John Dies At The End (Don Coscarelli, 2012)

Don Coscarelli has had a unique career. He came to be a prominent writer/director among horror fans in 1979 following the release of Phantasm. He also went on to direct it's many sequels and is the man who wrote and directed The Beastmaster series, which has it's whole own cult following. In case you aren't familiar, the Phantasm series follows a boy who upon discovering the local mortician is actual a being from another dimension doing rather dastardly things with the bodies, sets out to stop him. After making this discovery, the series of films follow this young man, and his friend Reggie the ice cream man, as they battle the forces from this other dimension that are attempting to take over earth. I understand how that sounds, but at the very least, the original Phantasm is worth seeing because it is mind bogglingly original. It matches some real scares with some deeply funny moments and shockingly surreal imagery.

The Beastmaster is something else altogether. It's also a piece of fantasy fiction, but it's extremely different than Phantasm. Much more along the lines of a sword and sorcery variety of fantasy, it follows a warrior who can communicate with animals on an epic adventure, the third film in the series also involving time travel. It is a joyfully silly, fun adventure film in the best traditions of sword and sorcery films.

Those are the films which put Don Coscarelli safely in the hearts of horror and fantasy film fans the world over. He had fallen off the radar for a number of years though. He didn't release a film between Phantasm IV: Oblivion which was released in 1998 and his next film which was released in 2002. That film, was a howling ball of weird hilarity mixed with a healthy dose of horror genre tropes. Bubba Ho-Tep announced Coscarelli's return in a way that made horror fans and fans of the surreal and absurd sit up and cheer like a pack of wild hyenas that have just broken into a slaughterhouse. Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) plays a man in a nursing home who may or may not actually be Elvis Presley. That's the easy part of the story. The rest is that there's a mummy roaming around that is killing the inhabitants of the nursing home, and when Elvis/Sebastian figures this out, he enlists the help of John F. Kennedy (played by Ozzy Davis). Yes, you read that right. Don't worry, if you actually see the film, which you should, you'll understand and it will make sense.

Needless to say, Don Coscarelli is making very different movies from 99% of the other film makers alive today, and when he's been gone from the landscape of cinema for ten years, many people notice the absence. To his credit, he's made all of these films, and a few others, with the absolute least amount of money he could possibly have at his disposal and is still creating incredibly fun and entertaining films. He is more consistently willing to take chances and try to be actually creative, in the sense of doing things we've never seen before, than most other writers and directors working today. What he isn't, is making movies with serious content even though he's serious about being creative. His films are one hundred and ten percent about being fun, entertaining and original. John Dies at the End is no different. Based on the book of the same name by David Wong (which is itself a pseudonym for a former editor of Vice magazine, Jason Pargin), John Dies at the End, fits into Coscarelli's filmography perfectly, and might just be the high point for his career to date. It's an insane film, barreling at the audience at 250 m.p.h, laughing maniacally, spewing guts and not bothering to slow down and ask whether or not you're keeping up or getting out of the way.