Phantasm

By: DThompson | in: Movies |

Phantasm

If you’ve been paying attention you’ve read me mentioning a movie called Phantasm a few times over the past two weeks. I’ve made some glowing comments (including, I believe, that Phantasm is “the bestest movie ever”), and I’ve meant (er, pretty much meant) every one of them.

Phantasm Theme

Along with Halloween, and Friday the Thirteenth, Phantasm was part of a late seventies crop of low-budget, independent horror films that came to define big budget studio horror for over a decade. That is to say, Halloween and Friday did, Phantasm remained its own thing, impossible to recreate, or to re-cast as a genre blueprint. Director (and writer, and editor, and cinematographer) Don Coscarelli was in his very early twenties when he made this movie and it shows, not in a bad or inexperienced way, but in an energetic and wild and everything but the kitchen sink way. Now that I think of it, one scene prominently features a kitchen sink, so it should be everything AND the kitchen sink.

Phantasm

To say I love this movie isn’t even close. It takes standard horror elements, but uses them in a totally unique way. From a basic story about two brothers and their friend fighting off an evil mortician (who, by the way, is stealing corpses and crushing them down to dwarfs so they can be his equally evil slaves), Phantasm goes in so many directions, and so quickly, that it commonly takes several viewings before you understand it. That’s OK though, because Phantasm isn’t just scary, it’s fun. It’s “fun-scary”. No. Really. This movie has the aforementioned mortician who’s really tall (for some reason Leonard Maltin makes fun of how thin his tie is, go figure), a crushed corpse-dwarf crashing a hearse into a tree, allusions to Dune and Star Wars, a killer jet black muscle car, a bald ice cream salesman as one of its heroes, screaming severed fingers that bleed French’s mustard and change into giant mutant killer flies, and a flying silver sphere that sprouts spikes, impales itself into some guy’s forehead and drills his freakin’ brain out! That is SO COOL!

Phantasm

It helps for me personally that this movie is a virtual time capsule of 1979 – this is how people talked, how they dressed, how they interacted. This is how we rolled back in the day, and THIS is how we dealt with nasty too-tall morticians who weren’t at all what they seemed to be.
There are currently four Phantasm films, with a fifth in planning, all directed by Coscarelli, none as good as the first, though the second is basically a bigger budgeted studio remake (just showing that throwing money at a film won’t necessarily make it better).

Phantasm has a website: www.phantasm.com
Check out the trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3f-eyuili8

[Subscribe to this feed]

Posted on September 6, 2007

Comments

15 Responses to “Phantasm”

Ryan of the RSL Music Blog on September 6th, 2007 4:01 am

Ahhhh. An oldie - but a goodie. Very interesting that you would write about this one. This movie was mentioned not once - but twice yesterday on the radio here in the Boston area.

The first mention was made in reference to the new Halloween movie - the DJ asked people which horror movie (both good or bad) would they like to see re-made.

The second mention was hours later on another station: Asked which movie prop or object would you most like to own as a nick-knack or collectible. The bladed sphere from Phantasm was right up there.

Charbarred on September 6th, 2007 4:04 am

I wouldn’t like to see this one re-made. Most of the charm of it is the fact that it is a “period piece”, ie, people with sideburns wearing flannel shirts and saying “groovy”. If you update it, it’s just another horror movie.

DThompson on September 6th, 2007 4:32 am

I agree, I have no great desire to see a remake, I know what a remake would look like, it would look like Phantasm 2!
But, owning the silver sphere would be righteous!

Kendall on September 6th, 2007 5:56 am

You guys are obssessed!

Peety on September 6th, 2007 6:05 am

I have never heard of it.. Thanks for the tip!!

Charbarred on September 6th, 2007 6:34 am

What do you mean obsessed Kendall? Have you watched it? Give it a try and you’ll be doing a write up on Phantasm II in no time (warning, number IV kinda sucked).
Peety, it’s really worth renting.

Kendall on September 6th, 2007 6:42 am

Of course I have seen Phantasm! I’m a movie nut with the best of them. I just noticed you guys are doing a lot of talk about Phantasm recently. My props to D for bringing it to the forefront again.

mozzer on September 6th, 2007 7:13 am

Again, I’m not a fan of horror. It’s probably just me and the Amish who’ve not seen this film. But if DThompson gives it his stamp of approval, then it’s worth effort of adding Phantasm to my Netflix queue.

Charbarred on September 6th, 2007 7:39 am

I would like to get an Amish perspective on this one though. I’d better start searching the Amish blogs (yes they exist).

Todd on September 6th, 2007 10:26 am

I have never seen this movie, but I have heard about it. I have always been a fan of horror movies such as Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm St., and Halloween. Since Halloween is coming up I’m getting excited to branch out of the over done horror movies. Thanks for letting me know of this film.

DThompson on September 6th, 2007 10:51 am

I’m happy to spread the word! Just call me a big Phan of the philm. Ouch!
Hey, even if you don’t like it, you’ll have to agree, you’ve never seen another film like it.

Itax on September 6th, 2007 11:57 am

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
I think all the lead paint you guys ate as children is coming back to haunt you. I hate to be the lone voice of reason here but Phantasm (very cool name btw) is not “all that”. Maybe its because the movie is inextricably linked to the memory of DT swindling me out of my money to by a betamax, yes you heard that right, copy of this little abortion of a film. Or maybe its because the last time I saw this thing DT and I were putting down a half-rack of this god-awful Canadian beer, Glacier Bay, or maybe its because the “crushed-corpse dwarves” sound like constipated Jawas and the hero is a cloying little twat. I think Phantasm 2 was better although Angus Scrimm (the tall man) is the bomb in everything he touches

DThompson on September 6th, 2007 12:16 pm

itax itax itax
a)I never ate lead paint, I ate modelling glue.
b)Phantasm is SO “all that” and very much more.
c)Beta was the better system, the only reason VHS won was because it was “sexier” sounding…
d)Glacier Bay, ugh, there’s a memory I tried to put down
e)Though the dwarfs in Phantasm look EXACTLY like the Jawas in Star Wars, Phantasm was shot over a period of years and its dwarfs pre-date Jawas by some time. So, if anything, Star Wars stole from Phantasm. I suspect it’s just that both films were looking for a way around expensive makeup appliances and coincidentally came up with the same solution.
f)Angus Scrimm, the tall man, the evil mortician I refer to in the article IS the bomb. He’s just awesome! You hear that Angus? You ROCK!

C.K.Eddlemon on June 13th, 2010 11:55 pm

From what I’ve seen of Agnus Scrimm in interviews, he really doesn’t seem that intelligent or that good of an actor — sort of a dork, in fact, singing stupid songs about prarie dogs like someone’s grandfather.

But by accident or by intentional acting, his quirkiness and these very inadequacies make him an inexplicable, hard-to-understand, inpossible to fathom or size up, ALIEN VILLIAN.

He has that look about him we’ve seen in old time horror movies, Disney movies, moaning Tom Sawyer movies, even the Poltergiest series. He is the classic invincible villian.

I liked the series best before there was too much explanation. IV had a pretty dorky ‘Time Machine’ rip off plot and the boy who was a sure gonner turned out to be just a student in the making. Groan ….

peter on July 29th, 2010 8:24 am

The first Phantasm was by far the best of all. It left some stuff over to the imagination. All the other parts were too explicit in terms of violence and tried to explain to much, whereas the charm of part one was the mystery of it all.. I agree a remake would not work. Just look at the remake of friday the 13th which I think was pretty awfull.