In going bigger, Phantasm II has removed much that made the first unique. Studio interference ensured that the surrealism, both in look and narrative, was dropped in favour of more action - guns, chainsaw fights, flamethrowers - creating a road-movie sequel that could so easily be lost amongst a plethora of 80s horror.
Whilst the studio requested that Coscarelli drop the dream sequences and Michael Baldwin as Mike, he was allowed to keep Reggie Bannister’s charismatic “bald, middle-aged, ex-ice cream vendor,” Reggie (who he even gives a bizarre and laughable sex scene to), and Angus Scrimm reprises the terrifying Tall Man, his chrome sentinels still stalking and enacting violent and inventive death, his crushed corpses still skulking.
Much of what made Phantasm distinctive - its fantastical and bizarre ambiguity - is gone, yet Coscarelli is a horror auteur who still creates something weird, inventive and more out there than most mainstream studio horror.