Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Phantasm is a late '70s supernatural fantasy horror movie that does a great job of combining atmosphere, creepy nightmares, flying sphere-violence, location, characters, events and scares into one great, big bundle of nightmarish joy.
As an artist with a love of all things odd, unusual, beautiful, surreal, spooky and fun, this movie delivers all that and a bag of evil chips from another dimension.
Let me describe the highlights and joys of this movie:
The creepy, old cemetery setting.
The mystical, surreal hallways under the morgue.
The flying spheres with daggers at the end that contributed a great gore scene.
The almost stereotypical '70s fellas, with their collar-length hair, leather jackets and love of rock.
The evil midgets that chase you and spew yellow vomit.
The terrifying Tall Man that loves screaming, "Boyyyyy!!!!!".
The fact that the movie has the guts to add in a room with a doorway to a parallel universe halfway through.

Well, that's saying a lot right there, but I won't give away anything else of the movie. Phantasm has gone on to become a cult favorite of movie lovers everywhere, and if you haven't seen it but wanna watch something cool, scary and unusual, I wholeheartedly recommend this gem. Thanks for the time, and peace.

Don Coscarelli's intensely dreamlike "Phantasm" is a very original and startling horror film from the late 70's. A lot of horror classics were produced in the 70's, but this one in particular stands out because it is the only one that does not hearken back in some way to earlier established archetypes. All the details are more or less original, so you are not looking at a retread of the conventional Frankenstein/Dracula/Zombie stories. The main baddie is an exceptionally tall undertaker from another planet, for starters. His dwarf slaves are essentially zombies (reanimated dead people he has crushed "down to half size") but in their behavior and appearance do not really resemble zombies from other myths. This is a movie trying to be as different as possible.

All the strange elements and images here add up to a high-octane creepy sense of the bizarre that, in my opinion, has never quite been matched. But if you find yourself chuckling at the absurdities here and there--or just straight-up laughing--that's no accident. There are some very funny moments ("Yahhhhh!! My FOOT, man!"), and these tend to hone the fine edge of the film's unpredictability.

In the opening scenes, we see that spooky shenanigans are going on over at that Morningside Mortuary, including murder, appearances of strange hooded dwarf creatures, and kid-hero Mike (Michael Baldwin) riding his motorcycle around in the cemetery, apparently for kicks. After just a few minutes have elapsed, "Phantasm" is already a tapestry of weirdness, and it generally gets stranger, scarier and funnier as it goes along. The youthful hero Mike, in order to save his older brother and their friend Reggie from the eerie monsters invading their home town, is ready to jump into the action and fight. Will the Tall Man, with his hordes of undead minions, be conquered? With a villain this strange and this powerful, their valiant, 70's-macho efforts may not be enough.

Not surprising that it was a big theatrical hit when it came out originally. It was totally unlike any other movie, and audiences could see clearly that this low-budget oddity was bending over backwards to deliver its roller-coaster-style entertainment.

Excellent on DVD with its stereo-surround remix and special features. This movie has had a number of sequels--all of which are interesting and worth a look. But the original first film establishes the ambiguous myth in a pure, inspired way, and is the most perfect of the series.