PHANTASM: RAVAGER (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Sure enough, at the beginning of the final film, Reggie is on his own, with no reference as to where Mike went. Reggie wanders along an open country road, where he meets a man driving a car that belongs to Reggie. After Reggie tosses out the car-thief, he’s chased by two silver flying spheres. Though the middle-aged warrior escapes this threat, he’s then subjected to a half-dozen changes of scenery and situation—stuck in an asylum telling his wild story to Mike (reversing their relationship from the first film), traveling back in time to talk to Jedediah Morningside, meeting another hot young woman—who, rather than morphing into a demon, later turns up in another time-continuum as an entirely different person. To top it all off, the Tall Man’s invasion of Earth, using both various slaves and gigantic silver spheres, has transpired, reducing the world to chaos—unless, of course, the chaos is purely a product of Reggie’s delusions. Mike and Jody are even more peripheral to the story here than in the previous two films, although Coscarelli gives fans of the Rocky character a quick cameo at the film’s end.

Since the first film started with the psychic chaos fomented by untimely death—i.e., the result of the “monsters getting you”—I find it fitting that the series meets its (probable) end by confronting the waking world with a new apocalypse. Angus Scrimm passed in 2016, and while in theory any actor can be replaced in any role, I doubt fans of the franchise would welcome such a substitution. Further, since RAVAGER was the only one of the films that Coscarelli did not direct, in that he ceded that chore to co-writer David Franklin, I think one would be justified in suspecting that the creator has nothing more to say with his characters, and thus the series might be allowed a quiet and dignified death.