At its heart a very sad and moving portrait of how adolescent boys fantasize about sex and death to cope with the essential loneliness and pain of growing up. The younger brother looks up to his older brother who drives a cool car, has huge hair, and gets laid, but is also kind of an asshole who is going to leave him behind to grow up on his own, so he invents a fantasy about an evil mortician who turns dead bodies into dwarf slaves he shrinks and stuffs in oil drums so he can send them to another planet. In this fantasy there is danger and death but he also gets to do cool shit with his brother like drive cars, shoot guns and see boobs. The dead end, boring American town that is his prison becomes a surreal abattoir but at least it's fun and interesting and he doesn't have to think about his brother and parents actually being dead. One of the best things about horror movies, particularly of this era, is that they represent some of the few honest and non-cloying depictions of childhood in film. In America, only through the sleaze and amateurism of the horror genre is where we find anything that feels like an authentic portrayal of being 13 or 14 and realizing the world sucks, nothing is fair, and that growing up is just an endless series of humiliations and traumas about sex and death until you die or just die inside.Chills/Thrills, Gore/Ownage, and Horniness levels all solid.
In the early to mid 90's I was an expert at sneaking around my Dad's VHS collection... one day while in extra snoop mode I came across something he had taped off tv... a vhs tape with big block letters that read "PHANTASM". I thought it was the coolest word ever so, as inquiring minds do, I looked it up in our dictionary and BOOM... There was no way I wasn’t totally going to watch this mysterious sounding spectre of movie.I was the perfect age to watch Phantasm, roughly the same age as our main character Mike, maybe even a little younger. I kept asking myself why he lived with his brother and it dawned on me... his parents were dead. My comprehensions of death up to that point were non existsnt. That moment, along with a death in my family pinpointed my understanding that once you're gone, that's it, you don't come back. You can imagine the effect that had on a young preteen.By that time I was already a fan of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but this one was different... the creepy sci-fi factor, little jawa dudes, mausoleums, bald hero with a ponytail and an ice cream truck, flying death spheres, creepy Tall Man, the soundtrack, and the insanely forboding atmosphere filled with surreal nightmare fuel at every turn absolutely drove my young imagination wild—and honestly, it still does. This is an all timer for me, containing a prime example of dreamy atmosphere that I go nuts for... sleepy lingering dread, the waking nightmare.In a weird way every revisit feels like staring into a pictureshow time capsule of what it felt like to be young and all the soon to be dangers of adulthood in the form of a tall, lumbering spectoral reaper of innocence. Yeah, I love Phantasm.
Mike is a little kid who lost his parents in a tragic accident a couple years back. His hero is Jody his super-cool bell bottom jeans wearing older brother. Together along with Reggie the most gangsta ice cream truck driver known to man they must fight an evil like no other. A dark evil. A spooky evil. An evil that is beyond evil. This evil is known simply as The Tall Man. One of the creepiest villains ever in one of the oddest but awesomely awesome horror films ever made. Graveyard bump n' grind. Tit touch. The first time you see The Tall Man. Creepy funeral parlor. Bionic strength. The score is freakishly similar to Halloween. Badass Jody. Mike's dirt bike riding skills. Grandma's glasses. Reggie is quite possibly the only non-creepo ponytail sporting guitar playing ice cream truck driver in the history of cinema. Barroom pimpin'. Why do people enjoy fucking in graveyards? A bed or kitchen counter will do the trick. Panty mouth. Bootleg Tatooine Jawas. Angus swag. I want to drive Jody's car. Fuck! The Tall Man is one scary motherfucker. Hammer time. Slow Timmy. Jody's Stones t-shirt. Mike's curiosity. Casket peek-a-boo. Silver spheres ain't no joke. I would run like a motherfucker if The Tall Man was chasing me. Yellow blood? Finger box. I'm pretty sure these fucked up creatures are the types of shit you hallucinate when you're on strong acid. Garbage disposal nightmare. Always shoot to kill a motherfucker. Jody's steady aim. Car chicken. Mike drives a car like a boss. Reggie's bow tie and vest. Everybody talks like they're high as a kite. Top hat baddie. Tall Man stroll. Jawa carjack. Tall Man snatch and grab. Tall Man giggle. Is it ever fun to ride in the back of a hearse? The bond between Jody and Mike. Reggie the Fearless. Windy wind. Ice cold stab. Tall Man snarl. The last motherfucker you want to see at your window. Fuck fear! Boobie trap. Giant rock. Fireside chat. Don Coscarelli's Phantasm is so much more than a psychedelic horror film. It introduced the world to Angus Scrimm's iconic Tall Man character. His screen time is limited but his legend is infinite. Phantasm is also a film about grief and how we cope when extremely shitty things occur beyond our control. Mike has been to hell and back and through his grief we get to truly experience the monster that is The Tall Man. This is one of my all-time favorite films and I can't recommend it enough.
