater screening and driving there with everyone piled into a car, sitting on each other’s laps, faces pressed against each other or the windows.
Step 9: An hour before the movie starts, drop some high-grade LSD.
Now you are ready.
If you follow all the above steps correctly, you are guaranteed, or your money back, that you will see Phantasm II, as not even the director intended, and your concept of reality will be transformed, and you will be both glad and horrified, and you will realize that reality is a flying silver ball ready to lodge itself into your head and turn your mind to mush.
If you follow the instructions, you will see the movie for what it is, a house of mirrors reflecting time and space in all directions, right into your world and into your mind and the minds of your companions.
It is no coincidence that the sequel number is styled in the mirrored II instead of 2. The mirroring is also apparent in the promotional movie posters. These show the Tall Man (Angus Grimm) holding the silver ball and on the surface of the ball are the reflected faces of principal characters Mike (James LeGros) and Liz (Paula Irvine). These two look a lot alike, almost mirror images of each other. Below them, the tag line reads: “The Ball is Back.” Because in this movie, the silver ball is the creator, the center, and the origin of everything.
If you follow the instructions, you will see that Phantasm II doesn’t start at the beginning, but about 52 minutes in. The start of the story is the first silver ball flying in profile through the mortuary halls, the universe reflected on its surface. From this silver ball, the story extends outwards, not linearly backwards and forwards, but in all directions, like an explosion, like a big bang.
In the movie as in the poster, Mike and Liz are mirror images of each other. Not only do they have very similar facial features, but they also dress alike, share the same dreams, and can read each other’s mind. The opening parentheses of the movie are about reuniting this divided unity. They are shot in similar but opposite angles; they say similar things and have similar expressions, to the point that they start to blur into each other. It is almost as if Coscarelli filmed their scenes then mashed them up, giving Mike’s scenes a bit more Mike, and Liz’s a bit more Liz. By the time they finally meet, shortly after the silver ball starts the story, it’s like they are meeting themselves.
Supporting character Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is initially mirrored by Father Meyers (Kenneth Tigar), the priest. They look alike, but Father Meyers is killed seconds from the start, after the silver ball lodges itself into his forehead and drills into his brain. So we only see him in the opening parentheses. In all the closing parentheses Reggie is mirrored by Alchemy (Samantha Phillips). They get the same “mash-up” treatment as Liz and Mike.
There are also other secondary elements that increase this mirroring effect, Liz and her sister, grandma and grandpa, the twin morticians, the chainsaw battle, the quadruple minions on the staircase and the double double-barrel shotgun Reggie uses to kill them.
The mirroring effect is also used in the settings. Houses explode in ways that almost seem like Coscarelli might have used the same shot, except in one the characters are running from the burning house, in the other they are holding back from running to it. There are also mirrored instances of them getting stuff out of the car trunk, or cutting their way into boarded-up houses with a chainsaw, or walking through cemeteries with dug out graves, or driving through abandoned towns. Mirrors and more mirrors.
At this point you might look at your group as they watch the movie and realize the same mirroring is taking place in your world and you are all reflections of each other reflecting into the movie as the movie is reflected on you.
The line between your world and the movie will get thinner as you notice the way the backgrounds are alive. The principal background used to this effect is the marble walls of the mortuary halls which seem to be about to swallow the characters and then keep on swallowing the screen and into your world. The feeling will increase as you follow them between dugout graves that seem to be crawling with millions of bugs, or as they drive through ghost towns where every little piece of debris is vibrating.
This house of mirrors is ultimately reflected in the plot. Many have found the plot confusing or non-existent; they have not followed the instructions. The plot is simple: a silver ball creates the world, in the world, girl dreams of boy who in turn, dreams of girl dreaming of boy. Like two mirrors facing each other. The resulting feedback loop creates the silver ball from which all of it stems. A perfect synthesis of reality.
In the closing parentheses of the movie, the characters find twin mirrored posts (like the II in the title). The posts form a portal to another dimension where they come face to face with extremely distorted versions of themselves, shrunken and slimy, in a hellish landscape. Something got mirrored once too many times?
In the final scene, Mike and Liz try to shake each other awake repeating “It’s all a dream.” “It’s only a dream.” Then the Tall Man delivers the closing line, “No, it’s not.”If you followed the instructions correctly, you know who is right.
RC Hopgood was born in Puerto Rico, and lived in Texas, Mexico and Colorado. He has a BFA from Rice University and is the author of “Bellows: Fables from the Musical Underground,” (Hmm, 2013) and a year-long 52 entry blog about his upbringing in Puerto Rico, “Cuentos del Barrio Machuchal” (2014-2015). Currently he lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is working on a long-form fictional piece about a book that changes its words every time someone reads it.