The Tall Man

Funeral's About to Begin...sirrrr!

I remember someone on the dearly departed IMDb Horror Board mentioning that "Phantasm" (1979) is like the last great 70s film, a goodbye letter to the decade of darkness before the decade of capitalist decadence. Sex in the cemetery, pick up at a bar after some brief dialogue, panties between the teeth, Mike getting a gleeful eyeful of cleavage, jam sessions in the afternoon, the hiccups that Mike goes auto mechanic to repair on the badass Cuda, bedroom wallpaper shot from the moon of the earth, Mike visiting a spaced-out blond and her medium grandma, the marble floor and walls of the labyrinthine Morningside mausoleum where an intense tall grump with a stern voice could be a ghoul (and one "strong mother") taking corpses as manual labor for his world away from world, a memorable score that hums forever in your head and remains in melody when your eyes close, a kid without parents killed in a crash facing the anxiety of losing his brother (again), night trips to bars, cemetery, and Morningside, gunfights and evasive maneuvers as the Tall Man and his minions present plenty of challenges, and no end to Mike's games with TM.

I do think this is very much up for debate. Do you think this is an ongoing continuous nightmare, a dream series of adventures so desired by Mike to be real he gives TM the ability to manifest, or is the Tall Man a serious alien using a portal to send minions from one parallel dimension to the next?

I'm sure I mentioned this before, but "Phantasm" holds a very special place not just because it was a Sci-Fi Channel mainstay in the 90s where I was introduced to the film, but also due to when I first saw it. Vincent Price died October 1993 and later that month, there was this incredible marathon of horror that included "Phantasm", "The Evil Dead", and "The Puppet Master" (and its sequel). I was a student being educated over a day of horror on Halloween in 1993. I was truly hooked for good.

But Mike visiting his brother's gravestone, just the sunny buy lonely melancholy of it, the oddness of the blond taking it upon herself to visit Morningside to her own peril, Reggie "tuning" the parallel portal causing the establishment to fissure, stir up, and eventually vanish, and the way Tall Man keeps coming for Mike until he no longer can get away; scene after scene, and the iconic score that lives on, are with me, staying never leaving. A film experience every October beckons.