I got this film in a pack with eight other films in it. I watched this one first because its very short description made it sound like it might be good. I was thinking a haunted house tell with some risqué scenes here and there. Instead, it turns out to be one of the most dull films I have ever seen from the Full Moon Studios. I just could not believe it was made by them, one never expects gold when watching their films, but one does expect more fun than this film had to offer. Even the music was bland...it reminded me of the music from that Pod People film. Someone pushing on a Casio keyboard for a minute at a time! The only saving grace was the two lead actresses who were very cute and you did get to see them nude. Not enough to save the film, I am afraid.The story at first seemed to have something to do with a girl who restores paintings. However, the focus is instead on this girl's friend who has returned to live at her castle. The painting restorer and the head of the castle view this show and invite the entertainers to the castle where the entertainers promptly drug and have sex with the two girls. At this point I am thinking it is going to be bad, but at least there will be plenty of nudity. Unfortunately, I quickly realize this film is not really much of a horror flick at all and only a slightly more risqué version of Beauty and the Beast. There is hardly any blood or gore and besides the first nude scene there is relatively little in the way of skin the rest of the way.Perhaps Charles Band wished to make a more serious in tone film, and I will not fault him for trying something different. One could almost say this is a horror film and a romance merged into one. However, it plays out way to much like a chick flick for my tastes as it needs more of anything! It also needed less paint restoration too. Yes, this goes on for way to long and the revelation here was not all that grand either. The ending was also relatively lame...just too much talking, not enough anything of interest to me when I have expectations of watching a horror film.

It's the moment you've been waiting for! Sherilyn Fenn in the buff, and as an added bonus, some other actress too.Sherilyn's just returned to Italy to her family castle as a successful sculptress, and is welcomed home by her old nanny. Her friend, also American, restores paintings and heads over for the weekend for a bit of a laugh. At the same time, however, a strange travelling freak show turn up and Sherilyn's a bit taken by the leader of the show: some guy who, judging by his dress sense, wouldn't have looked amiss singing for Spandau Ballet.The freak show are invited to the castle for dinner, and before you know it, Sherilyn and her friend have been drugged and ended up getting raped by the ringleader and a mysterious masked man, who not only is the twin of the ringleader of the freaks, but also turns into some sort of beast mid-coitus. This actor, in real life, probably chalks up this scene, where he gets to lie naked with both actresses, as the 'best thing he's ever done ever'. I'll bet he's still grinning and pinching himself to this day. Turns out these New Romantic twins are ancient brothers, and one of them is evil and the other one just wants to be free of the curse. This is all linked to Sherilyn's family, and a painting her friend is restoring, and one of the characters may even be a ghost, and by that I don't mean the actual ghost that's kicking about. Much spooky happenings, romance, and naked Fenn scenes ensue.I quite liked Phantoms, for what it was. I've never been big on rape in films, mind you, but this all seems to be tied in with the plot somehow. There's effective scenes of the brothers emerging from the walls of the castle. It's very close in spirit to the actual home grown Italian horror movies of this era (Specters, Demons 3 The Ogre) although it's slightly lacking in the cheese department. Recommended for those who are unnerved at trying anything that has the name 'Charles Brand' attached to it.

My friends and I went through a period of rather than attempting to rent the best video we could find we deliberately attempted to rent the worst. And if it had beautiful scantily clad women on the cover all the better. Phantoms/Meridian was top of the list not least because we were big Twin Peaks fans and posters of Sherilyn Fenn adorned our bedroom walls. Really it's a pretty schizophrenic piece. We have a PG rated supernatural romantic love story that takes up the vast majority of the running time. It's OK, nice scenery, some decent acting and dialogue but pretty much unremarkable. The end scene where they disappear into the floodlit skull like cave is quite arresting and I recognised the whip wielding dwarf as Krammer's friend from Senfield.But then it's like the producers said "We need to spice it up a bit" and filmed THAT scene, the infamous but undeniably strangely sexy sequence where the gorgeous Sherilyn and her equally beautiful co-star Charlene Spraldling are stripped and drug-raped only to succumb to their dark desires and end up willingly and enthusiastically participating in their own ravishment like true Gothic horror heroines. We always wondered what Sherilyn looked like naked and she certainly doesn't disappoint, just as gloriously nubile as we fondly imagined. Spraldling is also fantastically hot (and buxom!)and again, shame she never did much after this. Pretty astonishing that they could still get away with an amazingly un-PC storyline like that in the 1990s! All the more amazing that the actresses actually agreed to do it no matter how much soft focus, erotic music and slow motion is employed, especially since Sherilyn was enjoying massive mainstream success with Twin Peaks at the time. And THEN, then when you think it just can't get any weirder the twin having sex with Sherilyn's character transforms into a monster and she still keeps having sex with him! AND THEN she falls in love with her man/beast rapist! Smacks of GOT/Galaxy of Terror fic, a fetish for beautiful women raped and impregnated by monsters whom they then fall in love with (yes, I am serious, just Google the term or search Monster Sex on Amazon if you don't believe me)So, if you want to see a film with lovely scenery, a truly unconventional Gothic romance, a weird yet extremely erotic sex scene with 2 very beautiful female stars and a storyline that singlehandedly sets the cause of feminism back about 500 years then this one is for you

This film will not challenge anyone intellectually. The castle where a good portion of the movie is filmed does have an eerie feel about it. Charlie Spradling and Sherilyn Fenn play the two women who are drugged at the castle where they live by some weird circus performers. The leader of the group takes Fenn into a back bedroom and strips her down and looks like he is going to have a good time with the nubile, lovely lady but then he passes her over to his twin brother. The leader then goes and strips down Charlie Spradling and and ravages her body while his brother gets it on with the drugged Fenn. Weird!