31 Days of Horror- Day 11: Phantasm (1979)

(dir. Don Coscarelli)

AVCO Embassy Pictures

13-year old Mike becomes caught in the mysterious machinations of an otherworldly undertaker, The Tall Man, and must convince his older brother and their family friend that evil has invaded their small town.

Phantasm, the first film in Don Coscarelli’s five-film, decades spanning and dimension hopping horror franchise is an animal unlike any I’ve encountered before. There’s a certain, and valid expectation, that comes with most horror films in from the late 70s and 80s that they are simply riffs of one another. The expectation certainly comes into play when watching Phantasm for the first time, but Coscarelli who made the film in his early 20s on a budget of $300,000 defies nearly all expectations and genre conventions. A significant part of this defiance comes from his having to get creative with the budget, and his decision to a three hour cut of the film to nearly half that length. The resulting film, is a fragmented dreamscape that tackles a young boy’s coming to terms with death.

There’s much of Phantasm that makes it hard to decipher dream from reality. As viewer, we’re forced to cling to what few concrete details we know in order to move forward. Those concrete details? Mike’s parents recently died, and his environment is alarmingly empty even for a small town. With those few details, we begin to piece together the nightmare that Mike finds himself in as an encounter with the Tall Man leads him to explore an elaborate mausoleum where he encounters evil dwarves, and the iconic bladed silver spheres. While the sphere scene, a tense chase through the extended halls of the mausoleum has become the principal image of the Phantasm franchise, and is likely familiar before seeing the film in totality, the lasting appeal of Phantasm is the family element at the heart of the horror. While the relationships in Phantasm grow more rewarding as the series progresses (a factor I learned through watching all five films back-to-back) we do get a sense of that here. Mike, Jody, and Reggie, respectively portrayed by A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, and Reggie Banister form a make-shift family of aimless young men, given purpose in the fight against death. This of course becomes increasingly harder as the series progresses and the characters age along with the story, but this initial chapter makes that fight a fulfilling, if futile journey.

Mike, Jody, and Reggie, discover that the Tall Man (the imposing Angus Scrimm) has been stealing corpses and turning them into dwarves who serve as his slaves in another dimension. Phantasm manages to create some lofty ideas, and the hint of sci-fi spectacle within its modest parameters. But even in the midst of the grand ideas that lurk below the surface is the fact that so much of Phantasm’s horror stems from the mind of a 13-year old boy and the things that are frightening come attached with a subconscious fear of maturity, the realization of one’s own mortality and the inescapability of decay, as signified by Mike’s dying town. The ending, without spoiling it, further re-contextualizes the whole the film. It's intially frustrating if you're trying to view the film literally, but the gaps in logic ultimately serve as a fulfillment of this nightmarish coming of age tale.

Scare Factor: 2/5 Phantasm is must-see horror, but perhaps not in the way you’re expecting. It’s certainly chilling thanks to Scrimm’s wonderful performance, but it also has a lot of heart thanks to the character at the center of the film. While the acting isn’t pitch-perfect, there’s an emotional connection made to these characters and this world, one that only increases as the series continues. And Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave’s Goblin-influenced score gives the nightmares a rhythm that’s impossible to shake. While the film might not give adults night-terrors, Phantasm is great introduction to more serious horror for younger viewers looking to delve into the genre.