Phantasm series
reviews by Steven Hampton 
Yes, there really are two kinds of people in the world...
There are people who watch a mystery movie - a movie with mysteriousness at its
heart, and then say: “I don’t get that [frowns]. It’s rubbish!”
And there are people that watch that same movie with a mystery in its dark
heart, and say: “I don’t understand that [frowns, thoughtfully]. I’ll watch it
again.”
Phantasm (1979)
Writer and director: Don Coscarelli
8/10
Teenage orphan Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin) snoops around Morningside
cemetery, where the powerful and malevolent Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) lurches
about robbing graves and, apparently, uses alien technology to produce midget
homunculi (resembling the child-sized Jawas of Star Wars, 1977) for expendable slave labour sent to another
dimension or inhospitable alien planet. Mike’s older brother, Jody (Bill
Thornbury), and the town’s ice-cream seller, Reg (Reggie Bannister), are
eventually convinced that Mike’s fantastic story is all true, and eventually
this gang of three mount an armed raid on Morningside...
Considering that Phantasm was a low-budget genre offering, it became
a remarkable cult success when released on video. The script is clearly the
work of a tyro filmmaker, and the cast have more amateurish charm than
professional competence, but the movie is an efficiently produced combination
of scares and laughs, and boasts an inspired level of real creativity from
young filmmaker Don Coscarelli.
Although it features ostensibly supernatural set
pieces, Phantasm also has overtly SF elements that are elegantly
simple: blue barrels contain and preserve the remains of harvested corpses, a
pair of vibrating metal posts (the space-gate) in a secret room mark the
dimensional boundary of an interplanetary teleportation device, and there’s a
flying mechanical sphere (the sentinel) with built-in power tools. This chromed
device latches onto its victim’s head, drills noisily into the skull and then
pumps out every last drop of blood. Credited to one Willard Green, it’s like a
heat-seeking cannonball from Black & Decker!
Sci-fi paraphernalia, childhood melancholy, and its evocative sense of the
macabre aside, Phantasm stands apart from conventional American
horror movies due to its ominous surrealism. Mike is morbidly curious because
his parents are dead but, in place of the nitty-gritty of mortuary customs, his
investigation into the mysteries of death uncovers the shocking and arcane
practices of the Tall Man, a figure of terror that later haunts the boy's
dreams. The Tall Man is a ‘boogeyman’ more fearsome than Michael Myers, Jason
Voorhees, and perhaps even more horrible than the original incarnation of
Freddy Krueger - before numerous Elm
Street sequels and the spin-off TV series
turned the uncanny serial killer into an icon of black comedy.
The Tall Man lives among the townspeople masquerading as an undertaker, yet
Mike perceives his inhuman nature in daylight via psychic visions of him
walking in slow motion down the street, his footfalls accompanied by a
thunderous noise indicating menace like the beating of some almighty great
doomsday drum. This disturbing scene of unreality is heightened by surrealist
ambiguity, its meaning unclear beyond adolescent Mike’s emotional response.
Another memorable sequence sees the Tall Man’s severed finger (lost in a splash
of yellow blood during his frenzied pursuit of Mike), transform overnight into
a strange bug creature that buzzes angrily around the boy's bedroom at home.
These startling and fascinatingly grotesque images, and the wholesale
plundering of graves, may be interpreted as signifiers of alien invasion and
the ultimate enslavement of mankind, but Coscarelli holds back from making
these points clear in the first movie.
Phantasm II (1988)
Writer and director: Don Coscarelli
6/10
After directing sword ‘n’
sorcery adventure, The Beastmaster (1982), based on a fantasy novel
by Andre Norton, the more experienced and bankable Coscarelli secured finance
to make Phantasm II, though the resulting movie, which featured quality
effects work by Mark Shostrom and Dream Quest Images, was (in the manner of Sam
Raimi’s Evil Dead II, 1987) a bigger budgeted remake as much as a
narrative sequel.
After seven years in a psych hospital, Mike (here played by James Le Gros) is
released and immediately sets out with Reg in search of the menacing Tall Man -
who has taken to the road in his hearse, emptying whole towns of their buried
dead. Breaking into a hardware store, Reg and Mike assemble weapons including a
homemade flamethrower and a pair of double-barrelled shotguns fixed together
(similar to a heavy duty firearm used by the protagonist of New Zealand
director Geoff Murphy’s historical adventure Utu, 1983), and their
preparations copy the improvised armoury techniques of TV’s The A-Team. In the
devastated town of Perigord,
our vigilante heroes find the Tall Man lurking about and stealing corpses from
a funeral parlour, and their battle against evil is resumed...
Horror drama concerns the traumatic ‘return of the repressed’, ‘encounters with
death’ and the loss of identity. Phantasm II features one of the most
inspired screen images ever to touch on the mystery of what death ‘means’. In
an early night scene, we follow Mike and Reg as they enter a small town cemetery
and, with the camera on a crane, Coscarelli pulls back for a high-angle, wide
shot revealing that every grave in sight is empty. The moonlit darkness is
filled with headstones, long shadows and the gaping black rectangles of all
those deep holes in the ground. It’s an intensely chilling movie moment
(representing the physical erasure of entire family lineages and histories,
and, by extension, the human past), and by depicting the ghastly impact of
absolute evil at large in the modern world it becomes as perfectly realised a
glimpse of pure gothic visual imagination as any piece of artwork you may find
in this genre.
Perhaps thankfully, though, Phantasm II isn’t all arty aesthetics.
Fans of gore and action will also get their money’s worth here. The diversion
into road movie traditions recalls Race With The Devil (1975) and
yet, unlike director Jack Starrett’s assured mixing of the supernatural with
standard car chase thrills, the heroes of Phantasm II are intent upon
hunting down and destroying their powerful enemy, rather than simply trying to
escape with their lives. Fight sequences offer sufficient amusement value
despite some grim use of fire and bullets. In particular, the ever-busy Reg’s
chainsaw duel with one of the Tall Man’s masked drones is terrific fun, as it
evokes the crazed power-tool abuse of a certain vengeful Texas Ranger (Dennis
Hopper) in Tobe Hooper’s cult sequel, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
2 (1986). The ghastliest sequence is undoubtedly foreshadowed by Reg’s
sabotage of an embalming machine, which results in the climactic meltdown of
the Tall Man when his body is pumped full of hydrochloric acid.
SF riffs in Phantasm II include the unexplained telepathic link
between Mike and young blonde Liz (Paula Irvine), another brief but suitably
eerie trip through the space-gate to revisit the bleak alien world where midget
workers are visible in the distance still toiling away at some unspecified
task, new functions for the flying balls, such as a gold coloured variety which
fires a laser beam (and mimics the light-sabres of Star Wars), and the
first hints that these spheres can enter and re-animate human corpses after
they have done killing people.
Phantasm III: Lord Of The Dead (1994)
Writer and director: Don Coscarelli
6/10
As the common attention
span dwindles from two hours to two minutes, the film trilogy or series loses
impact with each new outing. Scary jolts tend to replace the development of
characters because, ever since the halcyon days of 1970s disaster movies, the
average life expectancy of supporting players in horror drama is rarely more
than 50 minutes.
Phantasm III is not immune to sequelitis and, even though it picks up
exactly where the second film left off, and the filmmakers benefit from a
further budget increase (enabling better production values), there's little
here that's fresh or innovative. With the aid of ex-army girl, Rocky
(Gloria-Lynne Henry), and young orphan Tim (Kevin Conners) - who bring kung fu
training and shooting skills to the heroes' cause - Reg goes in search of the
kidnapped Mike (A. Michael Baldwin returns, in a casting twist that adds
another layer of weirdness to this movie series!), tracking the indestructible
Tall Man through more Midwest ghost towns with names like Holtsville and
Boulton.
”What the hell are you doing here? You’re dead!” Reg and his newfound allies
encounter an amoral gang of violent scavengers and explore the creepy marbled
halls of yet bigger mausoleums, but are now guided on their quest by Mike’s
older brother Jody (who was killed in a car wreck), appearing in human-spirit
form and as a dark tarnished version of the multipurpose spheres. In addition
to more night raids on cemeteries, looking for any new way to stop the
conquering plans of their enemy, Reg and friends find that the Tall Man (the
imposing Mr Scrimm is mesmerising here) has no use for ‘corpsicles’ (frozen
heads are discarded) and is afraid of the cold. This makes the refrigeration
room scene, and the use a cryogenic storage vat is put to, rather predictable
in a weak plot that tends to ignore the potential of intriguing SF ideas in the
previous movies - as Coscarelli seems content to simply replay, re-stage or
restyle scenes from Phantasm and Phantasm II on a grander,
though sadly unimaginative, scale. So, when the unexpected closing of a
space-gate cuts off the Tall Man's hands at his wrists, they shed disguising
skins and transform into a pair of skittering toothy lizard-things.
What saves Phantasm III from watch ‘n’ wipe recycled video ranking is
its adroit use of humour. It’s not the first time a horror sequel has been
salvaged by memorable in-jokes but here, Coscarelli’s main cast inhabit their
roles with such easy assurance that their diehard habits (Reg, as per usual,
lusting after the spirited heroine) and characteristic expressions (the Tall
Man’s quizzically arched eyebrow speaks in proverbial volumes) are indicative
of a finely-honed professional attitude from all concerned behind-the-scenes.
And so the witty banter between Reg and Rocky stems from temperament and
motivation, and rarely depends on throwaway one-liners, while Mike's
confrontations with the Tall Man are fraught with the appropriate wordless
intensity of a clash of wills between champion and nemesis.
Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998)
Writer and director: Don Coscarelli
8/10
While many other directors
are glad to hand over the reins for their genre creations to others, Coscarelli has strayed bravely from the usual franchising path and maintained a
high degree of quality control over his unique concepts, thus ensuring a brand
name continuity of vision that many film series lack. In this, he follows the
example set by George A. Romero (whose zombie trilogy is now highly respected),
and so Coscarelli deserves to be ranked as a genre auteur, rather than just
another of that legion of unremarkable, low-budget exploitation-movie directors
(you know who they are).
Phantasm IV sees a broadening of the SF and fantasy tropes, which
celebrate many key events of the first movie via flashback clips - now
re-viewed as fresh interpretations of lucid dreaming and, to some extent,
demystified memories - while cleverly redefining the milieu inhabited by the
ubiquitous Tall Man with a tour of post-holocaust America for our lost heroes,
fielding an allegorical dark fantasy of a shattered human psyche. In redrawing
the boundaries of the Phantasm universe, Coscarelli brings the story almost
full circle by means of a looped narrative, which permits the sort of temporal
paradox that SF fans will recognise instantly.
Reg follows Mike down the highway to Death Valley
on a forsaken route leading straight to hell and back. Along this almost
mythological road to nowhere, Reg fends off repeated attacks by the hideous
dwarves, and deals with the menace of a bullet-proof cop. Out on the heat-hazed
desert plain, neat rows of space-gate posts stand like a carpet of needles; a
bed of nails for the nostalgic reverie of our chosen survivors. The hitherto
unsuspected name of the Tall Man is revealed to be that of diabolical inventor
Jedediah Morningside, a mad doctor from the Civil War period, but we must doubt
the veracity of such time travel disclosures - because they are inextricably
linked to Mike's futile attempt to hang himself in a scene reminiscent of
award-winning French short film, An Occurrence At Owl Creek
Bridge (1963), which appeared as an episode of TV anthology
series, The Twilight Zone. The nihilism of our hero’s failed suicide is
balanced, albeit imperfectly, with hope (just a smidgen, though). In spite of
this film’s downbeat subtitle - Oblivion - Phantasm IV has
upbeat moments, not of joy but of possibilities for the future.
Genre films tend to appear and develop in cycles. An original work is almost
inevitably succeeded by numerous cash-ins and rip-offs, before a spate of
parodies brings closure to all prospects for the burnt-out trend. However, the
film industry does not always obey this familiar cyclical model of the
boom/ bust economy because, occasionally, aesthetics get in the way of passing
fads.
Like Romero's
classic Dead trilogy, and unlike a majority of other franchised
production lines, Coscarelli’s Phantasm movies have worthy artistic
merits (provocative symbolism, narrative ambiguity, unpretentious ambition,
authentic innovation, creative integrity and, oh yes... balls), which
facilitates escape from the video schlock ghetto to rise above their humble
beginnings as a low-budget exploitation flick, and challenge audience
perceptions and jaded critical judgments of what modern horror films can do,
and say, and what they may become.
Phantasm: Ravager (2016)
Director: David Hartman
7/10
“I can’t tell what’s real
any more because of him.” The series becomes a proper cinematic franchise with its
fifth adventure, Phantasm: Ravager. Reggie
is back. He’s here to bust balls and cope with early dementia, and he’s all out
of crazy. On back roads through small towns, driving along in his favourite
muscle car, romantic hero Reg picks up the stranded Dawn, and strums his guitar “in
the glow of a new song,” but he soon finds that new horrors are simply
inescapable, whether he is actually delusional or not. Even when he’s tooled
up, ready to fight the flying spheres of death, Reg must consider whether finding a
gateway portal with a giant sentinel is the best answer to his various problems, or just the start of a brand new level of insanity.
While too many sequels,
remakes, and re-boots play out their scenarios with borrowed themes like
overblown fan-fiction, this feels like nightmare paths crossing from different
directions and creative directors. With all of its 21st century genre riffs
carrying a similar yet queasy bi-polar intensity of weirdo imagination,
teleporting in from realms of acidic flashbacks that are just as startling
cruel as before, this belated addition to the Phantasm milieu offers a Matrixology of Caligarism. CGI visions of
apocalyptic shock and awesome gore, fully re-animated and manifesting as both
tribute and reinterpretation, with vividly composed shots expanding a
claustrophobic, suffocating dream into comicbook hyper-reality and beyond. Boy,
oh boy!
