Phantasm

‘Let me liberate you from this flesh construct that binds you to time and space. All that is unknown will be known to you once more…’ – THE TALL MAN

Phantasm was a 1979 film from a relative unknown named Don Coscarelli. It is one of the most unique, strange, and bewildering contribution in the world of popular film boogeymen populated by the likes of A Nightmare On Elm St., Friday The 13th, Haloween, and Hellraiser.

Chief of it is the film's antagonist. A tall, lanky geriatric mortician sporting a Prince Valiant haircut simply called The Tall Man. Wearing black suits a size too small and with the habit of pillaging graveyards and turning corpses into pint sized-zombies, and using their brains to power his floating metallic orbs. A graphic scene involving these deadly spheres drilling into the head of a victim and sucking out the blood from them is a gory, but amusing bit of cinematic creativity. You'd feel the tongue in cheek humor like the creators were having a joke while conceptualizing it.

Angus Scrimm as the nefarious Tall Man

It's the same tone that separated the film among the pack. It knew about the seeming absurdity of the premise and decided to inject a few self-deprecating humor while it had fun scaring audiences out of their wits.

Thanks in no small part to Angus Scrimm's portrayal of the villain. The Tall Man is unnerving, weird---in a funny way---while at the same time able to conjure just enough fright, especially when he's in pursuit. Always in that wide, steady and purposeful stride with the echoing TOK-TOK-TOK of his heavy- cleated boots. Never ran. Not that he needed to, in the first place.

As with all other monsters in the genre, the guy seemed to magically teleport into that place where you thought you were the safest.

Unlike the motormouthed Freddy Krueger, or the one-track mind of Jason Voorhees, The Tall Man’s motivations are slightly a bit more complex than just thoughtless mayhem. You never quite know what the guy is up to; even when you know mankind’s best interest is the farthest thing in his head. He goes from town to town, harvesting graves and leaving a wasteland that almost wipes out a town’s population and leaving not more than a few ‘lurkers’[undead rejects] in them as well.

But what really set the movie apart was that the series [all four of them] had a comic book approach to it that references the classic hero vs arch –enemy routine that promises a perpetual conflict between the opposing sides. The film’s protagonist trio – A young boy, his elder brother and their ice cream vendor bestfriend have been steady characters in all the series. Whereas in other fims in the genre, the average shelf-life of the main characters were two movies at most. The actors even aged in it. By the time the fourth installment came [1998], Scrimm’s appearance was in stark contrast to his 1979 incarnation.

The series has a dreamy, and predominantly melancholic tone to it more than outright terror. Don Coscarelli is fond of long, drawling footages of bleak landscapes and isolation mostly focused on A. Michael Baldwin’s character Mike, who had been the target of the Tall Man’s pursuit since the first film. There are times when the movie even feels like a Joy Division or The Cure video, with all the footages of landscapes devoid of human habitation and complete solitude. It’s closer to David Lynch than Clive Barker or Wes Craven.

Even the origin of the villain or his relation to one of the characters has no visible explanation.Whether the guy is an alien, demon or death himself. The only clue is that there is vital information for whatever plans he has on Mike’s [Baldwin] head. That Mike might even be of the same origin as the Tall Man remains vague, despite the latter extracting one of the killer spheres in his head by the end of the fourth film.

In a lot of ways it’s one of the best films to have come out of the last 30 years. Just on the out of world premise to it that is as confounding as anything Terry Gilliam did and just as funny in some parts as Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. It’s one of the better big ‘indie’ films ever made. I doubt if the premise was pitched in today’s gore and sensory overload-addicted climate, it would get any kind of approval then go straight to the can in favor of celluloid cruds big on explosions, more explosions and sub-par storyline.

It’s not without its flaws, and there are surely enough of them to go around in the series, but as with any other films boxed in the same genre, the demographics for this kind of movies aren’t exactly moustache-twirling cineastes. To go watch it and expect any profound statements on the human condition other than watching it for thrills would be an exercise in stupidity. In fact going out to watch any films with that kind of mindset is ridiculous.

Unless you’re paid to be like that.