1979 | Dir. Don Coscarelli | 89 Minutes
"You play a good game, boy. But the game is finished, now you die."
A resourceful teenager named Mike, his adult brother Jody, and their friend Reggie discover that mysterious deaths plaguing their small town are linked to the machinations of an otherworldly funeral director operating out of a labyrinthine mausoleum. Dubbed the Tall Man, the inhuman mortician conspires to enslave the dead. Together, the heroes battle the Tall Man and his supernatural forces but at every turn, reality is not as it appears.
Independently financed and assembled, Don Coscarelli's Phantasm is an astonishingly imaginative and inventive horror film. The plot unapologetically refuses to provide its audience with simple or consistent logic, unfolding in dreamlike fashion. While it may be frustrating for some viewers, unbound by conventional plot structure, Phantasm is free to be as innovative and bizarre as Coscarelli's imagination allows.
Through the perspective of young Mike, Phantasm is thematically centered on the psychological trauma of growing up, facing fear, and coming to terms with the concept of death. The Tall Man, a stand-in for death, occasionally takes the form of a provocative woman in a lavender dress. When the woman entices Jody to follow her to a cemetery, Mike inadvertently interrupts Jody's intimate encounter with her. Despite the supernatural threat of the Tall Man, Mike's greatest fear is that Jody would abandon him. In the picture's closing minutes, it is revealed that Jody had passed away and that Mike was in the care of Reggie the entire time, suggesting for a moment that the horrors Mike experienced throughout the film were a nightmare spawned from his grief.
During the film's most iconic sequence, a flying silver sphere with retractable blades and drill pursues Mike in the halls of the mausoleum, eventually penetrating the head of one of the Tall Man's minions, liquefying and immediately dispelling the contents of his skull. Considering the movie's relatively low budget, the effects work for this sequence alone is virtually seamless and absolutely impressive. Another excellent effects sequence that augments the ambitious and ambiguous storytelling involves a portal to another world that works like a tuning fork.
While its memorable set pieces and visuals bring a unique quality to Phantasm, the picture would not work without its excellent cast. A. Michael Baldwin is a natural and charismatic as the teenage dirt-bike riding lead, maintaining believable chemistry with his co-stars Bill Thornbury as Jody and Reggie Bannister as Reggie. As the physically imposing Tall Man, Angus Scrimm brings a uniquely creepy presence with a resonant sinister voice and unnaturally rigid strut. Though featured briefly, Reggie Bannister nearly steals the show as the affable, comically upbeat ice cream man.
The film features a brilliant musical score by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave, an excellent blend of equal parts horror and action motifs. Charmingly, Thornbury and Bannister also contribute their musical talent to the movie. In one sequence, Jody and Reggie have an impromptu jam session performing a song written by Thornbury.
The plot may not make much logical sense, but Phantasm plays by its own rules, offering as much meaning as the viewer is willing to attribute to it, and is ultimately a better horror film for it. Unique in execution out of budgetary and technical necessity, but emotionally earnest and artistically ingenious, the feature stands apart from other horror features of its time, earning its much-deserved status as a cult classic.
FRAGMENTS
- Appropriately, the inspiration for the silver sphere chase in the mausoleum, and the film as a whole, came to director Don Coscarelli in a dream
- Don Coscarelli and Reggie Bannister's parents appear as extras in the funeral scene
- The scene in the fortuneteller's house in which Mike puts his hand in a black box that inflicts pain in a lesson intended to teach him to conquer fear is a direct reference to Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune
- The black Hemi Cuda driven by Jody and Mike is featured in every film of the Phantasm series
- A rough cut of the film was over three hours long and a portion of excised footage was repurposed for Phantasm IV: Oblivion
- Director J.J. Abrams is a fan of Phantasm, spearheading a remastered restoration of the film released in 2016 and naming the Star Wars character Captain Phasma after the film
