Now available on DVD
Cast:
Greg Evigan as JJ
Nicole Eggert as Tammy
Brenna O’Brien as Jesse
Adam Battrick as Cutter
Winston Rekert as Sheriff Hodges
Directed by Terry Ingram
Review:
Working from Stephen King’s novel, John Carpenter’s Christine proved that a movie about a killer car can work. And why not? It certainly isn’t any more outlandish than indestructible killers or Jigsaw’s elaborate traps. Phantom Racer, which premiered on SyFy last year, is Christine and Fast & Furious mixed with daytime soap opera. The latter is what ultimately dooms it. A handful of outrageously graphic vehicular homicides can’t compete with an hour of melodrama that puts anything on the CW to shame.
The fit-for-Lifetime story concerns JJ Sawyer (Greg Evigan), once a hero in Farewell Bend. As a young man seventeen years prior, he was in a horrific car wreck during a race. His fierce rival Cutter (Adam Battrick) burned to death in the crash. JJ took off without even saying goodbye. Now fate has brought him back. He drives truck for a racing team and it just happens to break down in his hometown. His sudden return creates havoc for those he left behind, including Tammy (Nicole Eggert), who apparently had feelings for him despite shacking up with Cutter.
Tammy also has a surly teenage daughter, Jesse (Brenna O’Brien). Though Cutter is her father, Jesse is aware of lingering issues between her mother and JJ. Teens are good at picking up on that sort of thing. Unless this is your first movie it won’t take long to figure out where everything is heading.
If it seems like I’ve forgotten the titular ghost, I haven’t. It’s just that Phantom Racer treats it like an afterthought most of the time. Cutter’s race car has been restored to mint condition and he has returned for revenge. He revs up his ride and runs down unsuspecting, hapless victims, apparently upset that he perished in an accident he was responsible for. The race car carnage provides the few bright spots. People are maimed in absurdly gruesome fashion. A cop has his face shredded by the razor-sharp windshield wipers while a troublemaking teen is torn in half by the trunk. It’s too bad that these moments are few and far between.
For a movie of this variety, people tune in to see a race car driven by a ghost go on a rampage. They do not tune in for something they could see on daytime television. The forced sappiness and cringe-inducing dialogue takes up far too much of the running time. The melodrama is laid on way too thick. It also appears that not much thought was given to the phantom itself. An even moderately unique villain would have gone a long way towards making Phantom Racer a little more engaging. Instead we get two or three brief glimpses of a weird, glowing apparition. It looks about as threatening as a fluffy bunny.
This is a perfect example of how a simple yet promising premise for a low-budget horror movie can be totally botched. Obviously the hero needs some kind of a back story, but you don’t pile it on to such an extreme degree, and it doesn’t have to be quite so obvious and uninspired. Plus, you need to at least try to concoct a somewhat intriguing bad guy/car/whatever. Put some effort into it. The target audience is willing to go along for the ride, but give them more to chew on.
