Phantasm (also released as Never Dead in Australia) is a low-budget "cult classic" horror film produced in 1977 and released in 1979. The film was directed, written, photographed, co-produced and edited by Don Coscarelli. It introduced The Tall Man (who was portrayed in the film and its sequels by Angus Scrimm), a supernatural and malevolent undertaker who turns the dead into dwarf zombies to do his bidding and take over the world. This film was released as a DVD by MGM in 1999 and then re-released on DVD by Anchor Bay Entertainment on April 10, 2007.
The film was originally rated X by the MPAA because of the silver sphere sequence, and due to a scene involving a man urinating on the floor after going down dead. After Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin made a telephone call in a favor to a friend on the board, the rating was changed from the (commercially non-viable) X-rating to R. Champlin's positive review was quoted on the film's promotional posters.
This movie was number 25 on the cable channel Bravo!'s list of the "100 Scariest Movie Moments".
To date the film has four sequels, Phantasm II, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, Phantasm IV: Oblivion and Phantasm V: Ravager.
Plot
After the death of their parents, 24 year old musician Jody Pearson is raising his 13 year old brother Mike in a small town disturbed by the mysterious deaths of its citizens. Reggie, a family man and ice cream vendor, joins the brothers in their suspicions that the local mortician, dubbed "The Tall Man", is responsible for the deaths. Mike relays his fears to a fortune teller and her granddaughter about the possibility of Jody leaving town, and Mike in the care of his aunt along with the suspicions of The Tall Man. Mike is shown a small black box and told to put his hand into it. After the box grips his hand, Mike is told not to be afraid and as the panic subsides, the box relaxes its grip. The notion of fear itself as the killer is established and is what propels Mike towards his final confrontation in the film with The Tall Man.
Mike is pursued by minions of the Tall Man, zombie dwarfs made from the bodies of the recently deceased, and tries to convince his brother of what is happening.
After convincing his brother and Reggie, they find a strange white room with containers in the mausoleum. There is also a gateway to another dimension or planet that Mike enters briefly where he sees the dwarfs that have hunted him through the movie being used as slaves. While trying to escape the Tall Man, Reggie is killed. Mike and Jody barely escape. They devise a plan to lure the Tall Man into a local deserted mine shaft and trap him inside. After doing so successfully, Mike wakes with a start in his house, laying by the fireplace with Reggie sitting next to him.
Reggie explains that Mike was simply having a bad dream, something that was common since Jody died in a car crash. This implies that the entire movie has been a dream, wherein Mike was trying to prevent Jody from leaving. Mike goes into his room where the Tall Man is waiting and pulls Mike through his bedroom mirror.
Deleted Scenes
During 1998 MGM re-released Phantasm on VHS and DVD, the movie had a newly remastered Dolby stereo soundtrack. Also, both the VHS and DVD included deleted scenes. The cut footage included two scenes:
- The first involved Mike entering a room with 2 coffins, one is open and a body is inside, the other is closed but Mike hears sounds from inside it and thinks it’s Reggie. As he tries to open the coffin, Reggie enters the room. When Mike sees him and realizes that something unpleasant is in there, the two close the coffin together. Mike then tells Reggie that they need to find Jody. For some reason, this scene is not included on the Anchor Bay release.
- The second had Mike and Jody see the Tall Man in the funeral home. Jody shoots the Tall Man several times with his shotgun but it has no effect on him. The Tall Man knocks Mike onto the floor and picks up Jody by the neck with one hand. Mike sees a fire extinguisher and remembers that the Tall Man reacted badly when he passed by Reggie's Ice Cream truck with its refrigerator open. Mike realizes the Tall Man can be hurt by the cold, so he takes out the fire extinguisher and blasts the Tall Man with it just as he's about to kill Jody. The Tall Man withers in pain, suddenly he screams and his head explodes splattering yellow blood all over the walls.
List of deaths
| Name | Cause of Death | Killer | On Screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tommy | Stabbed to death | The Tall Man | No | |
| Fortuneteller's Granddaughter | Killed off-screen | Dwarfs | No | Only screams heard |
| Dwarf | Shot with a shotgun | Jody Pearson | Partially | It was dark |
| Caretaker | Impaled in the head with a sphere, blood sucked out | Sphere | Yes | |
| Sally | Possibly killed | Dwarfs | No | Fate unknown |
| Susie | Possibly killed | Dwarfs | No | Fate unknown |
| Jody Pearson | Died in car crash | N/A | No | Grave seen |
Cast
- Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man
- Pat Roman as The Mega Dwarf
- A. Michael Baldwin as Mike Pearson
- Bill Thornbury as Jody Pearson
- Reggie Bannister as Reggie
- Kathy Lester as Lady in Lavender
- Terrie Kalbus as Fortuneteller's Granddaughter
- Kenneth V. Jones as Caretaker
- Susan Harper as Susie
- Lynn Eastman as Sally
- David Arntzen as Toby
- Ralph Richmond as Bartender
- Bill Cone as Tommy
- Laura Mann as Double Lavender
- Mary Ellen Shaw as Fortuneteller
- Myrle Scotton as Maid
Production
Development
After seeing the audience reaction to jump scares in Kenny and Company, writer-director Don Coscarelli decided to do a horror film as his next project. His previous films had not performed well, and he heard that horror films were always successful; branching into horror allowed him to combine his childhood love of the genre with better business prospects. The original idea was inspired by Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Coscarelli had initially sought to adapt the story into a film, but the license had already been sold. The theme of a young boy's difficulty convincing adults of his fears was influenced by Invaders from Mars (1953). Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) and its lack of explanations was another influence on Coscarelli. The soundtrack was influenced by Goblin and Mike Oldfield. The synthesizers were so primitive that it was difficult to reproduce the same sound twice. When writing the film's conclusion, Coscarelli intentionally wanted to shock audiences and "send people out of the theater with a bang."
Filming
There were no accountants on the set, but Coscarelli estimates the budget at $300,000. Funding for the film came in part from Coscarelli's father, who was credited as the film's producer; additional funding came from doctors and lawyers. His mother designed some of the special effects, costumes, and make-up. The cast and crew were composed mainly of friends and aspiring professionals. Due to their inexperience, they did not realize that firing blanks could be dangerous; Coscarelli's jacket caught fire from a shotgun blank. Casting was based on previous films that Coscarelli directed, and he created roles for those actors. Because he could not afford to hire an editor or cameraman, Coscarelli did these duties himself.
Filming was done on weekends and sometimes lasted for 20 hours a day over the course of more than a year. Reggie Bannister described the production as "flying by the seat of our pants." The actors would be called to perform their scenes and picked up as soon as they were available. Bannister did many of his own stunts. Though set in Oregon, shooting took place primarily in the San Fernando Valley in Chatsworth, California. The script changed often during production, and Bannister says that he never saw a completed copy of it; instead, they worked scene-by-scene and used improvisation. The script was characterized by Coscarelli as "barely linear". While it contained the basic concepts of the completed film, the script was unfocused and rewritten during filming. The spheres came from one of Coscarelli's nightmares, but the original idea did not involve drilling. Will Greene, an elderly metal-worker, fashioned the iconic spheres, but he never got to see the finished film, as he died before the film was released. The black 1971 Plymouth Barracuda was used because Coscarelli had known someone in high school who drove one; he realized that he could get his hands on one by using it in the film.
Post-production
Post-production took another six to eight months. The first test screening was poorly-received due to the film's length; Coscarelli says that he erred in adding too much character development, which needed to be edited out. Phantasm's fractured dream logic was due in part to the extensive editing. During shooting, they did not have a clear idea of the ending. Several endings were filmed, and one of them was re-used in Phantasm IV: Oblivion. Coscarelli attributed the freedom to choose from among these endings to his independent financing.
Release
To solicit outside opinions, Coscarelli paid an audience to watch an early cut of the film. Although Coscarelli called the result "a disaster", he was encouraged by the audience's reactions to the film. The financial success of the film Halloween released the prior year convinced vice-president of marketing at AVCO Embassy Pictures, Robert Rehme, to purchase Phantasm for distribution. The film was released March 28, 1979 in California and Texas.
It was released in Australia under the alternative title The Never Dead, to avoid confusion with the similarly-named 1976 Australian softcore porn film Fantasm.
Home media
MGM released Phantasm on LaserDisc in 1981, and on VHS and DVD in August 1998. Anchor Bay Entertainment re-released it on DVD on April 10, 2007.
Restoration
In late 2015, Coscarelli showed a work-in-progress 4K resolution restoration of Phantasm (called Phantasm: Remastered) at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival. It was supervised by Coscarelli at Bad Robot Productions. Bad Robot became involved when director J. J. Abrams, a fan of the series, requested a screening of the film. Coscarelli told him that he did not have a high-quality print, but Abrams volunteered the use of his technicians for a restoration. The completed restoration premiered at SXSW in March 2016. Phantasm: Remastered was released in limited theaters on September 24, 2016, and was released on Blu-ray on December 6, 2016.
Reception
Critical response
Contemporaneous
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times deemed the film "a smooth and terrifically impressive technical achievement, a sort of jeu de spook with all manner of eerie and shocking special effects." In a mostly negative review, critic Roger Ebert described the film as "a labor of love, if not a terrifically skillful one" but admitted Phantasm had a good visual style and sense of pacing. Trevor Johnston of Time Out called the film "a surprisingly shambolic affair whose moments of genuine invention stand out amid the prevailing incompetence." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader described it as "spotty" and "effective here and there", though he praised Coscarelli's raw ability. Vincent Canby of The New York Times compared it to a ghost story told by a bright, imaginative 8-year-old; he concluded that it is "thoroughly silly and endearing". Variety gave it a positive review that highlighted the use of both horror and humor. Tim Pulleine (Monthly Film Bulletin) described the film as a "dilapidated z-movie" with "singularly unconvincing apparitions and contraptions" and that the film did not have "anything resembling a coherent plot in the course of all the fumblingly juvenile malarkey".
Retrospective
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Phantasm holds a 72% approval rating based on 47 critic reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The consensus reads: "Phantasm: Remastered adds visual clarity to the first installment in one of horror's most enduring -- and endearingly idiosyncratic -- franchises." Kim Newman of Empire called it "an incoherent but effective horror picture" that "deliberately makes no sense" and rates it four out of five stars. Scott Weinberg of Fearnet stated the acting is "indie-style raw" and special effects are sometimes poor, but the originality and boldness make up for it. Steve Barton of Dread Central gave the film a score of five out of five stars, calling it a masterpiece and "one hell of a scary film". Bloody Disgusting's John Squires rated it four out of five stars, calling it "truly original" and writing that it "imbues in its viewers is a profound sense of dread". Author John Kenneth Muir called the film striking, distinctive, and original. Muir stated that the film has become a classic, and that the Tall Man is a horror film icon.
Box office
Phantasm grossed $15 million in the United States and Canada. In its first 3 months in 10 foreign territories, the film grossed $7 million for a worldwide total of $22 million.
Awards and nominations
- Don Coscarelli won the Special Jury Award in 1979, and the film was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film in 1980.
