Don Coscarelli's Phantasm Mixes Coping With Death With Wacky Sci-Fi Horror Concepts To Shockingly Cohesive Results

Death is a prominent force in the life of youngster Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin). He recently lost his parents, which has forced him to live with his older brother, Jody Pearson (Bill Thornbury), and now death has reared its head again thanks one of his other brothers (he's got three) just now also passing away. How ironic then, given how heavily death plays into Mike's life up to this point, that it would be a mortician that garners Mike's suspicions. Specifically, a fellow only referred to as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) that serves as the local mortician has aroused the distrust of Mike now that the adolescent individual saw this old and feeble man manage to lift his brother's coffin all by himself.


Those suspicions get heightened once Mike takes a peek into The Tall Man's place of residence and discovers a bizarre locale full of floating robotic guards and miniature henchmen. Once he brings proof of the strangeness unfolding at this nearby place to Jody, the two siblings decide to engage with the unusual evil lurking in their own hometown and find out what exactly the reason for The Tall Man's wickedness is. That's not going to be an easy task given how omnipresent this evildoers henchman are, though, and there may just be more gruesome horror than actual victories in store for both Mike and Jody in their noble quest.

If the process of making a movie was a blender, then Phantasm would result from tossing a campfire horror story, a rumination on coping with death and science-fiction visual trappings together. Let it blend for 60 seconds, and, voila! You get this 1979 horror film from director Don Coscarelli, who also single-handily wrote and produced this project that has become an item of intense cult adoration in the nearly 40 years since its release. It's easy to see why given the distinctive and engaging atmosphere this movie creates that immediately separates it from the various slasher movies that were dominating the horror genre in the era in which it was originally released.

Most surprising about Don Coscarelli's script is how it's fully committed to the motif of Mike grappling with the concept of death and worrying about losing Jody. Instead of just vanishing and then reappearing when the film needs an unearned moment of treacly sentimentality, this character trait informs the entire plot and feels like a realistic depiction of how someone in Mike's age range would cope with the process of death as well as how that would affect how he interacts with other loved ones. That's a nicely handled bit of character business in a movie that typically eschews that kind of depth in the name of brevity while such a positive trait also stands out given how easily it seems that Phantasm could be all style and no substance so easily.

Of course, there is plenty of style to be found in the various sets in The Tall Man's hideout, which is adorned with marble flooring and walls that give the whole place this unsettling futuristic vibe that seems to run on sterility. It isn't just in the scenery that our villain of the piece provides some entertainment though, as The Tall Man's various henchmen provide another bonkers element to an already pretty over-the-top feature film. Those miniature robed helpers of The Tall Man are like obedient versions of the Jawas while briefly appearing floating robot guards provide Phantasm with one of its most gloriously gruesome moments.

 Just as enjoyable as those heightened assistants to The Tall Man is Coscarelli's style of dialogue, which is uniquely written, feeling at times both too stodgy and yet oddly realistic to the more unpolished speaking patterns of people. This is especially true of the movies best character, ice cream driver Reggie (Reggie Bannister), who speaks in offbeat colloquialisms and delivers his dialogue in this simultaneously awkward yet charming manner that's oddly endearing. Reggie Bannister, whose work here seems like an ancestor of a typical Clint Howard performance (and not just because they both played Ice Cream men!), is one of the highlights of the delightfully odd and charming Phantasm, which has Don Coscarelli putting together an unorthodox combination of elements to create a horror movie that really is like no other.