The Dumb Cool Weird Podcast
It is a podcast that covers old movies from the 20th century that are funny and ridiculous. We cover what is dumb, cool, and weird about each movie. We are raw and don't show mercy!!
🎙️ To Check Us Out and Support US Go Here: https://linktr.ee/retroradfilms
The Dumb Cool Weird Podcast
The Repetitiveness of Phantasm 3 (1994): The Same Troupes and Formula - Episode 60
Phantasm 3 might just be the zaniest installment of the franchise yet, and we're here to tell you why! Ever wonder why the townsfolk in horror movies seem so oblivious to the chaos around them? Join us on the Dumb, Cool, Weird podcast as we dissect the madness of "Phantasm 3," where even the Tall Man's sinister plot is overshadowed by a cast of characters straight out of a fever dream. From a pint-sized, trap-setting prodigy reminiscent of Kevin from "Home Alone" to a feisty ex-military woman with a questionable knack for nunchucks, this movie cranks up the absurdity. We laugh at Reggie's relentless, and often unwelcome, romantic pursuits and question the baffling reactions of locals who seem unfazed by the surrounding pandemonium.
Get ready for a deep dive into the ridiculous, as we contrast the film's low-budget quirks with intriguing expansions to the franchise's lore. We explore the challenges that come with cramming such a peculiar mix of elements into a single film, especially when the Tall Man's presence looms larger than ever. Our episode wraps up with a reflection on how these bizarre choices could shape the future of the series, pondering whether these odd turns will leave fans amused or exasperated. So, if you're in for some horror with a hearty side of hilarity, this episode is your ticket to understanding the outlandish world of "Phantasm 3.
Support the show:
🎤 Go to listen to the audio podcast on your favorite platform: https://dumbcoolweirdpodcast.buzzsprout.com/share
🌐 To see more stuff, buy some merch, or support us go to https://www.retroradfilms.com/dumbcoolweirdpodcast
😀 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/retroradfilms/
📷 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/retroradfilms/
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/retroradfilms
🌴 Links: https://linktr.ee/retroradfilms
dumb cool weird podcast. All right, welcome to the dumb, cool weird podcast. This is wes I'm, this is nick and we just watched phantasm 3. You know part three, third episode yeah, that was hard to watch like you said, it's a lot shorter this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they really keep running out of ideas on these movies because at the same time as they want to just go deeper into the lore of the tall man, they're having trouble actually sticking to like a level of continuity. The only thing that makes sense now is those. We figured out that he kills the cops in a town first. When it comes to that one kid's dad or he's like, yeah, my dad died and then he said it was a heart attack, but we all knew that was suspicious.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, he kills the lawman first and then he preys on the rest of the town yeah, you know we can go into detail about the story on this, but you know, basically it's the same kind of story you've heard in the last one. He goes from town to town in Oregon small towns and he just cleans them out essentially.
Speaker 2:What I like about this one is it kind of touches on that question we've all been asking. Still no answers. But it was that same question of what is happening in these towns and why is nobody looking into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it looks like what the tall man does is he takes out the authorities first. Yeah, it looks like what the tall man does is he takes out the authorities first, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I said, he takes out the cops first, then he goes after all of his prey because it's easier. That way no one else is able to make reports about everybody dying when all the cops and the coroners are dead, because he moves in his army of deadites and his lurkers or midgets.
Speaker 1:Yep, and he cleans out the town. I mean his lurkers or midgets yep and uh, tay cleans out the town. I mean this time around. You know we kind of started off. You know, from the same um, you know from the other movie and um, you know, the girlfriend dies. Of course you know, because that's that's, that's the common trope in these movies the other characters that were there besides. You know reggie and a few other characters like Mike. You know you're going to die If you're, if, if you're in a phantasm movie in the future, if they make another one and you're not Reggie or Mike, you're going to die.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And you know, let's get on to the fact that he pretty much employs deadites to go out into the world wherever he can, even if they're in the big cities, just to fuck with people, yep.
Speaker 1:It's true.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because it's deadites. It's not Cenobites yet.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:We're going to get Cenobites soon, though.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and so what we end up with is basically what ends up happening is Mike gets captured by the tall man and it's Reggie on his own again.
Speaker 2:And Jody comes back as an orb.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep Comes back as an orb, and this is Mike's brother.
Speaker 2:He didn't age well.
Speaker 1:No, he didn't.
Speaker 2:Looks so handsome in the first one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And what happens is basically um, we meet new characters again. We get a little kid who basically is like a serial killer version of uh you know, kevin from home alone. And then we get two black girls who were in the military. Quote unquote.
Speaker 2:One of them knows how to use nunchucks, yeah, um I have a real question for anybody who was in the army in the late 80s and early 90s you know we'll just put the whole 90s out there Did any of you people use nunchucks? Did the army teach you to defend yourself in combat with nunchucks or any form of Ninja Turtle weaponry?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we need a yes or no answer on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'm really questioning this, because that was like literally a line in the movie where Rocky says oh, by the way, her name is Rocky. She says the army taught me how to defend myself in combat. Yeah, and you're like with fucking nunchucks, what are you? Michelangelo from the Ninja Turtles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, apparently so, and yeah, so we get these new characters. They basically go from town to town trying to figure out where the tall man is. They encounter the deadites. You know, there's these three characters that show up in the beginning of the movie that are skeezy, try to hurt these bad guys. Yep, they try to hurt reggie. They get murdered by the little kid and they bury them and then they get dug up by the tall man. Of course, yeah.
Speaker 2:So the kid's dad was definitely a Vietnam vet who taught him all this stuff Because he set up traps, like Kevin McAllister, plus some of those guys who got back from NAMM and became preppers. Yep, a kid was killing people and lurkers.
Speaker 1:Yep. And one other thing you can kind of add to that is you know, everybody around them just keeps dying and they're just nonchalant, just like not really affected by it anymore. At this point it's like oh, you know, it's Phantasm 3, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, at least it gives you some sort of insight about the movie a little bit more. When we talk about, like the gas station attendant, who's like why are you going to that town? It's done dry and clean there. It's done dry and clean. There's a darkness that passes over it. Nobody's there. You know he's got a bat. He's like freaking out. And then they go to that other town and then they go to the motel. Yeah, the guy's a drunk, he's like oh, there was a plague Killed all the sheep, Then the people.
Speaker 1:Yep, and they didn't listen to those guys, because you know those are the guys that just don't stick their nose where it doesn't belong. So they live. You know they get to survive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's weird. The tall man's like oh yes, I need this one random stranger to tell the tale. No one will believe the drunk or the elderly.
Speaker 1:Mm. Hmm, yeah, and you know, like, like, like Nick was saying, you know you don't have as many like midgets in this movie. You have a little bit more deadites in this movie he really relied on his deadite army.
Speaker 2:I mean I thought we were gonna see him them uh fight the uh gas mask.
Speaker 1:Uh hearse driving deadites like they did in the uh second movie yeah, they just kind of dipped out and noped on those guys, didn't they?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess. Uh, they were a lot weaker than the other ones because she stabbed that one, like rocky stabbed that one, that one deadite, and he was gone. He was out of the count after they backed up the car.
Speaker 1:Yep. And then you have Reggie just trying to get his rocks off again, trying to fuck somebody, and he tries to have sex with Rocky and Rocky was like, oh yeah, we'll have sex. And then she chains him to the bed.
Speaker 2:No, but I thought it. Great though is he woke up and he's getting like a blowjob from the deadite yeah well that was. The one who was tomahawked.
Speaker 1:Well, that was like. Later on, I was somehow wondering why they were sleeping in the motel. But yeah, that does happen. So they end up going to Like, when they get towards the climax of the movie, they end up Well, we got to talk about the fact that they go in a dream, within a dream. They get Mike out from that dream.
Speaker 1:And then bring him back into reality, yeah, and then the fucking tall man's hands get fucking late like cut off because they close the portal and then it turns into creatures again, except this time it's not a giant fly, it's more like a hand creature.
Speaker 2:It's kind of it looks like it looks like. You know what it reminds me of.
Speaker 1:Thing from Adam, the Thing, yeah, from Adam's family, but with fangs, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's like the Thing and then Thing.
Speaker 1:Yep, and so yeah. So Mike comes back to us. We end up going to where the tall man is. They get in there and they're like, oh, look at this, there's a cryogenic thing. And then Mike has a flashback. He's like wait a minute, I think that the tall man doesn't like the cold.
Speaker 2:What I love is what Reggie's like. He's like. Well, mike, why didn't you ever tell us this? This would have been useful information years ago when we started fighting. And folks? The answer? The answer is the director didn't think about it back. Yeah, oh, also, the orbs started of developing new and improved ways to do things. Apparently, it's got a brain inside of it, so what the tall man does is he removes the brains out of the compressed corpses and puts it inside of the orbs. The orbs now also have an eyeball attachment so that they can be used as a surveillance device around the town, so he can spy on people. And on top of that, they also have new features of lobotomizing. Oh, they also have a different kind of laser now. Oh, and they help you teleport, and it's a GPS. We're going to start writing these down because they keep adding things.
Speaker 1:The list just keeps growing. I mean goddamn. Next thing, you know they're going to be sex toys.
Speaker 2:I think that was what the plan was, along with the next one where they were supposed to also have Bruce Campbell in the sequel, in the fourth sequel.
Speaker 1:So apparently Bruce Campbell was originally supposed to be in the fourth sequel. We never got that. That would have actually tied together the deadites with the phantasm yeah With the phantasm universe, the evil dead universe and the phantasm universe would have been the same universe. That would have been great, though it really would. Um, I like my multiverses and that would have been a really cool multiverse, but because?
Speaker 2:reggie has a shot, has a quadruple barrel shotgun and you know, bruce has his, his boomstick and his chainsaw hand yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:You know it's um, the climax of this movie is, well, very anti-limactic, let me just put it that way. The last one we saw the tall man. Basically he melted to death. In this one he just gets frozen in a cooler and then an orb flies out of his head. They have a fight with the Deadites again and they basically fuck them up. One of the guys gets his head screwed off by one of the balls, the one that Jody's brother's spirit is stuck in. Yeah, basically fucked them up. One of the guys gets his head screwed off by one of the balls like the one that jody's brother's spirit is stuck in.
Speaker 1:Yeah by the way, that's the thing. Apparently you can get a spirit, can possess the ball. I'm guessing that's because the brain is his brain is actually in the ball and his brain went rogue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so try to follow that this is uh, we We've also gotten to this point now where we will say what we think is going to happen in the movie, and it's almost so self-aware that it just does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean he called it that the kids was the son of a sheriff and then it turned out he was.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then you said I bet you it's's that dead eye bitch who's giving him the blowjob, right?
Speaker 1:now, and it was and it was, it was her. Yep, I knew it and yeah it just. It basically ends with mike waking up after going into a dream and then the tall man comes out of the dream and then it turns out mike has been one of those creatures all along, or some shit like that. He's got an orb in his head. Yeah, he's got an orb in his head, it's like. And then he leaves and then Jody gives us some half-ass fucking thing where he's like oh well, you'll know when you know and you don't know, but you can't always believe what you see.
Speaker 1:Or some stupid shit. Basically, that's stupid opera talk for oh, there's gonna be a sequel, shut the fuck up we uh have to come back for more movies so we end on a note where you know rocky, we think rocky's gonna be, she rolls up at the hearse. But thinking rocky's gonna like kill him, because that's happens in every movie turns out no, she's just leaving.
Speaker 2:And yeah, because the female lead always, like the female love interest, always kills, uhgie, yeah, or tries to, or stabs him.
Speaker 1:Tries to Hurts him. Yep, and then Reggie and the little kid, they go back into the house or the mortuary Mortuary, yeah and they're trying to figure out what happened to Mike. And then it turns out there's balls everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the old man Angus had some balls, some balls of steam.
Speaker 1:Hanging around the fucking top of the on the ceiling and he goes in notices. Something came out of the basically the tall man when he turned into an orb. He came out of the cryogenic tube and he came back and yeah, so Reggie's trapped by the orbs. You know he's going balls to the wall, basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they lost that opportunity.
Speaker 1:I know right. And then you know, basically Reggie's like oh, it's all over. And then the little kid grabs a gun, he looks over and the tall man comes out and oh, it's all over. And then the little kid grabs a gun, he looks over and the tall man comes out and goes it's never over. And then they did a fucking another half ass snatch where they grabbed the kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of like bringing out the uh the first movie and then it ends and then supposedly it leads into the next one where they he has like he go, like Reggie basically, and tries to find Mike, but that's for next week. He's probably in the spirit world Something, and so that was basically Phantasm III. There's not really much.
Speaker 2:This one's pretty weak.
Speaker 1:It's a lot shorter.
Speaker 2:It's pretty weak, it's definitely got a lower budget, a lot more goofy characters in this one.
Speaker 1:A lot less characters, a lot less production value. Because I looked it up, the budget was a lot lower.
Speaker 2:They were definitely in the same town, pretending they were in multiple towns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, they had to. They probably couldn't afford it.
Speaker 2:This guy made no money on these movies, did he?
Speaker 1:No, actually he did.
Speaker 2:That's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he really did make money on these movies. That's what's crazy about it. It kind of gives me hope. It gives me a lot of hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could become a filmmaker.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just create, Become a filmmaker or something right.
Speaker 2:I know right yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the dumb cool and the weird Nick. Start with the dumb.
Speaker 2:Well, the dumb, clearly, is the fact that they're relying heavily on deadites to carry the plot of this movie. We'll really stick with the whole. Like the lesbians, yeah, being in the army? Um, that's. It's not about them being lesbians in the army, it's the fact that they were saying that the army taught them how to defend themselves using nunchucks well, I think, uh, I think what's really dumb was uh rocky's friend, uh just stood there she just stood there while the orb was coming towards the shit even nobody has ever just kind of stood there and blankly stared at it murder them.
Speaker 2:So fucking dumb um, oh, another one. Uh, reggie was creepy, it was really.
Speaker 1:Uh, the really dumb thing was how reggie kept trying after she kept saying no yeah, well, I mean reggie's dumb, I mean he's ready, he's pretty dumb, he makes really dumb decisions, you know, yeah, uh, and then then we talk about the weird like what was? Uh. Well, I guess we'll do the cool first. What was cool about this movie?
Speaker 2:oh, um, the tall man had a lot more lines. He really uh put himself out there in this movie, yeah I'll definitely say the fact that he was talking more and kind of giving you more insight and being a real part of the movie, instead of just kind of coming in with one liner saying boy boy.
Speaker 1:I thought it was cool that we finally got some background to why the tall man does what he does.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because we got a little bit of that background. I kind of, in my opinion, I wish we would have gotten a little bit more of that, but we didn't.
Speaker 2:That's probably what they're setting up for the fourth movie. I hope so. They're giving him way more lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I really want to know everything about like why he does what he does, and it's cool that they kind of delve into it. But I thought it was terrible that they didn't go into it more. But that was something that was like. The coolest part of the movie for me was that was the fact that they were trying to go into the lore a little bit more in the movie.
Speaker 2:I just thought it was great that he had character development.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:I mean. I would also say the kid was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the kid was pretty cool. Little Reggie was a fuck. Rated R, little rated R. You know Kevin McAllister, yes.
Speaker 2:Like wearing that creepy mask as he's murdering people with a tomahawk in his home? Yeah, or the booby traps, yep, and then razor blade frisbee. Let's go on with the razor blade frisbee right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't make me throw this. And I looked at I remember I looked at nick and I go he, they are not about to do that. And then they did, yeah they really did it um weird. So the weirdest part about this entire movie is the fact that we keep learning more, that these orbs are more than what they seem the fucking putting the brains in the orb.
Speaker 2:That's weird as shit, dude and well, and the fact is is that they're also a teleportation device yes, they are a teleportation device, I mean it's weird.
Speaker 1:It's the essence of a human it's weird that they just keep adding more and more shit to what this thing can do. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next movie it's you know it can fucking like make dinner for you. It could probably do your taxes too. Yeah, it's some weird shit. I also think that it's weird that, um, that this, this, this thing has been happening for so long. You think that they would have already alerted the us military or cia or something, or the fbi, but you know this is what do I know that?
Speaker 2:this weird part that was kind of weird too is they finally demand like, like, made it to where you can understand that they're interdimensional, so they might be going through multiple different dimensions at this point yeah and they don't even know it at this moment it's about the people in the movie yeah, the people in the movie might be crossing over, but through different dimensions, because every time they touch one of those tuning fork teleporters they might be transporting themselves to another dimension.
Speaker 1:You know, it's entirely possible. It may. That may be the reason why, um, even though it picks up right after the next movie, even though it's like almost a decade apart each time, pretty much. Maybe that's the explanation. Maybe that's the reason why they look older. Or maybe that's the reason why it still looks like it's the 80s, because they're going through a different dimension and like they're back in the 80s or something. I don't know well, they also.
Speaker 2:They also said that he's coming from other dimensions. Yeah, so it's a possibility that while he's traveling to their dimension, they're accidentally going to another dimension that he presides over.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's possible. Everything is weird.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's a weird movie. I mean we could talk about the weird all day, but I think that's Phantasm, that's Phantasm 3. We're going to be doing the fourth one next week and that'll be. That'll wrap it up. We'll probably do the fifth one sometime next year to kind of completely wrap up the series.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, we're getting ready for Christmas movies coming up next month and we got some treats for the for y'all for that.
Speaker 2:Yes, so very good stuff.
Speaker 1:Good stuff. So, yep, that's uh, that's it. So we'll see you next week for uh, well, actually, yeah, next week. We'll see you next week for phantasm four, and then we're moving to Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So you want to sign us out.
Speaker 2:Stay sexy.
Speaker 1:Thanks for watching the dumb, cool, weird podcast where we cover some of your favorite movies in.
