Movie 123: Phantasm

Starring: Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm, Lynn Eastman, Bill Cone.
Director: Don Coscarelli.

It's a sad day for horror fans as news of the passing of Angus Scrimm has been circulating the internet.  Obviously, those fans don't need an explanation on how important the actor has been to them.  While he is not the most prolific actor ever, Scrimm became a massive cult figure in his own right with Don Coscarreli's Gonzo Horror series Phantasm as the chilling and mysterious Tall Man.  The Tall Man is one of Horror's premiere boogeymen, and Scrimm's performance had truly been something legendary.

I was originally going to give Phantasm a pass.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the series for all its madness and confusion, but I actually don't have the entire series.  Under the circumstances, I'm going to break my rule of not reviewing movies I don't actually own and go ahead and do the entire series.  Beyond not owning them all, I was also waiting for this long-awaited Phantasm 5 to finally reach the masses.  The movie has been talked about for a long time now, with teaser trailers and various tidbits occasionally making the rounds on the nets of inter, but I'm not sure what the delay actually is.  Supposedly, or so my research suggests, the film is actually done.  IMDB states it's still in post-production.  Maybe it's trapped in some sort of distribution hell, unable to find anyone willing to shell out the dough to release it?  Being some asshole at home, I have no idea.

No matter the case, I'm going to go ahead and watch the entire Phantasm series here and now, and pass along my running commentary and analysis to you as I do so.  It's the best I can do to honor the memory of a truly impressive figure in the genres history.  Rest In Peace, Angus Scrimm.

Oh, shit, this copy of the film I'm watching has a direct introduction from Scrimm himself.  It's incredibly academic and very, very charming.  What a class act this guy is.  The story Scrimm is sharing: that he was approached to play an "alien" and misunderstanding that as an Immigrant...and then being amused when he discovered it was NOT that at all...kind of gave me chills.  What a classy artist this man was.

Now we'll stop gushing on the late Mr.Scrimm and get into the film itself.

Fantastic weird opener: Coscarelli brings us to two very iconic Phantasm elements-sex and graveyards(and I've had sex in a graveyard.  I didn't have Tommy's Mutton chops or mustache, but she DID have a knife...but she didn't turn into The Tall Man, for which I am very thankful)-and makes it very otherworldly.  So much is made of the graveyard sets, but even more is made of the extraordinary Mortuary where so much of the film is set.  The marble walls and floors, the seemingly vague and shapeless statuary: lots of symmetry.  Very pretty.

I'd almost forgotten how Seventies this really is: Jody(the fantastic Bill Thornbury)-who, to this day, I am bummed wasn't around much in the sequels-has helmet hair, his suit has bell bottoms, and his boots have high-heels.  Jody makes for a great leading man, though: there's something comforting about him.  Maybe capable is a better word.  Jody seems like he'll have everything under control.  He seems...well, is comparing him to Han Solo too much?  He seems a lot like Han Solo.

As horror movie kids go, Mike is pretty bearable.  Adolescents usually provide irritation in horror flicks, or are an objective or something at risk, but Mike manages to be a strong enough protagonist.  I've always loved the weird scene with the psychic: Mike goes to see an old lady Psychic-who only communicates through her pretty young Daughter-and we get slightly discordant flashbacks to Mike and Jody's relationship-and then they make Mike stick his hand in a box and tell him "don't fear." Then the old woman bursts out laughing after Mike leaves. It's awesome.

There's a lot of discordance to the narrative flow of Phantasm.  It plays almost like a Fulci film, except it's coherent. Flashbacks, jump cuts, characters discussing past events before the audience knows about them...in fact, I don't think I ever realized how much Phantasm is influenced by films like Fulci's The Beyond and the like.  Half the time it feels like we don't even quite know what we're looking at.  It's bold.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that this film is very much a Spielberg movie(suburban middle-America, coming-of-age and self-discovery in adolescents and vaguely alien science fiction) by way of a Fulci film(other dimensions, non-linear narrative stylings, and grotesque gore).  It's rather extraordinary in that regard.

Pretty extraordinary otherworldly scare sequence with Mike's dream.  Laying in bed, the music creeping louder and louder, and then he opens his eyes and there's The Tall Man standing over his bed.  The bed lays in the cemetery, and out of the ground comes two monsters who grab him...and then the next day, Mike sees the monstrous boogeyman walking down the street...and The Tall Man looks right at him.  Great stuff.

There's so much fantastical elements to this flick: the flying orbs filled with various blades, robed midget monks, and especially The Tall Man himself, who gives chase after Mike with weird, moaning musical keys and shrieks in three different voices when Mike chops off his fingers...which bleed yellow.  Furthers my Spielberg/Fulci combo-pack theory, which now seems so obvious I can't believe it took me twenty years to see it.  I mean, even the finger turning into a weird fly beast and crawling over Mike's head...and Reggie unwittingly wanders into it.  That's so Spielberg.  Spielberg had made Close Encounters by that time, so it's not out of the question.

"You don't point a gun at a man in case you intend to shoot him.  And you don't shoot a man unless you intend to kill him.  No warning shots.  Warning shots are bullshit.  Shoot to kill, or you don't shoot at all."  Perhaps the best explanation of gun etiquette I've ever heard.

I wonder if Coscarelli knew he was going to be playing with psychic elements or was just being Fulci-like.  Both Mike and Jody have dreams about The Tall Man attacking.  When Mike escapes the back of Sally's VW Bug, there are shots of him laying in the street with shots of Jody looking worried, jumping quickly between the two.  Also, The Tall Man has a fascination with Mike even at the start...it's hard to tell with the weird narrative stylings of the film just what, exactly, Coscarelli had planned as far as a greater mythology...if he had a plan at all.  It doesn't really matter: the slightly drug-trip like floating Mike does when Tall Man lifts him off his feet is so undeniably cool.

Interesting decision to have Reggie pop back up and verbally recount an entire storyline we never see: He hid out in a casket, escaped, found the established Women we knew were captured earlier and helped them escape and now he's back to be part of the climax.

The otherworld is so simply done it's wonderful.  Mike sticks his head through a door(which is just two metal cylinders), sees a red planet with all the midget monks moving in a line.  It's basically just a gravel pit with red lights all around.  Amazing.  The explanation is simple enough, too: they crush corpses down to dwarf size and use them as slaves because the other planet has funky gravity.  Love it.

I think Mike has been fighting The Tall Man for longer than he realizes: perhaps forever.  Considering the series and all of it's time-jumping, dream sequences, fever dreams, and other weird shit, I don't think it's out of the question.  The Tall Man knows Mike, seemingly even at the beginning, and acknowledges him as a worthy opponent even though Mike hasn't really done much to really screw things up for the guy.  Oh, man, my head: what if the beginning of the series Phantasm is actually the end?  Like, Mike is facing Tall Man at the beginning of his idea of the narrative but only after a bunch of magic and time travel and...I mean, I guess it isn't likely, considering the misdirect of Jody being actually dead and the movie up until the ending is considered a dream...or another reality....

Final Thoughts: BOYYYYYYYYYY!

Well, that and a sudden realization this Phantasm is actually a really clever mash-up of elements and concepts from that period's greatest genre works.

Final Rating: Three and a Half Stars.