'Phantasm'
A retrospective movie review by Walter Frith
For those of you who have seen 'Phantasm' and perhaps its two sequels, you have to ask yourself a question. Is it a bad film? The answer is definitely "yes". But guess what? It's one of the best bad films I've ever seen. Sound like a contradiction? Maybe so but every movie fan has his or her guilty pleasures. Even super critics Siskel and Ebert for whom I have a lot of respect, have admitted to liking certain films that most people despised.
What 'Phantasm' does is it provides an example of how one man can craft a film given the opportunity even though he has very little experience or talent in doing so. It seems like it's an experimental film, the kind you would expect to find at a student film festival or on a video store shelf as one of those forgotten movies that never got a theatre release but went directly to video. 'Phantasm' did get a theatre release and came out in 1979, just a couple of years before the home video rental market took off.
It takes place in California where two brothers become involved in a menacing plot concocted by a funeral home director to abduct the dead from his nearby cemetery and use them in a slave plot in another dimension apart from our world. As bizarre as this sounds, 'Phantasm' plays out like a nightmarish scenario and has some oddly entertaining scenes involving a flying steel sphere which performs brain drain and can move with the speed of the most deadly flying predator. With other assorted ghouls and gadgets of terror, the movie is cheesy but indulgently campy and is a cult classic although the term "classic" is used loosely.
Director Don Coscarelli was in his mid twenties when he made the film and acted as the film's writer, director of photography and editor along with that. He does what any aspiring young movie maker would want given the opportunity. The film looks more like a test product than a full length feature film. It does have a sharp villain called 'The Tall Man' played by Angus Scrimm and 'The Tall Man' was recently inducted into the horror hall of fame for his notoriety with horror fans.
Given its underground success, 'Phantasm' was released a couple of years ago on laser disc with a new stereo surround soundtrack and in widescreen format. It's other two sequels, 'Phantasm II' (1988) and 'Phantasm: Lord of the Dead' but also known as 'Phantasm III' (1994) have a bigger budget and better special effects and talk of a fourth film is in the works for you 'Phantasm' worshippers (I know a few) which may be out in 1999.
VISIT FILM FOLLOW-UP BY WALTER FRITH
http://home.netinc.ca/~wfrith/movies.htm
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