Horror Review: Phantasm (1979)

Phantasm (1979), the movie that boasts "If this one doesn't scare you... You're Already Dead!". Well, I guess that makes me a zombie, then, because I didn't find any of this remotely scary. Warning: SPOILERS.

Thirteen-year-old Michael suspects there's something off about the really tall undertaker he saw stealing a coffin. And he's right as the Tall Man has the ability to change into a woman the better to lure unsuspecting victims. But why is he hoarding dead bodies? And what are those small, hooded figures seen scurrying about?

The movie opens in a cemetery, which is an easy way to create a spooky atmosphere. A young couple are getting it on behind a tombstone. He's clearly loving it, but our mysterious lady has something other than sex in her mind, namely MURDER! She stabs her ecstatic partner. While grabbing a boob. Maybe it helps with the stabbing? Oh, and it turns out she's actually a sinister tall man.

The dead young man was Tommy, and apparently the official cause of death was suicide. What?! How? He was stabbed in the chest! His friends, Jody and Reggie, are sad but accept Tommy committed suicide. Why? Had he been depressed for a long time? Jody takes a stroll through the cemetery mausoleum and hears weird noises. In a place filled with dead people. Yet, he doesn't freak out. What scares him is the Tall Man (that was the woman in lavender who killed non-suicidal Tommy) suddenly grabbing his shoulder and aggressively telling him the funeral has already started.

Jody's little brother, Michael, rides his bike between the tombstones (is that allowed?!) until he gets to a good spot to spy on Jody and Reggie helping to carry the heavy coffin. He's still there after they leave and he sees the Tall Man pick up the coffin like it's nothing and put it back in the hearse. Oho, but the Tall Man sees Michael and makes him fall off his bike with the power of his mind! With Mike helplessly lying on the ground, he... does nothing and just lets him go. Hmm, why? So he can spend the rest of the movie stalking him?

After this disturbing encounter, Michael visits a psychic grandmother and her granddaughter and is assured Jody will never leave him, and that there's no real reason to fear the creepy corpse stealer. Really? That's some shitty psychic advice. After all, the guy is clearly super strong and stole a corpse. The granddaughter isn't wholly convinced of the Tall Man's harmlessness and goes to the cemetery and something bad that we don't see happens. What was the point of this? We already knew the Tall Man was evil and we learn nothing about what he's doing. To make this an even bigger waste of screen time, no one is going to notice the granddaughter's disappearance.

The woman in lavender shows up again and her target this time is Jody. Luckily for him, Michael keeps stalking him and follows them to the cemetery. He's being a little creep, watching his brother get it on, when a short hooded someone freaks him out and he draws Jody's attention right after he's taken the Tall Man's lady avatar's panties off with his teeth (at least, that's what it looks like). He's not happy about being interrupted (though he should be) and when he goes back, she's gone. So, why does she take it that far? Couldn't she just kill them as soon as they get to the cemetery? Doesn't the Tall Man retain his superhuman strength in this female form?

After all the weird shit he's seen, Michael decides that the best course of action is to go back to Morningside Cemetery and break into the mausoleum. Well, if he dies, that will definitely count as a suicide. At the mausoleum, he's confronted by a man who gets stabbed on the head by a sphere. You know those lemon juice extractors that you stick in the lemon and then the juice pours out? It's the same, only it's a human head instead of a lemon and what comes out is BLOOD.

The Tall Man shows up, but before he catches the intruder, Michael manages to get into a room and closes the door on his fingers. He cuts them and we see that the shape-shifting undertaker bleeds yellow soup! Michael cleverly takes one of the still moving fingers with him, so now he has some evidence of weird shit happening. Later, the finger changes into an ugly giant bug and Jody and Michael have to stick it into the garbage disposal unit to destroy it. However, after this, Jody decides to go to the cemetery himself. WTF?! Why the hell would he do that? This is insanely stupid, even by horror movie standards. The only thing Jody's idiocy gets him is the reveal that those small, hooded figures we've been seeing scurrying about are in fact the reanimated compacted dead bodies the Tall Man stole. Which frankly is more ridiculous than scary. They hide this larger piece of evidence in Reggie's ice cream truck, which is deeply unsanitary.

Now that they know that the Tall Man isn't human and that he has strange abilities, our heroes decide to... go back?! Well, not all of them, just Jody. With a gun. Again. This time, he gets Reggie to take Michael to Sally's antique shop so he'll be safe. Except, Michael freaks out when he finds an old, animated photograph of the Tall Man driving a hearse carriage at the shop and demands Sally and Suzie take him home. On the way there, they find Reggie's overturned ice cream truck. And the half melted dead pygmy zombie is gone! They're attacked by more, non melted pygmy zombies and Michael runs away. To the mausoleum. Where the Tall Man and his creations live. Genius. Michael gets there in time for Jody to save him from one of those flying lemon juicers. And who else is there? Reggie! He didn't die, has been hiding in a coffin since he escaped the crash, and has just managed to help Sally, Suzie, and a couple of other women escape without anyone noticing. How? Seriously, how? Also, that was some really clunky exposition dialogue.

Anyway, the trio of suicidal idiots find the Tall Man's secret room. The walls are lined with containers and there's a couple of metal pillars in the middle of the room. Now, finally we have some answers! The Tall Man has been reanimating corpses so he can use them as workers in another world accessible through the pillars! And they must be compacted because of the difference in atmosphere! That is... well, not something anyone would've been able to guess. Reggie gets the pillars to kind of work and... unleashes a bunch of wind. Really?! Wind?! He then gets killed by the woman in lavender after he leaves the mausoleum.

This should be the grand finale, but instead, Jody and Michael go home where they come up with a plan to bury the Tall Man in an abandoned mineshaft. For some reason, after everything they've seen, they still believe that Michael will be safe in the house if all the doors and windows are locked. Naturally, he isn't. The Tall Man kidnaps him, which is something he could’ve easily done after Tommy's funeral, but Michael manages to shoot his way out of the hearse. So, the Tall Man let him keep his gun? That was nice of him. Michael uses the psychic's lesson about fear being only psychological to avoid falling for the Tall Man's illusions. Hmm, why doesn't he just attack him? When the Tall Man finally does, he ends up falling in the abandoned mineshaft and Jody buries him with rocks.

Everything is fine and... it was just a dream. WTF?! After all this, the whole thing turns out to have been just a dream Michael had after Jody's funeral?! Reggie, who's alive (again), assures Michael none of that was real and that he'll take care of him. However, when Michael goes to his room to pack his things, the Tall Man appears and a pair of zombie hands pull him into the mirror. The End.

The only shocking thing about this whole movie is how boring it is. There's this creepy, shape-shifting undertaker murdering people and stealing their corpses and yet, Phantasm manages to generate zero fear and horror. Maybe it’s the bad acting, bad dialogue, and the lame characters. Really, it's difficult to care about a bunch of idiots that keep going back to the villain's secret lair even after finding out he's not human and has supernatural powers. For all his great height and slow-motion walking, the Tall Man isn't that scary. Also, apart from the sphere to the forehead death, there's little gore and no good death scenes. The moving severed fingers and the melting zombie face aren’t shocking anymore. Honestly, I'm not sure they were shocking even at the time it was released. After all, 1979 was the same year that gave us Alien and The Brood.

Verdict: don't let its recently awarded cult movie status fool you - Phantasm is a waste of time.

By Danforth