Film A wonderfully far-out fantasy.
Phantasm is an interesting picture for a lot of reasons. Made in 1979, it sort of prefigures Stephen King with its small-town setting and child protagonist. In fact, it seems very much like something a child would think up, probably in a nightmare — for few movies have quite the same irrational, nightmarish, weird feel that Phantasm has.
And oh-ho boy, is Phantasm a weird, weird picture. Where to even begin? There's the villain of the piece, of course, a gaunt Humanoid Abomination known only as "The Tall Man", and played by the wonderfully-named Angus Scrimm. (Seriously, it's like he stepped out of a Harry Potter book.) Between his stiff, awkward gait, his almost skeletal face and his ill-fitting funereal wear, he earns his place as a horror movie icon.
Oh, and before you ask what makes this movie so weird, his blood is yellow. And his severed fingers move on their own and can become furry little puppet monsters. And he uses his job as a mortician to steal corpses and transform them into undead midgets in brown robes. And he's also got these flying chrome spheres that drill into your brain and expunge all your blood. And that's not to mention the creepy psychic fortune teller, the badass ice cream man, the possessed cars, the interdimensional portals...
Phantasm has more going for it than its gonzo plot, though. Made on a shoestring budget, it elevates itself from mere B-movie status by dint of its oddly elegiac synth score, its unique atmosphere, and its characters. Besides the already mentioned badass ice cream man, an adolescent Michael Baldwin makes for a compelling lead, convincingly precocious, neurotic, and profane by turns. As the emotional core of the film, he ties all of the weirdness together and transforms it into an oddball Coming of Age story, giving this unconventional horror-fantasy some welcome dramatic heft and making it a truly memorable film.
Film A horror movie should be good when it's *not* in full gear, too.
As someone who loves weird 1970s movies and surreal horror, I wanted to check this out.
It seemed unforgivable to me how slowly this film reached a spot where things were laid out well enough to be compelling. For the longest time, we get snippets of horror and strange and minimal character interactions that don't cohere well enough. We see a man die while having sex in a graveyard and his friend Jody comes to look around the funeral parlor. Jody's kid brother Mike sees a grim tall man taking the coffin one-handed into his hearse while also feeling stalked by small creatures. This sounds good, but it feels hollow in execution for how often we're given so little. Horror needs to escalate, but it should do so more fluidly. Jody and Mike's dynamic is also unappealing— they lost their parents recently and Jody wants to move them away, leading to Mike nigh-pathologically stalking him everywhere he goes. It's hard to like either of them and the mystery and horror feels really flaky. The acting and filmmaking don't support the opening scenes any better, leaving it hard to keep watching.
Things change for the better when Mike breaks into the funeral home to investigate things, and the movie finally demonstrates its flair to the best. The score, sound design, and visuals are truly strange and upsetting in an unreal, nightmarish way. The Tall Man is strong, ominous, and few of words, and has strange powers like sending flying metal spheres with blades to bore out people's brains, and is followed by tiny people in hoods who attack for him. The music and sounds really can't be praised enough for how unique and uncomfortable they are. The film also improves the second Mike successfully proves to Jody weird stuff is going on, and a dynamic ensues of teaming up to investigate and fight back. It's not without tiresome hiccups as Mike is repeatedly forced to hide away out of the action, but the pace and horror escalates. We also see hints of what's going on, with a more cosmic mythos element than I expected. I'd have preferred something more ghostly, but it seemed cool enough, for how little we got.
The film loses its steam after that, however, with a fairly anticlimactic end. By the end of the story it really felt like we didn't get enough in terms of surrealism and horror. I wanted a few more scenes or a wild climax to really show off more wild scary ideas, but we don't get it. Budget, I guess. The ending also pulls the rug away from the audience to really confusing and purposeless effect, making me feel a bit cheated for giving in and trusting the movie in the second place.
This is a disjointed, unengaging movie with good and interesting horror scenes but not a lot of structure or script skill. I was disappointed as a fan of this niche and don't think I care to look at any more of the films.