Death is always there waiting...waiting for Mike!

One of my favorite scenes in the film features this elderly fortuneteller and her granddaughter. Don't know what it is but these two are just creepy. Their existence in Michael's life just reinforces the strangeness of the whole enterprise. Love me some Phantasm!

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No matter how far you run, Death is always there.

 I know you often get that "When I watched Phantasm on the screen for the first time" in these nostalgia pieces written from the fondness that comes with those trips to the past at a particular viewing that seemingly forever attaches the film to your life as a horror fan, but certainly I am glad I'm not alone in that regard. There are plenty of us that can brush aside the film's *shortcomings* (perhaps due to the editing process and the footage Coscarelli had to organize and go through) in logic and coherence just to shine off the constant excess of horror goodies provided to us.

The plot, let's face it, is this smorgasbord of nightmares and shocks designed in a spotfest that constantly berates you...well, for the horror fan, the berating is in a good way. Michael in a bed in the middle of nowhere has the Tall Man clasping the bed posts above him as two ghouls on each side of said bed arise from a swampy hole to grab the kid. A severed finger from the Tall Man collected by Mike in a box to show Jody turns into this red-eyed, sharp-teethed flying bug that fights off a trip into the kitchen sink trash dispenser. Dwarf slaves in monk robes miniaturized from the bodies of the dead sent by the Tall Man to his world in another dimension. I mean, I can see why certain folks would just laugh, roll their eyes, and hit the exits intellectually. This flying metal sphere with a drill that penetrates the skull and squirts out blood...often not mentioned is that the victim (a servant, I guess, to the Tall Man, who captures Mike temporarily) peed his pants while this happened, and the urine puddles on the floor! You have these sequences that just bewilder the senses. The "lady in lavender" fucking the band mate of Reggie and Jody in a cemetery (!) *turning* into the Tall Man (is there something there Coscarelli is telling us? Hell if I know but it always returns to my mind.) and stabbing him. Sex and violence and the whole damned thing.

I really responded, as many did, to the inherent presence of Mike's fear of losing his brother. Losing my own father, I see why he'd want to keep Jody right there in his sights and life always. Jody isn't very far from Mike and when there's a distance, the kid will do whatever it takes to shorten the length they are apart. Because death is so prevalent to Mike, the Tall Man is as good a representative of Death's pervasiveness and encroachment as anything. Toss in any idea of what the Tall Man is, an alien from another world who uses the Morningside cemetery and funeral parlor as his place of plunder and *profit* (off the bodies of the dead for his service), but the threat he represents is what makes him such an iconic figure to horror fans. Run as hard as you might, Death comes for us all. Tall Man is just another ominous figure that is ever-present and near. Mike does what he can to escape, but the shock ending tells us that kids are just as susceptible.

If anything, the idea that you and your big brother are out there fighting evil is a dream in itself that allows fantasy to replace what is lost...in reality, a kid has lost his family unit, but the dream allows him to have that chance of getting time with the brother he no longer has. Only when reality returns, and the kid sees the headstone and must accept what the dream wouldn't allow...Jody is gone. The Tall Man, however, isn't.