Six grisly, creatively nightmarish tales guaranteed to unsettle Phantasm fans from the inside out.
Six goosebump-inducing tales of terror from the mind of horror writer and filmmaker Coscarelli.
Celebrating the 45th anniversary of the sinister film universe of Phantasm (which the author wrote, directed, and filmed) and its sequels, these six eerie, supernatural vignettes elaborate on the fates of both fan-favorite characters and some minor, lesser-known ones from the original movie. Each story is supplemented by Coscarelli’s informative prologues and afterword sections describing his creative process and placing the tales within the overall Phantasm timeline. The character Reggie, a resilient ice cream vendor-turned-action hero in the first movie, headlines the immersive 1968-set opening tale “Life and Death in the ‘Nam,” in which he is a young soldier in the Vietnam War. Recruited to a sniper team, Reggie pursues a malevolent, high-ranking Vietcong officer but finds a terrifying, shapeshifting ghoul instead. “Behind the Mortuary Door” imagines the evolution of the “Caretaker” character, who, in the film, was the first to be ferociously impaled and exsanguinated by one of the Tall Man’s barbed chrome sentinel spheres. The story “Tobe” spotlights the supporting character of the same name and affords him a perspective that’s as fully realized, mortifyingly detailed, and as cinematic as the film itself. Coscarelli’s attention also extends to several characters who appeared in Phantasm sequels, like Rocky, the tough, nunchucks-brandishing female United States Army vet who appeared in the third iteration (Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead). In “The Rocky Road,” she and her best friend, Tanesha, explore a cemetery populated by menacing “dwarf creatures.” Closing out the collection is “Escape from New York,” featuring Chunk, a character who appeared in the franchise’s fifth sequel, Phantasm: Ravager. In the story, Chunk traverses a post-apocalyptic Manhattan further besieged by the Tall Man’s red-lasered spheres; the narrative spotlights the way Chunk’s “badass persona was forged.” Electrifyingly tense and gruesome, the variations in these dreadfully diverse tales add “a few novel surprises to the traditional Phantasm narrative.” Horror fans and cult devotees of the classic horror series will find Coscarelli’s ingenuity a rare treat.
Six grisly, creatively nightmarish tales guaranteed to unsettle Phantasm fans from the inside out.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Molotov Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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