Phantasm

Posted by J.L. Sosa (jorge@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 13, 2007

Phantasm is one of the most underrated horror films of all time. Sure, there’s an army of drooling fanboys out there who wank all over it and its string of sequels, but it still hasn’t achieved the household-name status it deserves.

With this month’s Anchor Bay re-release of Phantasm, I’m hoping more people will catch on to its genius.

Phantasm opens with a young couple gettin’ it on in a graveyard. Haven’t these kids ever seen any slasher flicks? This kind of thing never ends well.
The victim in the first scene is Tommy. His musician friends, Jody and Reggie the Ice Cream Man, attend his funeral at the Morningside mausoleum.

Morningside’s proprietor is a tall, cadaverous-looking old guy known, appropriately enough, as The Tall Man. He has a penchant for sneaking up on people and scaring the living shit out of them. He also likes to take the dead bodies entrusted to him and do awful, awful things with them.

Mike, Jody’s younger brother, discovers this thanks to his constant voyeurism. Mike and Jody, as it turns out, are alone in the world. The two young men have recently lost their parents and Mike is afraid his older brother will abandon him, also.

This sets up the three primary fears filmmaker Don Coscarelli explores in Phantasm. 1) Fear of death, 2) fear of abandonment and 3) fear of sex (remember that first scene?)

Perhaps the greatest fear people have about death isn’t so much the death part itself. It’s the fear of what’s going to happen to you after you die. This film suggests that everything you know or have been told is wrong. It suggests that after your death, you might not find Heaven or even, at best, an eternal slumber. Phantasm’s vision of Hell is truly terrifying.

Additionally, no one wants to be lonely. We all want the security that comes from having love and companionship. Phantasm acknowledges that in today’s society, the nuclear family is increasingly becoming the exception and not the rule. Mike and Jody aren’t even living in a single parent household. Jody must care for his younger brother as a surrogate father. The Tall Man threatens to leave Mike without friends or family, before finally coming for him, too.

Then there’s that whole fear of sex thing. Horror movies from Friday the 13th to Psycho have previously linked sex and death. The French apparently refer to the orgasm as “la petite mort” or “the little death.” (I don’t know. “Oh!!! I’m petite-morting! I’m petite-morting!” just doesn’t have that ring to it.) And in Phantasm, you’ve got the deadly and seductive Lady in Lavender. And a silver sphere that flies around inside the mausoleum. It kills people by ramming into their foreheads, liquefying their brains and spraying blood and gray matter all over the place in an ejaculatory stream.

I don’t know what any of that means, and I don’t want to think about it for too long because I don’t care to ruin the joys of fucking.

I could go on and on about how great Phantasm is. It’s right up there with The Exorcist, and actually makes a great companion piece to William Friedkin’s satanic masterpiece. Even the main musical theme is similar to Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. It has that melancholy music box feel to it, suggesting childhood innocence, irretrievably lost.

If you haven’t already seen it, check Phantasm out and prepare to witness one of the most bone-chilling fright flicks ever. If you already know and love it, you’ve gotta snatch up the Anchor Bay release. The movie sounds and looks great, and there are enough extra features to keep you entertained for at least a few hours.

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