Horror.com Forums - Talk about horror. - Rank The Phantasm Films

Phantasm may have inspired me more than anything. I'll rank 'em in the order I saw them.

Phantasm II: Always will be my favorite. Saw it when I was 10, way too young for it, and it scared me so much I kept changing the channel. It seemed terribly evil and mean spirited but then it had these awesome heroes who could actually take care of themselves! A real shocker for a horror movie. The ending seemed mean to a 10 year old who didn't understand it was a bigger story. I thought it was just a single entry with random characters thrown in, no continuity from movie to movie.

Phantasm: When I saw this years later as a 16 year old I started grasping the great mythology behind the series, the characters were bigger than the things that happened in the second film. It was kind of an epic journey and not really a slasher film at all (which had really been my only exposure to horror at this point in my life).

Phantasm III: So glad to see Reggie bouncing around, didn't care much for this one.

Phantasm IV: I have to say this is equal to the first one for me, though not quite as good as the second. I didn't like Oblivion when I first saw it, the ending felt like another cheap cliff hanger in a film that promised to be the end.

Spoilers for Oblivion:

But upon further viewings I have come to believe Michael is dying at the end, those last good memories leaking out of the hole in his head, and Reggie's futile hunt after the Tall Man will never end. Even Michael's last memory seems to echo this, almost as if Reggie gets caught in a loop of time only to live out his unending hunt for the Tall Man again and again as his friends are taken. It's incredibly sad in this lens.

Sorry for the long post, I just never found a place to vent my Phantasm love. No one gets it!