Phantasm 4 : Oblivion

Alternate titles : The Never Dead Part 4, Das Bose 4.

Tagline : "The sequel with BALLS!"

The whole original cast return for this fourth outing in the Phantasm series, which picks up sometime after Part 3. Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) is attempting to track down the series resident villain, the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), in an aquired hearse. As he is beginning to change into one of the Tall Man's zombies, and hopes to be able to find some way of stopping the transformation.

Driving out to the desert wastes of Death Valley, Mike is met by the ghostly image of his dead brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) where in order to learn how to defeat the Tall Man, he has to take Mike through a series of dark interdimensional journey's through space and time, where we discover the origins of where the Tall Man came from, and what will happen if he's not stopped.

In the meantime Reggie (Reggie Bannister) is hot on Mike's trail, hoping to get to him before the Tall Man does. Battling more of the series Zombie dwarf's, masked grave diggers, and killer spheres in the process, along with a few new surprises, including zombie police officers.

Perhaps not as entertaining as the previous films, which appears to lack the action and humour of the others, this is still an interesting sequel. Although it's one failing is that it suffers from what I call "sequal-itis", in that you really need to have seen the previous movies in order to understand the plot, as it basically just tries to explain the Tall Man's origins (a lot of which done through use of unused out-take footage from the previous films).

A good film, but perhaps one for fans of the series only. So if you haven't already seen parts 1-3, do so first.

Overall Marks : 5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Alternate Tag lines "From the Creators of the Original Phantasm comes the sequel 'Phans' Have Been Screaming for", "The Nightmare Lives On...But Humanity May Not".
• The scene were the Tall Man is walking down a deserted city street was filmed on Wilshire Boulevard in LA. However they didn't have a permit to film, nor permission to block the street off. So they went out on Thanksgiving morning, just before dawn, and grabbed what shots they could before the traffic kicked in. They did have a very close call when a police car came down the street, but fortunately they took one look at Angus Scrimm's character and drove off.
• The films budget was $650,000.
• Filmed in 23 days.
• Originally the Director wanted to film a complete alien complex out in the desert, however the film's budget wouldn't stretch to this, so they opted for the simple field of "gateways"
• The end credit music, which is basically a hard rock medley of the Phantasm theme, was performed by Reggie Bannister, under his bands title "Reggie B & the Jizz Wailin Ya Doggies".
• The majority of the flashback footage was actually unused out-take footage from the previous films. Most notably, the scene where the Tall Man is hanged by Mike and Jody, which formed part of the original ending that was trimmed from the final release of the first Phantasm film
• The Demonic police officer was played by the Stuntman Bob Ivy, who also worked on the previous films.
• The scene where Reggie comes accross an abadoned motel was filmed at a disused shack out in the desert, which they dressed up to look like a motel. They didn't actually have any filming permits to shoot there and the whole scene was filmed without permission.

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