Really Surprised!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Full disclosure: I have not seen any of the other "Phantasm" films, and do not expect ever to do so. This one was adequate in some ways. It was a little fun to see such a young James Le Gros, before his countenance doomed him to a career of playing villains. The acting was OK for this type of film, but the script, wow. I'll just say that I laughed out loud at what would have been the most inappropriate time, one of the most supposedly intense and scary scenes. I'm pretty sure they weren't going for camp, but who knows.

Better than the original, in my opinion. The first of the series to feature a female lead, some really good special FX, and the ice cream man played by Reggie Bannister gets to kick some ass! The ONLY THING -- is replacing A. Michael Baldwin with a Brad Pitt-type actor (FUN FACT: Brad Pitt actually auditioned for this role)

Bombing at the box office in 1988 (probably because it's nigh incomprehensible), "Phantasm II" is the sequel to the 1979 original. The protagonist is 19 year-old Mike (James Le Gros), who's released from a metal hospital and immediately teams-up with middle-aged Reg (Reggie Bannister) to hunt down the mysterious Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), an otherworldly mortician who plunders whole graveyards, as well as the sleeping, with the help of hideous little gnomes and baseball-sized spheres that can saw into people (?). What does the Tall Man do with the bodies and people? I think he turns them into more diabolical gnomes. Who knows? Paula Irvine and Samantha Phillips are also on hand as Liz and Alchemy.While this is a unique, colorful and fairly entertaining horror flick, it's hampered by an incoherent story, cardboard characters, a low-budget cartoony delivery and a dubious cast. One example of the "cardboard characters" is Reggie, whose house and family are blown to bits and yet he gets over it immediately with zero signs of grief. Despite this, it's hard not to like Reggie and root for him & Mike as they go on the road in search of the Tall Man; they're unlikely, but amiable protagonists.Really, everything about this film is bizarre; I've never seen anything else like it. Even the casting's bizarre. For instance, the villain is played by some tall, skinny old guy who lacks the charisma of, say, Christopher Lee to be fully effective. It's the same thing with the girls. They're not bad, but they're hardly "Friday Girl" material, but – then again – this may not be a bad thing because they reflect real people rather than actors with Hollywood good-looks.As noted above, the story – or the way it's told – is nigh incomprehensible. There's a lot of action and things to perk your attention every five minutes, but everything's just so muddled, gaudy and comic booky, which may be part of the movie's charm. I can say this: it's likable.The film runs 97 minutes and was shot in the greater Los Angeles area.GRADE: C+

Phantasm II continues in much the same vein as the original, with a totally illogical, anything goes plot, only this time the demented fun is taken to even greater heights with inventive Evil Dead-style camera-work (director Coscarelli even acknowledges Sam Raimi directly by showing his name on a prop), even more bonkers sphere action (this time with several types of deadly chrome balls), and a lot more gore.As Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and Mike (James LeGros) continue their hunt for The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), armed to the teeth with a variety of home-made weapons (including a quadruple-barrelled shotgun and a flamethrower), they get to battle hordes of ugly dwarfs, hook up with a couple of babes (Samantha Phillips as Alchemy and Paula Irvine as Liz), survive not one, but two exploding houses, and get dragged through an inter-dimensional gate to an alien world.Working with a much bigger budget than on the first film, Coscarelli is able to really go to town with his visuals, offering up such awesome sights as a cemetery full of empty graves, a town left completely ravaged by The Tall Man, and a wicked chainsaw duel between Reggie and a gas-mask wearing 'graver' (beings who exhume bodies for The Tall Man) that sees Reggie apply his revving power-tool to his opponents nether regions (and if that hasn't sold this film to you, then nothing will).