Phantasm

Dir: Don Coscarelli

1979

****

Phantasm has a huge fan following but I’ve always thought it strange that it is a cult classic and not a mainstream horror film. Evil Dead managed it and I’ve always seen Phantasm as its sci-fi horror cousin – although Evil Dead got better as it produced more sequels, Phantasm did not. You can’t beat old school independent horror films such as this though, filmed over two years and finally released in 1979, Phantasm was Don Coscarelli’s dream and the cast and crew were mostly amateurs and aspiring professionals. It was locally financed, with Coscarelli renting most of the equipment personally but only on a Friday, so he could use it all weekend and return it on Mondays, all the while only actually having to pay one day's rental on the equipment. Phantasm remains one of horrors most original stories and is responsible for some of the genres greatest horror scenes, as well as introducing us to the Tall Man – who is still responsible of many of my nightmares. The Tall Man (played by Angus Scrimm) is a supernatural and malevolent undertaker who turns the dead of earth into dwarf zombies to be sent to his planet and used as slaves. He uses small silver spheres that fly through the air to kill people and drill into their heads, a movie prop that is now as iconic as Freddy Krueger’s glove or Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask. Only a young boy called Mike seems to know what the Tall Man is up to and only he and the local ice-cream man can stop him. The film begins with Tommy (Bill Cone) and the Lady In Lavender (Kathy Lester) as they have sex in Morningside Cemetery. When the deed is done, the woman stabs Tommy to death. Later, Tommy's friends, including 24-year-old musician Jody Pearson and family man Reggie, attend Tommy's funeral at Morningside, believing he committed suicide. Jody explains that he didn't bring his 13-year-old brother, Mike, because their parents died recently and he felt Mike would be traumatized by another funeral. However, Mike has been secretly observing the funeral from the bushes; after the mourners leave, Mike witnesses a tall man in a suit who seems to be the Morningside mortician lift Tommy's 500-pound casket with superhuman strength and load it into his hearse instead of completing the burial. He also seems to telekinetically knock Mike off his motorbike as he flees the cemetery. Mike relays this story to a fortune teller (Mary Ellen Shaw) and her granddaughter (Terrie Kalbus), as well as his fears about the possibility of Jody departing and leaving him in the care of his aunt. Through her granddaughter, the fortune teller tells Mike not to worry about Jody, assuring him that Jody would take Mike along if he chose to leave town. Then, she seems to magically produce a small black box and instructs Mike to put his hand into it. After the box grips his hand, Mike is told not to be afraid, and as the panic subsides, the box relaxes its grip. After Mike leaves, the fortune teller's granddaughter investigates the Morningside mausoleum, where she finds a strange room filled with white light. She screams at what she sees, and is presumably killed. Later, the Lady in Lavender seduces Jody in a bar and takes him to Morningside Cemetery to have sex. Mike, who has taken to secretly following Jody in the wake of their parents' deaths, has an aggressive encounter with a short, hooded figure while spying on his brother. He runs screaming from the bushes, interrupting Jody mid-coitus. When Jody catches up to him, Mike frantically tries to tell him about the hooded figure, but Jody dismisses the story. After another violent encounter with more hooded figures and seeing the Tall Man walk down the street and react strangely to cold air coming out of Reggie's ice cream truck, Mike resolves to investigate Morningside and obtain proof of his suspicions to show to Jody. While exploring the mausoleum, a silver sphere flies through the air, narrowly missing Mike as he dives under it. He is accosted by a Morningside caretaker, but Mike escapes just as the sphere is making another pass; it impales itself in the caretaker's skull and drills into his brain, killing him. The Tall Man approaches Mike, but he escapes by exercising control over his fear, surprising the Tall Man and trapping his hand in a heavy door. Mike cuts the fingers off of the hand, causing the Tall Man to bellow an alien roar while yellow blood gushes from the wound. Mike takes one of the Tall Man's still-moving fingers and escapes the mausoleum, narrowly avoiding capture by the hooded figures. The finger is enough for Jody to believe Mike's stories about Morningside. Meanwhile, the finger transforms into a vicious, oversized fly-like insect that attacks Mike. Reggie coincidentally witnesses this, and joins the brothers in their suspicions about Morningside. Jody decides to go on his own investigation alone. He is chased away from Morningside by a seemingly driverless hearse, but is rescued by Mike in Jody's car. The two run the hearse off the road and discover it was driven by one of the hooded figures, whom they discover to be a re-animated Tommy. Tommy's body has been unnaturally shortened, although he weighs significantly more than average. Reggie and Jody resolve to defeat the Tall Man. Mike is taken to an antique store owned by Jody's friend Sally (Lynn Eastman). There, Mike discovers an antique photograph of the Tall Man. Mike begs Sally to take him home; on the way they see Reggie's ice cream truck overturned. Mike finds a handprint melted into a block of ice with the same yellow blood that came out of the Tall Man. Mike tries to get Sally and her friend to leave the scene quickly, but all three are attacked by a mob of hooded dwarves. Mike survives by being thrown out of the back window, while the girls drive off into the night, screaming. Mike assumes they and Reggie are all dead. Jody locks Mike in his room to keep him safe, then goes to Morningside to execute his plan to kill the Tall Man. Mike escapes his bedroom and tries to leave to help Jody, but the Tall Man is waiting for him outside his front door. He kidnaps Mike in a hearse, but Mike thwarts him by shooting out the back window and a rear tire, causing the hearse to strike a pole and explode. While looking for Jody in Morningside, Mike opens his father's casket and sees that it is empty, prompting him to scream and attract the attention of the silver sphere. Jody destroys it with a shotgun. Suddenly, Reggie appears and explains that he rescued Sally and several other girls. The three then open the mysterious door the fortune teller's daughter opened earlier. Inside, they find oil drum-like canisters with more dwarfed re-animated corpses inside them. Mike accidentally falls through a portal and catches a brief glimpse of a red, hot planet where the dwarves are toiling as slaves. He is quickly snatched back to Earth by Jody, after which he deduces that the Tall Man must come from the red planet and that the corpses are shortened so they can withstand the increased gravity and temperatures. The trio is suddenly split up by a power outage. Reggie remains in the dwarf storage room alone, and places his hands on the portal, mirroring an earlier scene when he stopped a tuning fork from vibrating. This causes the portal to become a powerful vacuum that Reggie narrowly escapes. It also stuns the Lady in Lavender, revealed to be a shape-shifted Tall Man, and saves Jody from being stabbed. However, in the chaos, Reggie stumbles upon the Lady in Lavender's body, and she kills him. Jody and Mike flee, and the mausoleum vanishes. The brothers devise a plan to lure the Tall Man into a local deserted mine shaft and trap him inside. Mike once again controls his fear and succeeds in the plan, after which he suddenly wakes up in his bed. Reggie, still alive, tells Mike that much of what he experienced was a nightmare, which has been happening frequently since Jody died in a car crash. Mike appears to remember this and believe it. Reggie tells Mike that he will take care of him like Jody did, and that they should go on a road trip together. When Mike enters his bedroom to pack, he is shocked to see the Tall Man is waiting for him. Hands crash through the glass of his bedroom mirror, pulling Mike into a dark void. It’s a confusing ending indeed but it won people over with its originality and quirkiness. It’s got some great old school special effect also, which was enjoyed by horror aficionados and lovers of gore. Coscarelli came up with the idea of making a horror after noticing the audience’s reaction to jump scares in his previous film Kenny and Company. He hadn’t had much success and thought horror would be the way to go. The original idea was inspired by Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Coscarelli had initially sought to adapt the story to film, but the license had already been sold. The theme of a young boy's difficulty convincing adults of his fears was influenced by the 1950s classic Invaders from Mars and Dario Argento's Suspiria and its lack of explanations was another influence. Much like his friend Sam Raimi did with Evil Dead, Coscarelli collected money from local businesses, doctors and lawyers. The film did not have an accountant, the production was hand to mouth. The theme of the film seems to be mourning and the effects of death on youth but it is also a very existentialist horror, a surreal mix of outlandish humour, old school gore and psychological mind-games. Coscarelli seems to have influenced by a whole host of classic film makers, from Alejandro Jodorowsky to Luis Buñuel. However, he and the Phantasm series have become even more of an influence, opening many possibilities to younger film makers and proving that you can mix genres, providing you have a strong imagination.