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I recently blazed through a rewatch of the Phantasm movies and thought I would get my thoughts down for Last Movie Outpost. I absolutely love this random, chaotic and often frustrating franchise, and I will do my best to articulate why in a two-part article.
This article will cover parts I and II. The second article will cover III-V
Creator and Director Don Coscarelli released five Phantasm movies between 1979 and 2016. The tale of a young teenage boy’s conflict with a grave-robbing mortician across dimensions and small town America spanned five decades and spawned numerous spin-off comic books and novels.
To describe Phantasm as ‘horror’ is broadly correct, but it is so much more than that. Phantasm is a strange brew of surrealist, supernatural, apocalyptic horror, science fiction, action, dark comedy and whatever else Don Coscarelli felt like throwing at the screen.
Alien morticians, zombies, interdimensional portals, psychic connections, dream sequences, murderous flying spheres, and disabled Jawas with anger issues are all thrown into the mix.
Describing it like that may make it sound absurd (or awesome!), but the movies do a great job of letting events unfold naturally without too much exposition, providing just enough hints to a larger mythology to keep you interested. Dario Argento’s Suspiria was a key influence. The less you explain, the more you intrigue.
Many questions remain, even five movies later. The sequels don’t so much expand the universe as inch it forward, possibly to a fault at times, but it sure beats over-explaining.
If you like weird, you’ll love Phantasm.
Cult following
The tone of Phantasm is mostly dark and serious, with a streak of The Evil Dead II-type humour. Later sequels lean more into the comedy aspect but, unlike many horror franchises of the 1970s and 1980s, stop short of becoming a joke.
The early movies are genuinely creepy. How can they not be? Phantasm centres around mortuaries, graveyards, and death. The morbid subject matter naturally draws us in, even when we don’t want it to. It’s a glimpse into our future.
The simple but relentless piano theme adds to the sense of dread and stays with you long after the movie ends.
Anchoring the tone is Phantasm’s iconic villain: the Tall Man. Angus Scrimm’s Creepy undertaker – possibly undead, possibly alien, possibly demon – looks imposing, sounds scary, and has the best snarl this side of Billy Idol.
For the reasons stated above, Phantasm has earned itself a well-deserved cult following. But there’s another reason, I think. The Phantasm series is the very definition of the underdog spirit: a guy struggling to make movies with the same group of friends over a period of 37 years with limited resources and a genuine love for the material.
The movies may be imperfect, but that passion always shows through.
There has never been anything quite like it.
Phantasm (1979)
The plot in a nutshell silver sphere: teenager Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) discovers that the local mortician, known only as the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), is stealing corpses from the local graveyard. But for what purpose? With the help of his brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) and their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister), Mike attempts to expose the Tall Man. In doing so, they uncover a strange and sinister world more dangerous than they could ever imagine.
Don Coscarelli had a dream one night where a baseball-sized silver sphere relentlessly pursued him down long corridors. It never caught him, but he wondered what would happen if it did. Phantasm was born.
The blades were added later
Phantasm was Coscarelli’s third movie. Its $300k budget was independently funded, largely through Coscarelli’s father. It afforded a high level of freedom in the kind of ideas he could include, and he certainly made the most of it.
The flip side of that coin was the inevitable budget constraints. Filming took well over a year, mostly on weekends. Coscarelli would rent the cameras on Friday and return them on Monday, getting three days’ use from a single day’s fee.
The drawn-out filming process gave Coscarelli extra time to re-write the script as they shot. The ending was the big sticking point, with several versions filmed. It shows. The ending in the final cut is bewildering.
Without spoiling it, the movie makes a handbrake turn so abrupt you’re likely to get whiplash watching it. It doesn’t make much sense given all that we’ve seen up to that point, and the coda that follows it. It is a rare example of the movie being weird to a fault, but you may well disagree.
Luckily, the final sting in the tail makes up for it, setting up the inevitable sequel.
Horror Movies Always Make Money
Phantasm starred mostly actors that Coscarelli had worked with before. Angus Scrimm appeared in his first movie, Jim, The World’s Greatest. A. Michael Baldwin starred in his second movie, Kenny & Company. Reggie Bannister appeared in both.
Both Jim, The World’s Greatest and Kenny & Company were coming-of age stories. Phantasm continued that trend, albeit in a horror setting.
Coscarelli chose to make a horror film partly because he loved the genre, partly because the funeral home setting was a novel idea, and partly because his first two movies hadn’t made any money. Conventional wisdom stated that horror movies always made money. ALWAYS. And he was right.
This is the original poster, which has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. How have I only just noticed the breasts?
The first cut ran three hours long, with multiple subplots and character moments. Following a disastrous test screening, Coscarelli edited the movie down to a lean 90-minutes. Now it was scary, if a little disjointed and random in parts, but that just added to the movie’s mystique.
Other than its randomness, my only criticism would be that the ending doesn’t quite work for me. You can criticise some of the acting too, but to me the performances are endearing in an odd way that is hard to articulate. They have camaraderie, and they commit.
AVCO Embassy Pictures, fresh off their Halloween success, picked up the movie for distribution. It grossed $22m worldwide on a $300k budget.
While not quite in the same league as Halloween, which grossed $70m from a similar budget, or Night of the Living Dead, which grossed $30m from a $125k budget, Phantasm was a success by anyone’s standards.
With those numbers, a sequel was inevitable. But it would take almost a decade for it to appear…
Phantasm II (1988)
I’ve had worse
The plot in a silver sphere: picking up immediately after the first movie, Reggie and Mike narrowly escape the Tall Man and his minions. Eight years later, Mike is released from a psychiatric institution. Mike shares a psychic bond with a young woman, Liz, whose town is being harvested by the Tall Man. Mike and Reggie embark on a cross-country trip to locate Liz and end the Tall Man’s reign of terror.
A sequel to Phantasm was announced in 1980, but Don Coscarelli struggled to find the story and was keen to work on other projects. In the period between Phantasm I and II, he wrote and directed another cult classic, The Beastmaster.
He eventually hit upon the somewhat obvious idea of starting Phantasm II straight after the end of the original. The movie then skips forward eight years to match the passage of time in real life.
Phantasm II (Roman numerals, so you know it means business) is the only movie in the series with major studio backing. Universal Studios was looking for a horror franchise and took a punt on financing it.
The $3m budget was the largest of any Phantasm film, but the least amount of money that Universal spent on any movie in the 1980s. This is the studio that chucked $36m at Howard the Duck.
Universal kept a tighter rein on the production, insisting that Coscarelli stick to the script and drop some of the more outlandish elements of the original. The studio also insisted on recasting the role of Mike. A Michael Baldwin was no longer a working actor, so James Le Gros took over as the adult Mike, beating Brad Pitt to the role.
Despite this, Phantasm II never feels compromised by studio interference. It’s just a little more focused, with a slightly bigger scope. The first half is a road movie, with Reggie and Mike discovering empty graveyards and dead towns that have fallen victim to the Tall Man. The second half is a slick re-tread of the original.
Dialled Up To Eleven
You don’t have to have watched the original to enjoy Phantasm II. It acts as a soft reboot as well as a sequel, with the action and gore quota dialled up to eleven.
The movie announces its intentions early on with a montage of Reggie and Mike tooling up and creating bespoke weapons to fight the Tall Man. Mike carries a flamethrower. Reggie sports a chainsaw and a custom-made four-barrelled shotgun. Then they peel away in their black 1971 Plymouth Barracuda. Fuck yeah.
While Phantasm was a boys-only adventure, the sequel cast two women in prominent roles – Paula Irvine as Liz and Samantha Phillips as the beautiful and mysterious Alchemy. These characters are integral to the plot as well as being potential love interests for Reggie and Mike.
But the real stars of the show are the silver spheres, also known as sentinels. The killings are brutal and the special effects are amazing, courtesy of Bob Kurtzman and Greg Nicotero. They really had fun with it, and you can see where the bulk of that $3m budget went.
There is little to fault in Phantasm II, other than it being effectively a remake that doesn’t significantly advance the mythology. My only criticism would be the final ‘it’s not really over’ sting.
The Phantasm movies have a habit of undermining the characters’ efforts over the previous 90-minutes for the sake of a cheap twist at the end. They consistently write themselves into corners that the next movie has to write its way out of. It’s not a deal breaker, but the lack of forward momentum in this series can be frustrating at times.
Unfair Reception
Phantasm II underperformed at the box office, grossing $7.3m against its $3m budget. I would hardly consider that a disaster, but it spelled the end of Universal’s interest in the franchise. It is likely that the long gap between movies played a part in its relative failure.
Phantasm II’s Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 33% (Critics) and 57% (viewers), which is a testament to the number of idiots in the world.
It remains my favourite Phantasm movie: quirky, scary, gruesome, funny, and accessible to series newcomers.
I first watched it on home video in the late eighties, without having seen the original, and it freaked me out. The image of the sentinel sphere drilling into that guy’s brain never left me. When I came across a box set of the first four movies many years later, I didn’t hesitate. It had to be mine.
Stay tuned for part 2…
The post Super Review: The PHANTASM Movies – Part 1 appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
