Phantasm Review (Film, 1979) #31DaysofHorror

content warning: sexual content, nudity, gore, foul language, gun violence

Something strange is happening at the Morningside Cemetery. We witness a ritual sacrifice right by the chapel, though the death is reported as a death by suicide. Now a strange cloaked figure is sneaking around in the corner of everyone’s eyes and whispers fill the halls of the funeral home, church, and mausoleum.

Don Coscarelli’s iconic horror film Phantasm is experimental in a lot of unexpected ways. The slasher was still an emerging form in 1979 without too many hard and fast rules. Coscarelli played around with tone, camera angles, characterization, and morality. You know you’re in for something special when you can tell within the first two scenes that every character major character is going to be filmed from their own unique perspective.

Michael, a teenage boy, is shot from underneath or far in the distance. He’s constantly investigating what’s happening in the world, sneaking around to learn the truth about his brother. Jody, his older brother, is shot from straight on. His goal is to leave the town forever and never look back. He knows his brother is following him and does everything he can to ignore him unless there truly is danger. The Tall Man, the mortician at the cemetery, is shot from above. He is treated as unnatural from the start, able to move silently through the marble halls of the mausoleum and lift a full casket by himself like it weighs nothing. Everyone is small compared to the Tall Man who seems to be everywhere at once.

Coscarelli’s approach to horror always plays with perspective in fascinating ways. The camera angles and depth of field set up a great sense of tension, as secrets are always hiding just out of focus. From there, his films tend to jump between different connected or concurrent narratives. Any character, no matter how small, is essential to the world because Coscarelli’s view of the world depends on the connections between our different lives. A threat to one person is potentially a threat to us all.

Phantasm swings far and wide in its storytelling. In one scene, Michael visits an elderly woman called Grandma, who will not speak on her own. Her granddaughter answers for her, channeling Grandma’s psychic abilities to dispense life advice. In another scene, Jody is just jamming out on his guitar on the front porch playing a song he wrote with his friend. Coscarelli layers in a lot of slice of life elements to his stories to ground them in a strong sense of reality so the unnatural or even otherworldly elements will be believable. Pay close enough attention to any scene and you can find a potential threat lurking somewhere onscreen.

Angus Scrimm easily cements himself as a horror icon with his performance in Phantasm. He plays the Tall Man throughout all five films in the series and he’s terrifying. His distant stare, his walk, his stance, and his unkind voice are a masterclass in commitment. Some of the greatest horror villains of all time are defined by a mask or a weapon; the Tall Man is defined by his unmoving face. 

One of the most unusual features of Phantasm is its play with genre. Yes, at this point in cinematic history, we had seen early slasher films like Halloween and Black Christmas. We had seen sci-fi/horror films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob. We had not seen a sci-fi/slasher film. The early elements of ritual and psychic characters are a masterful act of misdirection. The second act reveals the iconic metal spheres of the series and the true nature of the creatures hiding in the shadows. I’m actually struggling to think of another sci-fi/slasher that even spawned a sequel, let alone a series of films.

While I had seen and enjoyed Phantasm before, I have to make special note of the remastered release. The film has never looked more beautiful. So much of the play with shadow and focus was essentially lost for decades through lower quality transfers. If you do choose to watch, make sure it’s the remastered print.

Phantasm is currently streaming on Shudder.