Phantasm II

Last night I watched a couple of episodes of Millennium which I taped the night before. They were very good, if very dark. I also watched a late night horror film called Phantasm II, a 1988 film directed by Don Coscarelli. The film dealt with a mysterious mortician known as 'The Tall Man' (played by Angus Scrimm) who robs graves and resurrects the corpses as deformed zombie dwarfs which he uses as servants on Earth and also sends to another dimension for use as slave labour. 'The Tall Man' himself has yellow blood, can instantly heal himself after almost any injury, has the ability to confuse reality and dreams, and most notably can control floating metal spheres which spike people's heads and suck their brains out. The plot of the film revolves around the two survivors of the original movie (released in 1979) chasing 'The Tall Man' from town to town in the hope of finishing him off for good. The movie is not too bad for what it is, and 'The Tall Man' is a great villain. However there's nothing really knew in it.

Today has been fairly quiet. I only went out once today to post some cards and get my weekly grocery shopping.

This afternoon I was watching The Spy Who Loved Me on TV. It's a 1977 James Bond film directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Roger Moore as Bond. The story revolves around the mysterious disappearances of Russian and British nuclear submarines. Bond is assigned to investigate along with his Russian counterpart (Barbara Bach). It's one of the best of the Roger Moore Bond films with a great pre-credits sequence where Bond skis off a mountain to escape pursuing villains. Richard Kiel provides one of the most famous Band villains as the super-strong giant Jaws, who has a set of steel teeth. It also has one of the most fmaous theme songs for a Bond film ("Nobody Does it Better" by Carly Simon). The film has absolutely nothing to do with the original novel by Ian Fleming, except for the title. The original novel was apparently Fleming's idea of an experimental novel in which the story was seen through the eyes of the female lead, and with James Bond himself hardly appearing. Fleming reportedly disliked the book and when he sold the book's film rights he ordered that only the title could be used and none of the story elements. Incidentally, Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange and many other novels) briefly worked on an early script for this film.