The horror genre is no stranger to franchising, wildly out of proportion to other genres. Without even counting Direct to Video entries, it is clear that the reason for this is at least two fold. Horror stories are easily repeatable, with franchises often becoming villain-based with a rotating cast of victims/heroes for each entry. Horror is cheap, making that possible from a monetary standpoint, and therefore doesn’t need to reap gigantic profits to be successful. A popular franchise within the horror genre might still be niche by mainstream standards. Horror franchises seem to spring up consistently throughout movie history, with even sequel-light eras like the 50s spawning a few. Perhaps the greatest era of the horror franchise, however, is the 70s and 80s, when violent adult fare became common enough following the creation of the MPAA rating system. Many of the horror franchises that sprung up in this era earned an even greater longevity by conforming to extremely formulaic subgenres such as the slasher film. Consider the likes of Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street and the intimidating number of sequels to each entry.
While Phantasm is the first true horror franchise I am visiting, it is rather atypical among its sequel-happy contemporaries. The first movie is a strange enough affair to avoid classification like most of its brethren, and the sequels came about over a strangely lengthy and irregular time period. Consider, of the four films in this franchise, only one hails from the 70s, one from the 80s, and then two in the 90s. Compare that to Friday the 13th, with four sequels in nearly as many years.
One other factor separating Phantasm from these other movies is authorship. A single man oversaw every aspect of every single entry, driven by his own artistic whims. That man is the unique Don Coscarelli, director, writer, editor, cinematographer and co-producer of 1979’s Phantasm.
I say 1979, but Phantasm was really filmed in 1977. It took two years to find distribution. For Don Coscarelli was (and still is) a true independent filmmaker, creating American movies outside of the Hollywood system, unanswerable to market demands and producer meddling. Phantasm was created basically as a lark among friends, a bunch of relative amateurs renting a camera for the weekend (you get it for three days for the price of one day) as an excuse to hang out and have fun. And a lot of that vibe comes across on screen, coupled with a genuine love and competence on Coscarelli’s part. And a lot of Phantasm’s cult, for it is a cult movie, comes from those rare but devoted viewers (of which I consider myself a part – I’m a “phan”) who respond positively to these qualities. Something’s just a little off about Phantasm, and it’s a lot of fun.
Though Coscarelli was merely twenty-three when he made Phantasm, this wasn’t even his first movie. That would be Jim the World’s Greatest, a teenager drama he created at the young age of nineteen. Phantasm crackles with the confidence of an unshackled director who’s already cut his teeth, but still has the undisciplined passion of youth. As a cult movie, a lot of the Phantasm story concerns its production as much as its content, so a proper understanding of the film demands a little understanding of when it was made. The seventies were a wonderfully experimental time in horror, with movies both mainstream and grindhouse pushing the envelope and discovering new forms. But the easiest way of exploring Phantasm’s vagaries is to examine them over the course of the movie, so let’s get to it.
Things start out on a fairly cliché note, with a pair of teenagers having sex in a creepy old cemetery at night, and thus clearly about to become the movie’s first corpses. Even by 1977 (or ’79, or whatever) this was recognizable and tiresome. But this scene is necessary to set up the nature of whatever monster we’ll be dealing with, and here Coscarelli both sort of lies to us and throws us a curveball. For, in a post-coital embrace, the girl climbs on top of the boy, Tommy, grows a sinister look, and stabs him with a dagger. Then her face briefly changes to that of a grizzled, deathly old man, and suddenly changes back. Oh, this is the movie’s worst scene.
By morning we are still in same cemetery, a part of the Morningside Mortuary grounds, dominated by a creepy and imposing mausoleum mansion. Here older teen Jody Pearson (Bill Thornbury) gathers with middle-aged friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister, essentially playing himself), as they prepare for Tommy’s funeral and discuss his suicide…Suicide?! There is no way what happened to Tommy could look like a suicide! But that’s where this film’s genius comes in. For many a bad horror movie could present such a detail out of incompetence, but Phantasm does these things to throw the audience off, to create unexplainable discomfort.
The fundamental thing about Phantasm is this – it’s dreamlike. Sure, it’s also about dreams, in a sense, but not nearly as literally as something like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Phantasm is essentially surreal, about creating an unreality. Potential plot holes and narrative detours come about in a way that is very Italian. Indeed, Phantasm resembles an Italian horror movie far more than it does any of its American fellows. For fans of Italy’s awesome horror films of the 70s and 80s (and surely, Italian horror is an acquired taste), plot is not nearly as important as atmosphere and pulpy gruesomeness. Phantasm, for its many similarities to Italian fare, has relatively lighter violence. And the plot, we shall eventually see, justifies the surrealism.
The main inspiration for Coscarelli was a dream. Many movies could make the same claim, but Phantasm does a good job of remaining true to that source material.
Back to the funeral…Jody alone wanders the spotless, unearthly marble halls of the mausoleum, pausing at a crypt bearing his family name. Outside on the cemetery grounds, Jody’s younger brother Mike (thirteen-year-old A. Michael Baldwin, actually playing his age) spies on the mortuary grounds with binoculars. The movie cuts between Mike and Jody, each brother slowly hearing strange off screen ambient noises around them, a standard but often effective horror film tactic. Jody hears a scuttling in the hall, and is suddenly grabbed by the mortician, whom we recognize as the evil old man who killed Tommy – the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm, making the role his own). How shall I describe the Tall Man? Tall. “The funeral is about to begin, sir,” he hisses, making all of his roughly four lines count.
During the open casket funeral, Jody mentions to Reggie how he left Mike at home since the boy still hasn’t recovered from their parents’ recent deaths. You see, The Next Karate Kid, that’s how you deliver exposition about dead parents. Of course it helps that this movie takes place largely at a funeral home.
Ah yes, the funeral home. Pretty much all horror movies are about death, but Phantasm is about death in a far more specific, concrete way. To somewhat anticipate the primary source of horror in this film, the primary victims aren’t even the living, , but the dead themselves, and the dread associated with destroying the sanctity of the afterlife. It’s not as visceral, perhaps, but it’s far more primal, echoing the likes of Lovecraft and Poe quite intentionally. (Thar be references…Also to “Dune.”)
Mike grows suspicious of the mortuary goings on, having witnessed the Tall Man singlehandedly carry a casket that four grown men could barely carry. He seeks solace at the local fortuneteller’s, where this movie very casually accepts things like predilection, telepathy and such. It’s all rather matter of fact, much like the Italians would do. Mike recounts to the fortuneteller, through her granddaughter medium, a series of flashback events (or are they?) depicting his strained relationship with his brother now that they’re both orphaned. Even within the context of this flashback, the chronology is intentionally confused, dialogue overlapping unrelated imagery. And where does this all fit into the movie’s overall timeline? At first the story seems to flow in order, but that certainty evaporates over time.
In a scene that makes clear the film’s origin as the work of enthusiastic amateurs, Reggie the balding, middle-aged ice cream man (I love that) joins Jody on the stoop for a lengthy jam session. The details about our trio of heroes are all very specific and weird, but never off-putting in their specificity, due to some competence on Coscarelli’s part that I cannot positively identify.
Also, among these characters, it is thirteen-year-old Mike who is our identification figure. Again, in most horror movies this shouldn’t work at all. Making a horror story about a kid, someone who is obviously off limits, is surely the quickest way to water down the terror. Mike works around this, though, since his childish, dreamlike view of the world opens up the possibilities far more than a closed mind like Jody’s could. And Mike is not a precocious misconception of childhood. He drinks, swears, repairs cars and shoots guns, without it ever seeming forced.
The fortuneteller’s granddaughter sneaks off to Morningside at night, creeps the marble hall, and discovers a monolithic black door. She peaks inside to see a blinding white light. She screams.
This is the last we ever see of her. This movie’s crazy, in such a good way.
That same night, Jody picks up a familiar girl at the local bar. Much like Tommy before him, Jody proceeds to take her out to Morningside for an impromptu make out session on the gravestones. But Mike has tailed Jody here, anxious to know him better. Soon Mike becomes aware of a snarling, creeping presence nearby – several 3-foot tall, brown robed dwarves. These beasts look a lot like evil Jawas, a criticism that carries more weight since Star Wars came out during Phantasm’s production. Indeed, Coscarelli was well aware of this similarity. He maintains that his demonic dwarves were designed before Star Wars was released, and they decided to maintain this design in the face of criticism out of deference to Coscarelli’s original vision. I am conflicted about this.
Mike races screaming past Jody, fleeing the dwarves. This probably saves Jody from death at the girl’s dagger, as he pursues Mike into the woods. Catching Mike, he poetically explains that he saw something “little and brown and low to the ground.” Jody returns to the cemetery, only to find that the girl is no longer there.
Mike sleeps peacefully in his bed at home, and we are put off ease entirely due to the camera movements. Sensing something, Mike awakes to find his bed in the middle of the cemetery, Tall Man looming behind him. Two dwarves burst from the soil and drag Mike down!
And he awakes at home, safe. (We’ve seen this kind of movie dream many times, usually in films made after Phantasm, and it works here better than usual because of the movie’s devotion to being thoroughly dreamlike throughout.)
Day breaks, and Mike walks the Main Street of his tiny, depopulating town. The movie’s theme plays prominently on the soundtrack, and begs my commentary. Put bluntly, the Phantasm theme is awesome! It recalls the music from The Exorcist, Suspiria and Halloween, but it remains its own thing, and functions like those others to heighten the unreality. In this particular case, Mike senses an evil presence in the light of day, and peers across the street past Reggie’s ice cream truck to see the Tall Man march down the street, only to turn and glare directly at Mike (us). There’s clearly something not right about this guy, and seems quite different than the standard horror boogeyman – you know, ‘cause he’s not murdering indiscriminately or acting the fool.
Come nightfall, Mike is determined to learn what’s wrong with Morningside. Slipping a knife in his sock, he sneaks out to the nearby mortuary, climbing over the imposing entry gates. Following another lengthy, moody passage through the graveyard, Mike breaks into the mausoleum basement, into a room filled with open, emptied caskets. Just then this fat guy, whose mortuary function I’m not totally clear on, barges into the room and Mike hides in a coffin. The guy nears the coffin when the Tall Man appears at the door. They head out, clearly in some kind of cahoots. Mike follows carefully, wending his way to the marble hall.
Echoing his brother’s earlier path, Mike ultimately happens upon the mysterious black door. He cannot explore further, though, for this is when the strange man grabs hold of Mike, violence on his mind. Mike escapes, in the film’s signature sequence, as a hovering silver ball – a Sentinel Sphere, like an evil NBA trophy minus the base – flies into the room and sinks its blades deep into the man’s forehead. A drill then protrudes to siphon an unholy amount of blood. The man collapses at Mike’s feet, urine pooling beside his dying legs. The MPAA originally was not too keen on this scene, slapping Phantasm the commercial kiss of death that is the X-rating. Oh come on, the scene’s not that bad! Finally Coscarelli was able to talk the scene down to an R, through a pal in the MPAA. It’s a good thing too, since Coscarelli’s original dream had entirely to do with this sphere. The rest is just the director’s attempts to make sense of his personal horrors.
The Tall Man chases Mike tenaciously throughout the mausoleum. “Oh shit,” quoth Mike. Mike makes it to safety as he slams a large metal door against the Tall Man, only to discover the old man’s fingers wriggling in the frame. Mike slices the fingers with his knife, as sickening yellow blood spurts out. Collecting one wriggling, living finger, Mike flees for home, pursued by dwarves.
In the morning Jody wakes Mike on the stairs, a shotgun in his grasp. Mike shows Jody the living finger, now kept in a small box, causing Jody to believe his brother’s wild tales. Mike heads upstairs and opens the box again, only to see the finger has somehow transformed into a gigantic demonic bug. The demon bug engages both brothers, and soon also Reggie, until Jody finishes it off in the kitchen garbage disposal. I love how simply relating the events of this movie is enough to convey its craziness.
As night once again falls, Jody makes a trip much like his brother’s off to Morningside, armed with significant ordinance as he too aims to learn the mortuary’s dark secret. Jody only makes it as far as the basement when a dwarf attacks. Jody shoots it endlessly with his Colt, but still it comes. He flees for the mortuary’s entry gates, a driverless hearse bearing down upon him. Jody dodges the hearse as new headlights head down the road. It is the family’s cherished 1971 Hemicuda, driven with surprising skill by young Mike. The hearse returns, so it’s time for a car chase, simply because these things are fun for cast, crew and viewers, even if they have little to do with the horror genre. And the soundtrack goes crazy, itself sounding more Italian than American. Jody fires off a shotgun, forcing the hearse to crash into a tree, and I love how atypically proactive these protagonists are for horror heroes. It seems a lot of stupid horror movie rules are being broken here, likely because the filmmakers were too young to care much about them in the first place.
The brothers park to inspect the hearse. Inside they find a dead dwarf, smeared in yellow blood. Removing his hood, Jody is aghast to find – Tommy!, halved in size and transformed into a deathless automaton. This is the film’s true horror, that the dead are the mere tools of the Tall Man, whatever he is. Mike and Jody reflect back at home, huddled before the roaring fireplace. “What about Mom and Dad?” They consider going on the offensive, as Reggie joins them and proposes taking out the “Tall Dude.” So each hero goes on his separate task, Jody arming himself for war, Mike seeking safety with Sally (someone’s girlfriend, who’s only now been introduced), and Reggie stashing the dead Tommy dwarf in his truck. (“This guy’s not gonna leak all over my ice cream, is he?”)
Mike explores Sally’s bizarre antique shop, eyeing the creepy curios, when he sees a series of period photographs. The theme mounts in intensity as Mike recognizes a photo of the Tall Man on a horse-drawn hearse. Then this photograph Tall Man turns to stare us down. Reality is certainly starting to fall apart here.
General fear driving his decisions, Mike has Sally and her identical-looking blonde friend Suzie drive him away in their VW Bug. They slow down in the steadily increasing fog to find Reggie’s ice cream truck overturned on the side of the road. Not only is Reggie nowhere to be seen, but neither is the dwarf, replaced by telltale yellow blood. Mike returns to the VW when a mass of brown dwarves attacks them all. Mike alone is able to escape, smashing through the Bug’s rear window as it drives off with the screaming girls.
Mike returns to Jody with the latest news. Concerned with his brother’s safety, Jody locks Mike in his room, barring his door with a screwdriver. Mike is still able to MacGuyver his way out, exploding his door with items in every kid’s bedroom – tape, a diamond, a hammer and a shotgun shell. Mike runs downstairs to catch up with his departing brother. He opens the front door, to see –
The Tall Man! “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Jody’s Hemicuda and the Tall Man’s hearse both converge upon Morningside. Mike, locked in the hearse’s rear, shoots his way out with the family Colt (I like this kid). The hearse then proceeds to crash and explode gloriously. They’re certainly putting their budget up on screen.
Both Jody and Mike in turn enter the marble hall and inspect their parent’s crypt. Confirming their greatest fears, the coffins are empty – the horror of this moment sticks with me in a way no mere on-screen murder could, because it’s eerie, unsettling and subtle. Here comes that Sentinel Sphere, represented partially by a red-tinted POV shot, proving to be no match for Jody’s shotgun. The brothers sigh in relief when they are grabbed from behind by –
Reggie, very much not dead. It would seem. He explains, in a moment of loopy logic that feels nicely at place here, that he hid in a coffin, then saved Sally, Suzie and several other blonde girls that he’s never seen before, and whom we’ll never see. I actually like how random and thrown away this is, because at this stage the movie has become wild enough for us to accept it.
The reunited trio finally makes their way to that mysterious black door. Beyond is a stark, blindingly white room, like the construct in the Matrix, populated entirely by dark canisters full of incubating dwarves. There is also an oversized “tuning fork” in the corner, humming eerily. Mike inspects the space between the two fork poles when his hand suddenly vanishes into another dimension! A great wind sucks Mike inside, depositing him in a turbulent red wasteland where a line of dwarf slaves labors towards the horizon. Jody pulls Mike back to our world, this brief glimpse of the Tall Man’s darker secrets whetting our appetites for an answer. Nicely, for the time being (this entry), it remains a mystery.
Suddenly the lights go out, turning this pure-white world pure-black. The trio separates, dwarves run everywhere, and when the lights return, Reggie alone remains. He ponders the tuning forks, recognizing them for the tools he uses in his musical hobby. He stops their vibration, creating an extradimensional wind that ravages whatever vestiges of reality remain at Morningside. Reggie flees for the cemetery lawn, where he finds a familiar girl lying on the grass. He seeks to help her when she transforms into the Tall Man and stabs Reggie in the heart. Farewell, sweet prince! Mike and Jody, for their part, barely escape Morningside as the mausoleum vanishes in a swirling vortex, a special effect eons beyond the scope of this homemade movie.
The brothers collect their wits and ammunition back at home, discussing a final desperate confrontation. They shall lure the Tall Man into an abandoned mineshaft (um, okay then – this is a bit of a misstep). Mike grows anxious alone at home, justifiably, it seems, since the Tall Man bursts away a side door to confront him. “BOOOOY!” Mike runs into the forests, the Tall Man giving ever-tenacious pursuit. “You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die!” And by the way, I’ve rewritten every single line of the Tall Man’s dialogue here.
Things grow crazier and crazier, gravestones and zombie hands bursting from the mud! Yet Mike remains focused, leaping over the camouflaged mineshaft as the Tall Man proceeds to tumble down its 1,000 vertical feet. A mass of boulders then rolls down from a nearby hillside, and I am actually ready to accept this as another random bit of non-reality until Jody appears triumphant on the cliffs.
Mike awakens to a crackle of thunder, indicating that some or all of what preceded was a dream, or partially a dream, or something. It’s open enough for each viewer to bring his own interpretation, and I like not understanding it thoroughly. Mike sits at the fireplace with Reggie, who has proven once again very resilient against death. They recount roughly half of what we have just seen as true, including the mineshaft bit, except Reggie asserts that Jody is long dead, perished in a recent car wreck. A “flashback,” or something, reveals Mike in a very normal cemetery over his brother’s grave. Reggie proposes a road trip (i.e., a sequel), and Mike heads upstairs to pack. Mike collects clothes from his closet, and shuts the mirror door – so we know something evil will be reflected in it. Indeed, it is the Tall Man. “BOOOOOOY!” Dwarves drag Mike within the mirror!
Whew! I love this movie, and its unique, weird little exploration of…whatever. It is an experience, and undoubtedly unique in the horror field. I have little more to say about it that I didn’t give away earlier on. All that’s left to do now is consider the potential for sequels. It’s actually hard to imagine a horror movie that does not allow for the possibility of sequels, regardless of content. That’s just the nature of the genre. Of course one of Phantasm’s greatest strengths is its ambiguity, a quality that never fares well in sequels of any sort. Too much time with a dark figure like the Tall Man could lessen his impact. The reassuring fact is that Coscarelli shall remain in control throughout this series, so whatever weird direction the story goes in shall be the direction the original author intends. I feel that, as enjoyable or revealing as these upcoming films may be (a confession: I’ve not yet seen any of them), Phantasm shall always stand tall as an unassailable original, forever a solo entity with an oddball spirit.
Related posts:
• No. 2 Phantasm II (1988)
• No. 3 Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
• No. 4 Phantasm IV Oblivion (1998)
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