Back in the day J.J. and Cutter were
NASCARing fools and bitter enemies. Cutter had already
stolen J.J.'s girl Tammy and snatched his biggest sponsor,
thus to secure this domination over J.J.'s lameness, all
Cutter has to do on this day is win this race. Leaving
nothing to chance, Cutter also did a little number on J.J.'s
ride just to make sure the outcome came out in his
favor. Unfortunately Cutter's people suck at sabotaging
race cars because J.J.'s car didn't screw up until late in the
race, while he was winning, causing Cutter's car to crash into
J.J.'s ride injuring J.J. but leaving Cutter to fry like a
stuck pig inside what is now a rolling deathtrap. But
Cutter's not going to stay dead, no sir. He will return
years later, causing a ruckus, as the 'Phantom Racer!'
Fast forward seventeen years or so and J.J. (Greg Evigan) has
given up NASCARing and now just rides the open road in his big
rig ferrying a race car from race to race. Circumstance
on the road leads to J.J.'s rig having some technical
difficulty and dang if this rig doesn't break down in his old
home town, one he hasn't been in ever since that fateful day
seventeen years prior.
First J.J. runs into Sheriff Hodges
(Winston Rekert) who really doesn't like J.J. much, mainly
because he left town which seems like a lousy reason not to
like somebody. Then the sheriff drops J.J. off to get
his truck fixed at Cliff's auto shop, Cliff being Cutter's
brother and former pit chief so Cliff basically saw J.J. kill
his brother so that seems like the logical place for the
sheriff to drop J.J. off at. Sheriff Hodges… I tell
you. Cliff also married Tammy (Nicloe Eggert) after
Cutter died and has been the
defacto father to Cutter and Tammy's
seventeen year old girl Jesse (Brenna O'Brien). Most
importantly though is that Cliff has restored Cutter's
NAS-CAR. When J.J. saw the car he knew immediately that
something wasn't right, his NAS-CAR evil sensing ghost gene
kicking in, but then Cliff told him how he sabotaged his ride
back in the day and then Tammy showed up and stuff so he
forgot all about the evil car.
He won't be forgetting long though because the Death Car is
out of the garage, driving around town and messing people
up. Like the punk teens who saw it and decided to jump
in. One of them went in the trunk to check for beer
because everybody knows that if you see an abandoned stock car
on the side of the road it has to have beer in the
trunk. The gene pool has now been favorably thinned
out. Then the Death Car decapitates Cliff. This
seemed like dick move since Cliff was Cutter's brother and
all, and Cliff was the one who put the car back together so I
don't what was up with that. Unfortunately Sheriff
Hodges thinks J.J. killed Cliff, and so does the bratty teen
Jesse which leads to this movies best line… "You've killed My
Two Dads!" Greg Evigan was on the show My Two Dads back
in the 80's. Post B.J. and the Bear. Remember
those?
J.J. tries to tell folks that the car possessed, but do they
believe him? Not yet they don't, but after Death Car
Windshield Wiped that deputies face off and destroyed the
remainder of this towns incompetent cops, now everybody's a
believer and the Phantom Racer wants blood. J.J.'s
blood. Even though J.J. didn't do a damn thing to
him. With Tammy and Jesse in tow, and Tammy hiding a
secret that we all already know, they try to escape… the
Phantom Racer!
What a peculiar picture this Sci-Fi Channel original film
'Phantom Racer' turned out to be. A mix of extreme gore,
family melodrama and horror movie stupidity that had a fairly
enjoyable first half, this when the Phantom Racer was turning
the local townsfolk into bloody pulps, but then deteriorated
in its second half when the Phantom Racer was stuck chasing
our main characters down empty roads, for a virtual eternity,
which got a little dull after a while.
You want gore? When brother-man got his face wiped off by
windshield wipers, gotta admit I've never seen that
before. True enough, something that wipes off rain
probably shouldn't have the ability wipe somebody's face off,
but would a stock car even have windshield wipers?
People's faces get caved in by tires, decapitations, bodies
cut in half, imploded by seatbelts, all kinds of horrible
things happened to folks in 'Phantom Racer'.
Melodrama? J.J, Tammy, and Jesse had nothing to do
during the second half when they were running from the Phantom
Racer but talk about their emotion, pain, feelings,
abandonment, hopes, dreams future plans, and why Tammy turned
out to be a lousy mom on top of being a lousy person. It
was painful. For me as well as the characters.
Horror movie stupidity? It's been established that the
death car is indeed haunted and murderous and violent.
Maybe somebody who already knows all these things shouldn't
jump in the death car because that would be stupid. And
Cutter didn't seem like a real bad guy when he was alive and
all, so why was he such an asshole as the Phantom Racer?
Held up by a promising first half that had a crazy car killing
people in horrible ways, solid performances by a veteran cast,
let down in the second half by the 'Crazy Car Trying to Kill
the Main Character Syndrome'. Killer Car movies usually
start out swell when everybody is fair game, but most of them
start to stumble when we're stuck watching the car trying to
hunt down the main character, for an entire third act, who
just isn't going to die. And I don't think there's a
cure for this.
