- Directed by Don Coscarelli
- Written by Don Coscarelli
- Stars A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Thornbury
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C2I3hvqnQ
Spoiler-Free Judgement Zone
It feels like they had a lot of filler running in this one. They found a cache of unused footage from when they filmed the original, and they must have used it all here. We do get an origin story for the Tall Man, which is nice, but the low budget shows.
Synopsis
Mike from the previous films drives a hearse and has flashbacks to previous films. Reggie gives a voice over explaining how the Tall Main spreads like a plague, destroying whole towns in his path. He’s not just an undertaker, he sends bodies to a place worse than hell. Mike is in the process of transforming into something like the Tall Man, but he ran off. The Tall Man unleashes hundreds of spheres outside, “The final game now begins.” Credits roll.
Mike has passed dozens of destroyed and abandoned towns. The Tall Man has wiped them clean of the living and the dead. We get several clips of unused footage from the first film. Mike sees an old woman appear in the passenger seat and then disappear.
Jody, in his human form, comes to see Reggie. Jody wants Reg to follow Mike to wherever he’s going. Mike, on the other hand, is not driving the car; it’s taking him somewhere. The car enters Death Valley.
On the road behind him, Reggie encounters some kind of undead cop. Of course, there’s a battle where Reg gets beat up and puked on. He’s got the worst luck of any heroic character I can think of.
Mike wakes up in the desert; the car is dead. He spots Dwarves and Lurkers in the hills. He dreams of the Tall Man and has more flashbacks. He sees the Civil War, many dead bodies, and the Tall Man. He wakes up and sees a portal in the desert. Then he hangs himself, but the Tall Man is waiting for him.
A younger version of himself cuts Mike down from the tree.— no, it’s not Mike, it’s the Tall Man up there. “I’ll go away and I won’t ever come back,” he promises. “Just cut me down.” Mike falls for it. Back in the real world, in the desert, the Tall Man says, “Come, boy. We have things to do.” Mike almost gives in, but changes his mind and goes through the portal instead.
Mike appears in the past. He sees a bunch of clockwork machinery powering the much more primitive version of the portal. He’s back at the Morningside Funeral Home from the first film. He spots the Tall Man sitting on the porch. No, it’s not the Tall Man, it’s Jebediah Morningside, a nice old man who looks like the Tall Man. “Did you make passage through the dimension door? I’ve been waiting for someone to come through!”
Mike goes back through the portal to the desert, which now has many portals. Mike finds that he has now developed telekinesis, which he uses to squash scorpions and evil dwarves. Jody appears to him and explains how he wound up as a not-so-evil murderball. Mike starts ripping parts out of his car and building something with the bits.
Reggie rescues a girl from an exploding car on the road, so now he has a companion, Jennifer. Reggie tells all to Jennifer, but she’s skeptical to say the least. He then wakes up in a cemetery, and he’s attacked by the Tall… Mike? He wakes up again next to Jennifer and her boobs are getting wiggly. What? They turn into spheres and attack him. He kills one with a sledgehammer and the other with a tuning fork. Jennifer gets the sledgehammer as well.
Mike wants to go back to the past and stop Jebediah Morningside from completing his transition into the Tall Man. He gets a vision of downtown Los Angeles, completely empty and devoid of any life other than himself and the Tall Man.
Reggie arrives at Mike’s car and he dresses up in his ice-cream finery, loads his four-barreled shotgun, and goes looking for action. Mike’s gone through the portals again. He’s soon attacked by dwarves.
Mike and Jody reappear, and Mike tells Reg not to trust Jody. Reg gives Mike the tuning fork, and then Mike and Jody go back in time. Jebediah figured out how to create dimensional portals and built a machine. Jebediah switches it on and goes through. The Tall Man comes back out, apparently taking his form as a sort of avatar.
Mike stabs Jody. Another Jody takes Mike to the Tall Man, who starts to operate on Mike. Mike rings the tuning fork, which freezes the old man— for a moment.
The Tall Man follows Mike back to the desert, where Mike’s own killer ball attacks the Tall Man. Then the engine explodes, killing him. At least until another appears through the portal; he always has a replacement. The Tall Man reaches into Mike’s head and pulls out his own silver sphere. He takes it and goes back through the portal. Reg promises Mike that he’ll be right back and goes into the portal after the Tall Man.
Commentary
There is a lot of old footage of Mike and the guys filmed back when the first movie came out. There’s no other way they could have young Mike in so many scenes.
This one is really low-budget, but the time travel aspect is new and fairly interesting. We see the Tall Man’s origins, mostly. More importantly, we learn his ultimate plan: to take all life on Earth back to his dimension as slaves.
They don’t even pretend to really kill the Tall Man at the end this time, which makes one more sequel entirely possible.