Phantasm

I am of the opinion that Phantasm is a sort of dream adventure for Michael and Jody and Reggie. Mainly, it is a wish fulfillment fantasy for Michael, who had already lost his parents to an unelaborated death, getting to take on an evil figure known as The Tall Man with help from family pal, Reggie. The Tall Man fronts as a mortician operating Morningside Cemetery, using the bodies of the graves for his own use. With a kid as the hero and his brother as a sort of put upon paternal guardian (although it is established he’s planning to skip town soon and perhaps drop Michael off at their aunt’s house) trying to watch over him and keep him safe, both will eventually have to face The Tall Man, on his turf. Riding a motorcycle, driving his bro’s badass ‘Cuda, packing heat (either a shot gun or Jody’s Colt), evading little dwarf minions (crushed, “downsized” human bodies, forced into servitude for The Tall Man) and a dangerous flying silver sphere that seems to contain a spinning drill and lightning-shaped blades that trigger right before stabbing into the forehead of the unlucky (spitting out blood from a hole in the sphere): Michael gets to experience lots of bizarre events (car on a jack as he was working on the ‘Cuda collapsing thanks to the rocking of one of those dwarf minions, momentarily pinned underneath; boxing the severed finger of The Tall Man which transforms into a monster fly with sharp teeth; exploding a forcefully locked door thanks to a makeshift bomb (Jody wanted him to stay put); discovering a “door” through two poles that leads to The Tall Man’s planet where he sends the dwarf minions for future slavery).

The main characters seem to always return to the cemetery and mausoleum, perhaps because death is a bedfellow of Mike’s: so many he loves have died, leaving him alone. The real truth about Jody further emphasizes why Mike and his brother are always able to defeat (well, keep from succumbing to him despite numerous attempts on their lives) The Tall Man, until the final resolution determines a harsh reality that the kid will have to address whether he wants to or not. Maybe Angus Scrimm is a direct representation of what haunts Mike: death. Death comes for us all. We die daily and because Mike has lost those so close to him, The Tall Man is very real. He, too, is constantly running from The Tall Man, giving his all to stay one step ahead, unlike his family.

The dream adventure allows him to succeed, and the running theme is fear and conquering it. If you are able to face that fear and outlast it, maybe you can move past it and live. This kind of plot allows director Don Coscarelli to creatively toss every kind of weird and horrific set piece at us with nary a viable reason for any of them to truthfully function logically. He can craft a scene where an old photograph of The Tall Man on a stagecoach can suddenly come to life in an antique shop, a dwarf can drive a hearse (taking a tree through it when Mike and Jody successfully cause it to crash, revealing a smaller version of the man stabbed by Lady in Lavender in the opening scene), a sphere can fly on its own (we can actually see through its red vision POV as it travels), and Jody can pick up a woman in a manner of minutes in a bar (well, it is the Lady in Lavender so Jody’s pick up line was probably only a formality), taking her to the cemetery to make out(!) before Mike is chased by another dwarf.

You get Michael visiting a creepy, blind grandmother fortuneteller and her rather equally creepy granddaughter(who speaks for her grandmother and has a star on her cheek) who try to tell him Jody won’t leave him, soon having the kid stick his hand in a black box that appears out of thin air hoping to teach him a lesson about facing his fear.

Even at the end when Mike must visit his brother’s grave, forced to awaken from the nightmare of all that we have watched and he has been a part of, he fully, wholeheartedly, is convinced that The Tall Man has gotten his father, mother, and brother—and that The Tall Man wants him next. When The Tall Man reappears, Mike’s nightmare comes to fruition and those memorable hands break through a mirror to snatch our young hero into nothingness. Coscarelli loved to do that at the end of his Phantasm movies; we are led to believe that The Tall Man has been put down only to resurface, the heroes of the film once again defeated. Death keeps coming, and I can’t think of anyone more menacing to play such a role than Angus Scrimm.

I remember the year Vincent Price died, sci fi channel showed an all day/all night Halloween marathon in October and it was an incredible line up that introduced me to such recognizable titles as The Evil Dead and The Puppetmaster (and the sequel), but Phantasm was a nice surprise because of its inventive, everything goes nature. It really is like a long dream, scenes as odd as Mike in a bed, appearing in the middle of the woods, two zombie-like creatures rising from some sort of bog to grab him as The Tall Man hovers over him. Or Jody, one minute sitting in a chair in his living room, then all of a sudden finding himself in the mausoleum, the dwarves pulling him into a crypt. Not all so weird, as some spontaneously in-the-moment scenes include Jody and Reg rocking on their guitars and Mike trying to chase after his brother as Jody drives away, understanding his frustration. Once again, the horror genre features a 70s film with a very iconic score that sets the mood and remains in your head after its over. Its simple and effective. And how cool is that poster of the sight of the Earth from the moon in Mike’s room?

Boy!!!!

You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die!!!

I’ve been waiting for you.