FROM BOOK TO MOVIE
Phantoms (1998)Some like to say that Dean Koontz is the poor man's Stephen King, whatever that means. If they're trying to say he's trying to be like billion-volume selling author King, well duh, who wouldn't? Yes, Koontz's books tend to be a bit more, simplistic, and maybe not as long as Stephen King novels (some which go well over 1,000 pages) but he does has some good stories. If you're going to read one, I would personally suggest Lightning - it manages to mix horror, sci fi and some romance with good results. I don't think I'd want to see them attempt to make it into a movie though. Like this one shouldn't have been.
Phantoms is a story he wrote in 1983 that in 1998, for whatever reason, they decided to try to put on the big screen. It immediately got panned for trying to 'copy' movies like 'The Blob' and 'The Thing' but it really didn't - it's just the ideas in the movie aren't that original. But hey, when you're looking at a movie that got Ben Affleck and Peter O'Toole of all people to star in it, you want to check it out.
Sisters Lisa (Rose McGowan, later to find fame in Grindhouse films) and Jenny (Joanna Going who I owe an apology to, thinking through the whole movie I was watching Jamie Gertz of The Lost Boys - oops.) are taking a break at the small town of Snowfield, Colorado. It is getting on winter time, and this is a resort town, but when they get there, there's not a soul about. Literally. 
Arriving home where Jenny has her medical practice (always handy and convenient to have a doctor in these movies) they make the horrifying discovery of finding the body of her housekeeper. They immediately go to the Sheriff's office, only to find the body of a deputy. They are surprised there by Sheriff Bryce Hammond (Ben Affleck) and two of his deputies, one nice, one a short step from pedophilomania (I made that word up, seems to fit). The three were out of town and he had been on the phone with the deputy when the line went dead (as did the deputy I guess).
The five cautiously look around the main street of town. Everyone (except for a couple of bodies) is just - gone without a trace. And obviously in a heartbeat. In the motel they find one room empty except for a huge pile of metal on the bed: watches, rings, earrings, other jewelry and, more disturbing, metal things that would normally be found INSIDE a body, such as a pacemaker. The only clue is a lipstick-written note on a mirror that simply says 'Dr. Flyte The Ancient Evil'. The Sheriff manages to get that much out in a radio transmission before everything goes dark - then light - then dark. They figure that the 'it', whatever it is must be playing with them.
A voice calls out to them from the outside, sort of the sound of a woman screaming. The nice but dumb deputy runs out to the street - and then there were four. Something weird flying around tries to get to the others, but the other deputy Stu and Sheriff put about 50 bullet
s in it. Why and why didn't they need to reload? The script said so, I guess. Was it dead? Uh, what do you think? The obviously sick in the head deputy (played with gusto by Liev Schrieber, a face you've seen a lot if you don't recognize the name) gets a few more smarmy remarks in before the 'dead' flying thing bursts into the motel and eats his face, spitting out his glasses. And now there's three.
Then the movie stalls - badly. We have to endure the 'kidnapping' of Professor Flyte (Peter O'Toole sadly misused) by the FBI, the Army moving in (don't they always) and the long explanation made short that long ago Flyte had written an article for his university about an 'Ancient Evil' for which he was 'politely' kicked out. He now writes for a tabloid. We have to wait (or if you're like me with the fast forward button and close captioning you can speed past this part) for everybody to get their... stuff together and get to the town of Snowfield.
Meanwhile, the three are fighting just to survive the night. While Lisa tries to use the bathroom, she hears strange sounds from the pipes and suddenly the creepy and dead Deputy Stu appears and leers at her - but she's allowed to get away. 'Stu' appears again, this time leering at both women saying 'You want to see something?' and the lower half of him is like an octopus and he, uh, morphs into something deadly but still doesn't manage to kill them.Oh there's backstory on the Sheriff you have to know for the end, sorry. He's a Harvard graduate and FBI candidate but became a small town cop 'cause during a raid he found a kid in the closet with a gun and killed him. The gun was a toy. End of story.
The faster we make this, the faster the movie ends.
Oops, a little backstory on this 'Ancient Enemy' - supposedly for every strange disappearance you've ever heard of in history (think of the Mayans, or the colonists at Roanoke) the culprit behind it is this massive creature living inside the earth, only coming up to 'feed' on the living whenever it wants to and, like flatworms can, learns everything that the things and people it consumes knows. So since there were some religious nuts it apparently ate (I don't like nuts in my food personally), it now believes it is the Devil himself. Enough.
After more movie stalling and longing looks passed between the Sheriff and the Doctor and we start for the fast forward button again, Professor Flyte, also apparently a bioengineer has discovered a way to inject the 'thing' with this bacteria that supposedly multiplies 11 times a minute. I think - does it really matter? They load up some syringes and get guns to shoot them with (Wait, what?) and have the good Professor go out on the street to goad 'it' to show itself.
He makes a speech, sounding like he's betraying them, but actually he's trying to make 'it' mad (I dunno, maybe it learned anger from us dummies too.) and suddenly in a heartbeat in front of him appear hundreds of people. Just standing. Then they kind of part in the middle and we see the blob - oops, I mean 'it' forming out of the sewer and rise into a huge column reaching toward the sky. They shoot it - it screams with I guess untold numbers of voices and sinks back down to the sewers. So it's gone, right?
The Professor, a handy chap, says it probably has a nucleus that can survive without the bulk of its body (and unless you didn't pay attention to the backstory you can pretty much write this part yourself). It is most likely still in the sewers. So down goes Sheriff Bryce, who is met with... everyone say it with me... the little boy he had killed in the raid. Anyone who is surprised needs to stop watching movies.
Anywho, his reluctance to shoot the 'kid' makes 'it' beat the hell out of him, throwing him around like crazy which makes no sense - why not immediately consume him and start growing again? Oh well. Bryce tries to reach for the remaining syringes but the boy picks them up. Bryce points his gun at him. 'Still want to shoot little boys?' it taunts. 'No, this time I'm gonna miss.'He shoots the syringes, getting the bacteria all over the boy after which we get the head shaking back and forth at a thousand rpm's that movies like to use for dramatic effect but has been used so much we just wait for 'it' to get done. Okay, it's dead. I guess. Flyte thinks it won since it wanted to be known about, and announces he is going to tell the world what happened. Flyte releases a book titled The Ancient Enemy, which is based on his experiences.
Later, two bar patrons argue about the existence of alien life. Nearby, a Sheriff's deputy starts to laugh. The deputy, (everybody together now) the creepy and dead several times over Stu turns around and asks them, 'Do you want to see something?' Okay that's an outright ripoff of the ending of Twighlight Zone: The Movie, which came out the same year as the book. Oh well, we now know it's over but it's not over but at least there won't be a sequel.
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