Phantom Town (1999)

I have always been interested in horror. I grew up in the 1990s, which was a huge time for horror aimed at children. Television shows like Freaky Stories, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Eerie, Indiana made their way onto screens across North America. If you turned on the television on a Saturday morning, you were bound to find one of the many kids’ horror programs. Few of them had the same impact on me as Goosebumps, however.

Goosebumps began as a series of spooky children’s literature written by R.L. Stine. They were easy reads with horror tales, geared towards children. The whole thing began in 1992. By 1995, a television show had premiered and Goosebumps fever was raging. I was a big Goosebumps supporter, reading the books and watching the television show. I watched the other television shows at the time, too. I was a spooky boy who wanted to watch spooky boy things.

The influence that Goosebumps had on things that followed could be seen to this day. Two feature films were made based on Goosebumps and R.L. Stine. They came out in 2015 and 2018. That’s how current the influence could be felt. But there were many other kids’ horror properties to come out since the release of the books and subsequent airing of the television series. Many of them took clear influence from the Goosebumps multimedia franchise.

Phantom Town was one such property. It came out in 1998 or 1999, based on conflicting information. It may have gone straight-to-video. Sometimes it might be referred to as Spooky Town. What I can tell you, however, is what Phantom Town was about. Mike (John Patrick White), Arnie (Taylor Locke), and Cindy (Lauren Summers) were three siblings that threw a party while their parents were out. When their parents didn’t return home the next day, they went searching for them. They discovered a town that didn’t exist, known as Long Hand. It was an 1800s wild west town. The three siblings got tied up in the weird machinations of Long Hand while trying to find and save their parents. Along the way, some horrific things happened.

One of the common themes that ran through a few of the Goosebumps stories was that kids or a family would go some place and discover that it wasn’t quite what it seemed. Kids would disappear and die at a summer camp, and one kid would have to figure out what was happening. An amusement park would be run by monsters and a family would fight to escape. Those sorts of things were common through Goosebumps and had some striking similarities to the story told in Phantom Town.

The first of those similarities was the family aspect. Phantom Town revolved around a family of five, particularly the three kids. There was the older brother, Mike. He was the leader of the three kids as they went on their adventure. That’s because he was a teenager who could drive. Then there was the middle child, Arnie. He was the level-headed one who knew how to think his way out of the problems. He was also the narrator, meaning the story was told through a child’s voice. Finally, there was the youngest, the sister, Cindy. She was there to be that younger child character because all family adventures require a younger sibling to do young child things. They were trying to save their parents. The family dynamic was set.

Compare that to something like One Day at Horrorland, a classic Goosebumps story set in an amusement park. There were five family members, though one technically wasn’t part of the family. There were the two parents, who separate from their children early in the story, only to come back and play a major part in escaping the horror. There was the brother and sister. There was also a friend of the kids. It was the same five person dynamic, with the three kids taking the lead.

Another similarity was the sinister undertone of the location. Long Hand was a wild west town. There was a saloon, an old-timey hotel, and one dusty street where it was easy to imagine a shootout. It was also the 1800s in that town, while it was the late 1990s in reality. There was something strange going on. The deeper the kids dug, the stranger they discovered the town to be. The people of the town were going through the motions, walking the same places, and having the same interactions. Arnie realized that the town was a living organism, with each person a part of it. If someone was injured, they became a pile of goo and melted into their surroundings. If a chair or wall was cut, green goo flowed from the cut. Long Hand was a strange place.

That could be compared to the summer camp from the Goosebumps story Welcome to Camp Nightmare. The setting of the story was Camp Nightmoon, a seemingly normal camp. Only, the more time that was spent at the camp, the stranger it seemed. Kids were being injured and the counselors weren’t doing anything about it. In fact, the counselors were injuring kids as well. People weren’t allowed out after nightfall. People went missing. Strange things happened at the camp. It was eventually revealed that the entire camp was a testing zone for the main character to see if he was ready for an interplanetary expedition. Camp Nightmoon was strange because it was created for an ulterior motive.

The final big similarity between Phantom Town and Goosebumps was the twist ending. Phantom Town heavily relied on a twist ending to give one final scare to the children, both those that were in the movie and those that were watching it. The kids saved their parents from pods in the caves under Long Hand. The entity that was the town collapsed and died as the family fled home. They held a party to celebrate. Mike and Arnie played music while the parents prepared a cake. When they cut into it, it oozed green goo. All the children whipped their heads in the direction of the cake and the story was over. The twist was that they hadn’t escaped. Long Hand had simply morphed into their home and their parents were a part of it.

Welcome to Camp Nightmare clearly had a twist, when the summer camp was revealed to be a testing zone for the main character. That was an easy twist to find. One Day at Horrorland featured a twist as well. The family escaped Horrorland, the theme park run by monsters, by pinching the monsters. This deflated them, allowing for an escape route. They stole a bus from the parking lot and headed home. Unbeknownst to them, one of the monsters made it to the bus and clung onto the back the entire trip. They piled out of the bus, found the monster, and had some understandable concern. It wasn’t warranted. The monster simply wanted to give them free passes for the next year. That was the twist. It was the opposite of the Phantom Town twist (one was positive to negative, while the other was negative to positive). But it helped to highlight how the twist ending was a fundamental part of any classic Goosebumps tale.

Phantom Town was a movie that featured the hallmarks of any Goosebumps story about a kid or kids going on an excursion. The kid(s) had a well-defined family unit. There was the older brother, the younger sister, the middle child, the mom, and the dad. The location wasn’t all that it seemed to be. Long Hand seemed like a wild west town but was really a living entity trying to absorb the family. Finally, there was a twist ending. They thought they had safely gone home, but Long Hand had come with them.

Goosebumps influenced many people throughout the 1990s. Children like me grew up watching the horror shows that aired on Saturdays and reran at various times during the week. It helped us grow into horror-loving adults so many years later. Filmmakers were inspired to tailor their stories to fit a similar mold. They played horror into their stories in a way that wasn’t going to scar their child audiences but would simply send chills through their bones and leave them wanting more. Goosebumps wasn’t intended to outright frighten. Neither were Are You Afraid of the Dark? or Freaky Stories or Tales from the Cryptkeeper. They were meant to spook, like the ghosts and ghouls on Halloween. It was family level horror.

I grew up on these shows through the 1990s. I remember watching them repeatedly because they were the horror I was allowed to watch. The Goosebumps books were the horror that I was allowed to read. As I got older, I got into horror geared at older people. Stephen King, Michael Crichton, slashers, haunted houses, all kinds of things. My world opened to a seemingly unlimited source of scary stories. I was ready for it. I dove right in. I was prepared, all because of the children’s horror shows I watched and children’s horror books I read in the 1990s.

Now it’s time to get prepared for a few notes:

• Anaconda: Offspring (week 80) featured Serban Celea of Phantom Town.
• That wasn’t the only person from the Anaconda franchise to appear in Phantom Town. Phantom Town had Dan Badarau from Anacondas 4: Trail of Blood (week 80).
• Dyer McHenry returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Phantom Town after being in Zarkorr! The Invader (week 123).
• Jimmy Herman was in both Santa’s Slay (week 263) and Phantom Town.
• Phantom Town was the second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Dorina Lazar, who was also in Transylmania (week 297).
• Finally, Constantin Barbulescu was in Phantom Town after showing up in Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (week 330).
• Have you seen Phantom Town? Did you watch shows like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark? when you were a child? What did you think about Phantom Town or those television shows? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there are any movies that you think would fit into the Sunday “Bad” Movies, get a hold of me on Twitter or in the comments. Tell me all about them. Let me know that I should seek them out, watch them, and write about them.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is on Instagram, sharing some fun things from the movies that have been covered.
• We have come to the end of another post. That means it is time to look forward to what will be coming up soon. There’s a director that has popped up twice in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, and it’s about time that director gets a third appearance. I’m talking about none other than Godfrey Ho. His Brucesploitation flick Enter the Invincible Hero will be the subject of next week’s post. I hope to see you then, ready for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

The world was a different place in the 1930s. People in North America were in financial ruin. A racist, fascist leader took over a country and deemed that anyone who wasn’t white shouldn’t deserve the same human rights. The world was on the brink of war. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so different after all. One thing was for sure, though. For most of that decade, there was no Superman.

That would all change in 1938 with the release of Action Comics #1. Though there were many characters introduced in that premiere issue, Superman was the one that would rise above the rest. He became a sensation, eventually earning his own comic book series, and a place among the DC Comics royalty alongside Batman, Wonder Woman, and all the other Justice League characters. He was practically the face of DC Comics from that point forward. The good American boy who was actually from the far away planet of Krypton.

It was only a matter of time before Superman would make the transition to both the small and big screen. He jumped to radio in 1940 before quickly getting the theatrical animated short treatment in 1941. Kirk Alyn portrayed Superman in a couple serials that came out in 1948 and 1950. Then George Reeves got the role for a 1951 B-movie and the television series that followed. That was all within the first fifteen years of Superman being created.

The biggest thing that would happen with Superman outside of the comics would come in 1978 when Superman: The Movie was released. It was a rousing success, spawning a franchise that spanned six movies, including the spinoff Supergirl movie. It was the first big budget American superhero movie based on an American (technically part Canadian) comic book superhero creation. And it set the scene for everything to come.

It would take a while for the big, successful superhero movies to become a normal thing, though. Sure, Batman came out in 1989 and set off an old-timey hero to the big screen trend that included The Phantom and The Rocketeer. But most of the superheroes were relegated to lower budgets if they wanted to make it to the big screen at all. Captain America and The Punisher got that treatment. So did Superman, by the time the film series reached its fourth, non-spinoff movie.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was released in 1987, only nine years after the first film in the series hit the big screens. Clark Kent (Christopher Reeve) was back to save the day in Metropolis. His alter ego, Superman, was once again pitted against Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), who recently escaped prison with the help of his nephew Lenny Luthor (Jon Cryer). They created a supervillain named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), who was an evil clone of Superman that could only come to life under direct sunlight. All the while, the Daily Planet had been taken over by a tabloid and it was up to Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) and Perry White (Jackie Cooper) to fight against the sensationalized news.

The Superman series of films had fallen a long way since it debuted on the big screen in 1978. The first two films were big-budget spectacles that had a talented, popular-at-the-time creative team behind the camera. Mario Puzo, the author behind The Godfather, was brought on to write the scripts. Guy Hamilton was brought on to direct, though he would later be replaced by Richard Donner. Richard Donner would then be replaced, partway through the production of Superman II with Richard Lester. And the Salkinds, a storied family in the Hollywood world, helped to produce it. They had a decent amount of trouble with the third film, as actors Gene Hackman and Margot Kidder disliked how the Salkinds relaced Donner, so Hackman was left out of the film and Kidder’s role was reduced to a cameo. By the time the fourth film came around, a huge change was ready to happen.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace no longer had the Salkinds as producers. They were completely out of the franchise, and thus, a new creative team stepped in. The intellectual property was given to Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the men behind The Cannon Group in the 1980s. They were big on churning out lower budget action flicks based on cheap scripts that they could make in no time. That’s the kind of quality treatment that the fourth film in the Superman series got.

The Cannon quality could be seen throughout Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Much of that came down to the writing. There were two main stories, one about a newspaper takeover and how sensationalism can dilute the importance of the news. The other was about Superman fighting a Superman clone. The two stories didn’t tie into one another at all. They were separate stories that were kept separate but for the tabloids trying to make Superman look like a bad guy. Clark had no active interest in the news part of the film and the news part of the film had no active interest in Nuclear Man. They could have been two completely separate movies.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, though not great in the writing department, still had some interesting action littered throughout. It may not have had the budget of Superman: The Movie ($17 million compared to the $55 million of the series starter), but director Sidney J. Furie and The Cannon Group knew how to make the most of their minimized budget. There were a few flying scenes, including multiple times in space. There was a small fight at the Great Wall of China. Nuclear Man even flew up through the many floors of a high-rise. It still had a decent level of spectacle. Yet, something about that spectacle felt cheaper than the movies before. It felt like sets made to look like the real thing, rather than sets that felt like the real thing. It was the uncanny valley of action locations.

That might be the defining characteristic of the lower budget superhero movies of the late 1980s and 1990s. Movies like 1990’s Captain America and 1989’s The Punisher had a similar problem. They wanted to recreate the spectacle of the big budget action flicks of the time, but they didn’t have nearly the same budget. Their spectacle action felt off. They were trying to reach the same heights without having the same resources, which created a dissonance when characters were supposed to be fighting at a place like the Great Wall of China. It looked almost right but wasn’t quite perfect.

The other defining characteristic was the supervillain. When looking for a cheap script, it can almost be guaranteed that a villain like Nuclear Man will be present. He was an easy villain to create that would be slightly difficult for Superman to overpower. He was a clone of Superman. He had all of Superman’s powers, but stronger. All of Superman’s strengths were his strengths as well. But the hero must come out victorious in the end, so there had to be a weakness. Nuclear Man never came in contact with Kryptonite to tell if he was weakened by it. He did require sunlight to have any sort of power, however, which was the easy way for Superman to defeat him. Take away the sunlight and Nuclear Man would be defeated. It was an easy villain to create in a cheap script to avoid having to pay rights for any other comic book villains. Create a Superman clone with one major weakness so that he could overpower Superman, yet still be defeated in the end.

The Superman film franchise would rebound when Bryan Singer took over for a reboot/sequel called Superman Returns in 2006. It got the big budget necessary to make the spectacle feel spectacular, rather than an attempt at spectacular. Then Superman would get a reboot with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013. He also got the 1990s Lois and Clark series, as well as Smallville, which began in the mid-00s. Superman was back on track as a film and television star in his post-Cannon days.

The world has gone through a lot of change since Superman debuted on the comic book pages in 1938. Wars, politics, fast food, television, sports, and movies helped to shape the world that people live in today. Superman went through it all. And he changed with the world. Faster than a locomotive became faster than a speeding bullet. He got movies and television shows. He got overtaken by other superheroes. But he’s been there since 1938, and the world has never been the same since.

There are a few notes for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace:

• This week’s movie was directed by Sidney J. Furie, who also directed Iron Eagle (week 90), Iron Eagle II (week 90), and Iron Eagle IV (week 90).
• Four actors from Flash Gordon (week 81) were in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. They were John Hollis, William Hootkins, Stanley Lebor, and Derek Lyons.
• Christine Hewett and Tina Simmons were featured in both Die Another Day (week 153) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
• Mariel Hemingway had a major role in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. She could also be seen in Rise of the Zombies (week 16).
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace wasn’t the first Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Margot Kidder. She could previously be heard in GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords (week 244).
• Finally, Jim Broadbent was in both Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and The Avengers (week 304).
• Have you seen Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? What did you think of it? What are your feelings on The Cannon Group? What are your feelings on the Superman movies? Let me know in the comments. Or you can get a hold of me on Twitter.
• You can find me on Twitter or in the comments if you want to let me know about the movies I should be checking out in future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments. I’m always open to suggestions.
• Head on over to Instagram when you have time and check out Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always trying to find some fun stuff to share over there.
• Now let’s take a look at what’s in store for next week. It has been a while since I went with a movie where the demographic was kids. It’s been even longer since it was a kids’ movie that incorporated horror elements. I think the last one of those was Ghosthunters on Icy Trails (week 324). Phantom Town will be the next movie, and it would be nice if you’d come back next week to enjoy it with me. See you then.