This blog will be a celebration of the role that he was best known for and the movies that I watched over and over as a kid (and the odd time now).
PHANTASM
Phantasm came out in 1979 and if you'd seen the movie back then you would have been struck by the visuals and the ingenuity of the movie makers. You'd have thought director, Don Coscarelli was on the verge of becoming a big deal. What you wouldn't realise is the movie took over a year to make, shot over weekends and any free time the cast and crew could get. It was financed by friends, family local business and costumes were made by Coscarelli's mother. She also designed some special fx. This, you see, was a labour of love. Coscarelli cast people he'd worked with before and edited the whole thing himself to save on costs. In total, Phantasm cost $300k. In the US alone on original release it made $12m. A slam dunk by any standard.
So what is it all about? Well, that's kind of open to interpretation but I'll try to write something resembling a "plot". Phantasm is a movie based in a small town (Morningside) where a 13 year old boy, Mike (Michael Baldwin) has just lost both his parents and is being looked after by his older brother, Jodi (Bill Thornbury) and his friend the local ice cream vendor, Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Things take a turn for the mysterious when Jodi and Reggie's friend dies suddenly. At the funeral Mike, who isn't allow attend, watches via binoculars from afar. When everyone clears off, Mike sees the mysterious funeral director (The Tall Man) take the coffin by hand and throw it into the back of his hearse... why? It takes a while but eventually we find out The Tall Man reanimates the corpses, crushes them down to hobbit size, puts them into barrels and enslaves them. For reasons known only to The Tall Man, he then sends some of them off to another dimension (the red dimension) through a dimensional fork (see picture)
As for The Tall Man, he knows his antics are not going to go unchallenged so he keeps some of his hooded hobbits around to fend off intruders. He also has a few henchmen and if you get by those, well see below.
One of the main selling points of Phantasm was the genius design of The Tall man's spheres. These diabolical weapons fly through the air and once they lock on to you they stop at nothing to attach themselves to you, (usually through the head) and drill into your skull... ewww. They are a highlight because their design is pure genius and the results of their attacks are horrifying.
The movie ends on a very odd note. Strangely enough, we see Reggie get stabbed but he's alive and well at the end of the flick. We never see Jodi getting killed but he's reportedly been killed in the fight to bring down The Tall Man... WTF?!! So we're left to believe that it has all been in Mike's head and he's dealing with the loss of his parents and now Jodi by making up this horror story... but then The Tall Man turns up right at the end and attacks Mike yet again... AHHHHH!!! My brain!
I don't know how many times I've watched this movie but it's a lot and I still can't make much sense of it. This is not a complaint... the movie is supposed to leave you wondering if this is all just happening in Mike's head after the trauma of losing his family and if it isn't, there's still no real sense to proceedings other than The Tall Man is evil and our plucky heroes are completely out of their depth. The movie leaves you with a whole lotta why and a what the actual fuck? But I do go back to it from time to time and I think that's partially because it is such a mystery.
Another reason to return is the humour. Phantasm doesn't get enough praise for the laughs it delivers. Maybe it's just me but I always found it hilarious that this guy pisses himself at the end of this scene:
Pacing wise the movie is uneven. It's at its best when Mike starts to unravel the mysterious goings on in Morningside Funeral Home and when Jodi and Reggie decide to help Mike take down The Tall Man. As you may have gathered or already know, this is not a movie for the masses and it hasn't aged particularly well. That being said, it has bag loads of charm, it is a break from the norm and, crucially it is entirely original. Not too many horror movies can say that.
PHANTASM 2
After the not too shabby success of Phantasm it was only a matter of time before the studios came sniffing. Oddly enough, it took a lot more time than one would have thought. A movie costing $300k that goes on to make 40 times its budget (domestically) really should have earned a lot more heat. But it took as long as it took and the sequel didn't hit US cinemas until 1988. As a 12 year old boy, I was very excited to see if Phantasm 2 could A. be as much fun as the original or B. start to make some sense out of this world. Bottom line though, I was just very excited!
Story wise, Coscarelli was struggling. Given the complete lack of a coherent narrative he had to build on this was hardly a surprise. What he did was quite clever, he started the movie right at the end of Phantasm to give the audience something resembling a back story. This sequence ends with Reggie blowing up his own house filled with The Tall Man's minions with both he and Mike barely escaping. Then we cut to Mike being released from a mental home 8 years after these incidents. Again, this hints at the potential for it all to be in Mike's imagination... Once out, Mike immediately heads to the cemetery and digs up a few graves. All empty. Reggie shows up and is upset to see his long time friend digging up graves mere hours after his release. Reggie and Mike leave the cemetery and in Reggie's car The Tall Man shares a vision with Mike of Reggie's house being blown up with his entire family inside. Mike warns Reggie of what he has just seen but it's too late, they get home in time to see the house exploding... So straight away we are back to wondering if this all isn't just in Mike's head. We've seen Reggie blow up his home already, apparently full of monsters and here is his house blowing up again with his family inside. Is the trauma too much for Mike and is The Tall Man a crutch for him to deal with (another) tragedy? Or has Reggie seen two of his houses blow up? It's impossible to tell as it always is in these movies. The movie is much better paced than the original and once Mike and Reggie set off on their journey to seek and destroy The Tall Man shit escalates pretty quickly. Mike and Reggie go from town to town and see the same pattern. "Small towns are like people, some get old and die... some are murdered" muses Reggie. And The Tall Man has been doing a lot of murdering. It's in one of these "dead" towns that Reggie and Mike break into a hardware store and make some new weapons. The best of these is Reggie's four barrel shotgun (picture from Phantasm 3)
We're introduced to a couple of new characters too. The most interesting of these is Liz. She shares a sort of psychic link to both Mike and The Tall Man. Now, before you surmise that this couldn't all be in Mike's head as someone else is having a similar experience involving The Tall Man, there is a scene (a pretty funny one actually) before the guys physically meet Liz where Reggie straight up says to Mike "I'm still not sure she's not just a wet dream". This, once again, implies the theory that Mike's imagination has got the better of him. Anyway, the movie floors it and we are treated to some highly inventive scenes one of which involves veteran actor Kenneth Tigar (he's the guy who stands up to Loki in the Avengers). He plays the local priest and he can't stand by and let The Tall Man desecrate the dead any longer. He decides to investigate the local mausoleum for himself and with God on his side (as well as some Dutch courage) he will take the fight to The Tall Man... It doesn't go well: You can imagine where it goes from there. Great delivery from Angus Scrimm there too. Total conviction. He believes he is The Tall Man therefore we believe it. This scene also introduces the spheres to us in Phantasm 2. As previously mentioned, Coscarelli hired two craftsmen for some truly memorable sequences. The make up fx are excellent and you do get the feeling that these guys really enjoyed being responsible for the havoc wreaked by the spheres. They are by their own admission huge "phans".
It should be noted that the studio stayed very much involved with the making of this movie. Dream sequences were thrown out and they forced Coscarelli to cast James LeGros as Mike this time. This caused some anger among phans but they needn't have worried as LeGros was absolutely fine in the role and Coscarelli got to cast Michael Baldwin again in the next movie. A well known fact among horror fans is that Brad Pitt read for the role of Mike too. Someone really should ask him if he remembers. Usually it doesn't bode well when a studio gets too close to a project but in this case I think it really helped. Phantasm 2 is a great looking movie, it's tightly edited, the acting is solid and they do their best to make it accessible to newbies... a tough ask but I love that they tried.
The movie made over $7m in the US and despite that being over twice the budget and therefore a success, Universal had hoped for more. It was pretty much panned by critics but horror fans enjoyed it, people with a dark sense of humour enjoyed it and Phantasm Phans enjoyed it too. Unlike the previous movie, time has been good to Phantasm 2. It has a huge cult following and when reviewed by today's critics it fares pretty well. I still think it's the best of the lot and I always have a hell of a time when I throw it on.
PHANTASM 3: Lord of the Dead
After the small success of Phantasm 2, Universal went ahead and gave Don Coscarelli $2.5m to go ahead and make Part 3. They also gave him full creative control and left him to make the movie he wanted to make. Tonally, Phantasm 3 is an odd beast. Yes it is a horror and there are many superb scenes to back this up but there's also an action vibe to it as well as a lot more of that dark humour that is sparingly used in parts 1 and 2.
Anyway, Mike is in a coma in hospital when The Tall Man sends one of his spheres to "visit" and see how he is doing. Rather than attack, this sphere actually produces an eye (pictured below). Whatever it sees, The Tall Man sees. Sitting on a throne (pictured above) surrounded by candles he seems happy enough with Mike's condition and decides to make a play for him. Inside Mike's coma, we see him walking toward the light. There he sees his dead brother, Jodi. He tells Mike to go back but Mike is drawn to the light... The Tall Man, an expert of inter dimensional travel, of course appears. Mike panics but can't move. Meanwhile Reggie walks in on a nurse trying to open Mike's skull, we find out why later. Reggie rescues Mike for the umpteenth time and they run.
As ever with Phantasm, there's a lot of stuff happening that is never explained. Here's a cracker: Mike and Reggie make it to Reggie's home. When they get inside Jodi is there waiting for them. Reggie points out the obvious, "What the hell are you doing here, you're dead". Jodi is apparently there to help but The Tall Man "locks on" to him and emerges through a dimensional fork. Reggie is knocked unconscious, Jodi then turns himself into a sphere and attacks. He is immediately disregarded by The Tall Man who takes Mike through the dimensional fork. Reggie wakes up and Jodi, now a sphere, tells him to go to Holtsville... What. The. FUCK?!!
Still, we mustn't get bogged down in the details now, that'd be insane. So on we go. Reggie stumbles across another dead town, however, he falls afoul of three looters who stick him in the trunk of his Hemi cuda and take it, along with a pink hearse to a nearby house, they've been scoping out. It is here that Phantasm 3's tone shifts to completely fucked up, but in a good way. The three looters enter the house only to find a masked kid (Tim) hiding inside and what's worse is, the kid has booby trapped the place so we get a short but enjoyable sequence where the three looters are picked off in what I have to assume is a darkly hilarious homage to Home Alone... One (a woman) takes an axe in the face, another has his throat slit by a frisbee with razor blades attached and the last falls into an unused grave. Tim simply shoots him. He lets Reggie out of his car and they bond over the losses they've suffered. Reggie tries to dump Tim off at the next town but the kid sneaks into the trunk of Reggie's car.
In the local mausoleum Reggie (thinking he's alone) investigates. Again, he gets captured, this time by two attractive black women both seemingly trained and doing some investigating of their own. Reggie tries to warn them but a sphere comes and kills one of them. It was about to kill the other (named Rocky) when Tim emerges gun in hand and with a perfect shot, takes down the sphere saving both the lady and Reggie. Rocky takes off while Tim has now convinced Reggie he is of use. Later they find Rocky and convince her to help them take on The Tall Man.Coscarelli brings back the dream sequences jettisoned by the studio from Phantasm 2 and in one of them Jodi takes Reggie to The Tall Man's lair where they rescue Mike and pull him back through to this world through one of those dimensional forks. Everyone together now, they need a place to hold up and they decide on the local mausoleum, the thinking being it's the last place he'd look. Of course things don't go well and while Mike is trying to learn about The Tall Man through Jodi, The Tall Man locks on to him again and comes for him. While in consultation with Jodi, Mike learns that The Tall Man puts the brains of his victims inside the spheres (we knew this from an earlier scene but Mike only finds out now). Mike already knew he was shrinking the bodies and using them as slaves but turning their minds into weapons was another horrible twist.
The Tall Man doesn't come alone, he has already reanimated the three looters from earlier and they are full of fight. Rocky takes on the woman "yo bitch, hands off my boy" she says as she was bashing Reggie. The fight is pretty good and is only ended when a sphere which came out of The Tall Man flies straight through the reanimated woman's face (pictured above).
Meanwhile, Mike has had a sphere placed in his skull (the nurse tried to do this earlier) by The Tall Man and while he is still human, he is now very different. Reggie and co have trapped The Tall Man in the cold room (he doesn't like the cold) and the ball that came out of him has been placed in a cryogenic tank. Predictably, this doesn't get it done! Mike and Jodi take off leaving Reg to ponder what the fuck he is fighting for. Rocky leaves too "this whuppin' zombie ass just ain't my gig". Reg and Tim head back inside. Reg gets pinned up against the wall by a load of spheres. Another of those pesky dimensional forks has turned up and The Tall Man has come through yet again. Reggie warns Tim, telling him it's all over. The Tall Man's response "it's never over". Tim is taken and presumably killed leaving The tall Man victorious yet again.
I quite like Phantasm 3 but as ever I'm left wondering just what the hell did I just watch? It looks great, the acting is solid but at times I can't decide if it's flirting with genius or if it's just completely taking the piss. In fact that's probably how I feel about the entire series... Test screenings for the movie went very well but, strangely, Universal refused to distribute it and it went dtv back in 1994 (I think). They didn't lose too much money on it but they might have made a few quid if they'd put it in cinemas. I guess they just stopped caring and allowed Coscarelli to take the rights back for the next installment.
PHANTASM OBLIVION
Where to start with this one? I remember hearing that we'd get answers and explanations in this movie and while there are some, I think it's fair to say the movie raises far more questions and leaves the viewer annoyed more than entertained. Don't get me wrong, it's worth watching but I don't think it's essential to the series.
With no studio involved and a very small budget Phantasm 4 looks like Phantasm 1. This isn't necessarily a good thing because the previous two movies looked really slick and the drop in quality is noticeable. But I can live with that. What I can't live with is the weirdness is taken to places that were never even hinted at in any of the previous three movies. I'll come to some examples of this later but I'll try to put together the pieces of story I can figure out first.
Picking up where Phantasm 3 left off The Tall Man mocks Reggie. He releases him from the grasp of the spheres and tells him his time is at an end but it is not yet. Reggie runs. I presume The Tall Man is either entertained by him or he is using him to find Mike. Meanwhile Mike has taken a hearse and has a plan to take out The Tall Man yet again. This is annoying because at this stage it is clear that even if the plan works, he'll just come through a dimensional fork again. With his sphere in his head, Mike is beginning to embrace his "dark side" and seems much more at peace in this movie. The Tall Man is clearly hoping to use Mike as his new vessel and Mike has accepted he will beat The Tall Man or die.
Those dimensional forks are fucking everywhere in this movie by the way. Mike jumps through so many of them that I found myself just watching and not having any fucking inkling as to what the fuck I was watching. There are discoveries along the way. One, with the help of Jodi is, The Tall Man was a once scientist and very human. He invented inter-dimensional travel via the forks and it is when he goes through the first of these that he is taken by The Tall Man.
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So whenever you kill his flesh in this world, he just comes through the dimensional fork again in the form he took all those years ago. So until you get to the root of The Tall Man which I have to assume is somewhere in the red dimension you're not going to get rid of him. But that doesn't stop Mike from trying anyway.
Meanwhile Reggie is still looking for Mike and The Tall Man. It should be noted at this point that Reggie Bannister is a solid actor and his performances in parts 2, 3 and 4 are always enjoyable. Well done that man. Anyway, as ever, The Tall Man leaves snares for Reggie and he falls into them over and over again. One of them is a very attractive blonde girl who gets naked but instead of Reggie finally getting some touch, it turns out she is a minion of The Tall Man and her breasts are actually spheres. In deep shit now, Reggie manages to escape the spheres by banging a tuning fork off a nearby table. Now, of all the fucking crazy bullshit these movies throw at you (an there is a lot) this might be the most fucking ridiculous. I just don't fucking get it. Has anything like this ever happened in the previous movies? No, no it hasn't. The only time I can remember seeing a tuning fork at all is in Phantasm when Reg and Jodi are jamming. See below:
Decent guitar work by the Reg-man there but I do not know how or why this is suddenly a thing in these movies. I have to surmise that it was just shoved in there as a throwback to the original movie without any real idea of how to explain it. What's worse is, at no point was it ever alluded to that it was a weapon to be used in this fight yet Reggie uses it and Mike also uses it later against The Tall Man and Jodi, who it turns out is now fully taken by The Tall Man and is working for him. It freezes them in place for as long as the fork echoes its note and gives Mike time to escape. In short, it's fucking stupid!
Moving on. The movie ends in an explosion next to The Tall Man. Mike's plan to destroy The Tall Man, predictably, fails as once again he emerges from the dimensional fork as we knew he would. Reggie has turned up also but is disregarded by The Tall Man and tellingly he says "Ice cream man, it's all in his head". This is a great line, it either means it is all actually a dream in Mike's imagination or he's talking about the sphere he put in there as part of the process to take him over. The Tall Man takes the ball out of Mikes head and leaves him there. Reggie goes to Mike and hears Mike whisper, "I'm dying". Reggie, in yet another spectacular show of courage, runs toward the dimensional fork and right at The Tall Man. We never see where he ends up. We then cut to the past where Mike, back to being a kid is picked up by Reggie in his ice cream van. They hear someone whisper "I'm dying" (we know it's Mike in the future) but they put it down to the wind and drive off. This ending leaves us so many questions, the biggest of which is what the fuck was all that about? It's not that I hated the movie. Far from it, I quite enjoyed it but there is no excuse or reason for adding to what was already a fucking insane mystery.
PHINAL THOUGHTS
Phantasm is a tidy and well executed franchise. Sure, I have issues with each of the movies but nobody could ever accuse these movies of not trying to do something interesting. Visually they are unusual and at times strikingly beautiful. Phantasm deserves credit for coming up with something completely different at a time when slasher flicks were two a penny. Performance wise, all of the credit must go to Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm. Reggie plays his character with conviction and quite a bit of charm. With Scrimm's Tall Man we also have a genuinely menacing and scary icon of horror. For such a pleasant man to create something so sinister is a testament to his talent and he will certainly be missed. Coscarelli also deserves credit for creating the whole thing and writing a superb score to rival that of Halloween.
G.
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