Mocking Halloween: Phantasm

What happens when you mix aliens with horror? No… not Alien but I’ll give you another hint. Aliens, horror and funeral directors; that’s right, you get Phantasm. A low budget horror movie that isn’t too famous but isn’t too obscure either. It’s about a group of kids that find out the dark and out-of-this-world secret of the local funeral director/grave robber and now they must expose him for what he really is. They just have one problem; they are trapped in the maze of the funeral home and pursued by his robotic weapons. This movie suffers from one thing and one thing only… the antagonist. No not The Tall Man but rather another antagonist.

The Tall Man is a rather frightening fellow and he is the typical scary, pale faced, tall, slip and eerie looking funeral owner but when I finally saw what his choice gadget is for killing people… I almost laughed. It’s a flying metal ball that drills into your head and sucks out your blood. I couldn’t believe my eyes. These guys are running from flying metal balls!! It’s just so out there and so wild that it seems to be awkward for such a moody and atmospheric horror film. What is even better is that as the film series progressed, the balls got more and more complex and sort of became a running gag in the franchise.

There are balls with razor blades on them, balls with long drills; swarm of balls, balls that drill and tear up your insides, a golden ball that does God knows what and a whole bunch more. In fact, the sequel’s tagline says it all: “This summer… the ball is back!” It’s the only bankable thing that the series has to offer and it’s sort of sad. I find it rather anticlimactic to see the main villain of a horror franchise be a metal ball from outer space but there is one movie that can beat this.

Revisiting Phantasm 2

As a child I loved the Phantasm series and I distinctly remember having a profound love for the second Phantasm movie than the first one. I could never understand why and I was itching to find the second film but the DVD was never at the library, I didn’t have the money to buy the DVD off a website so I waited until an opportunity came. Well, that opportunity came in the form of Corey from Evil on Two Legs… ‘cause he gave me a whole bunch of VHS’ that he didn’t want and one of them was Phantasm II. This was perfect for me because I used to watch that movie all the time on taper rather than DVD so I got to watch it the old fashioned way. It was a blast to the past for me.

While I sat there watching the movie I tried to figure out why I liked this movie so much and why my love for it overshadowed the original. The acting was pretty bad and the dialogue was very corny and seemed scripted, however it had it’s good moments like the entire montage of Reggie and Mike raiding a tool store and making custom guns and flamethrowers. After the second act (or after the car exploded) things got really good and I finally found out why I loved this movie as a kid; it’s because of the action and the gore/effects. Compared to the original movie, this one had some of the best action and some of the best gore that I had seen as a kid.

In terms of action there is a lot of it and it starts off in the first few minutes of the movie when Reggie is battling the minions inside the home. I counted about 3 explosions in this movie, which was eye candy for me as a kid and still is. I also was pretty thrilled to see a car chase between Mike, and Reggie and The Tall man because to me it felt like the situation got more serious and at that point there is more at stake; neither of them are going out without a fight and that it was almost like a prelude to an epic battle inside. Psychologically this is what it felt like although I am sure most of you might just think it was another shitty car chase.

I also noticed that there were more sentinel spheres, which I also enjoyed and these ones were particularly different. There are two that look and do the same thing but the gold one is a tad more brutal than the other ones. The scene where one of the undertakers gets attacked by the gold sphere was amazing, even as I watched it now I was captivated by it. The sphere bores into his back and starts shredding his insides as it makes its way towards his head… but it gets stuck in his mouth. It was unnerving and it made me cringe. The scene in which the Tall Man attacks Mike was the best scene out of the entire movie. Reggie stabs the Tall Man with a metal tube and begins pumping acid into his body. Yellow slime starts to spray all over the place as the Tall Man’s skin begins to melt. It’s a fantastic scene of utter disgust. I can tell you right now that scene alone made me want to watch this movie over and over again.

Another one of the most memorable things from this movie that has stuck with me all these years were the two funeral henchman. I could never understand why but I guess the reason lies within the fact that I used to enjoy when there was more than one villain. As a kid, it made the journey tougher and it I just enjoyed the idea that funeral workers would turn evil and attack people with hatches for no reason. By the age of 8 or 9 I had been to 8 funerals and 1 wedding, so I really got used to the whole funeral setting. Not only were there just two henchman, the Tall Man’s minions played a huge part in this and you had the guy with the gas mask and chainsaw. The best part was the introduction to the three sentinel spheres.

When the movie ended I ejected the tape and I sat back in my chair for a minute to reflect on what I just watched. I then realized something that I knew about but never fully understood until now: the acting may be bad and the dialogue a bit corny but if the imagery has stuck with me all these years than it must mean that the movie is more than just a bad movie. A movie can be bad in terms of filmmaking but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad in entertainment value. If a movie can entertain you, than I guess it did it’s job and I know that other things entertain some people. I would categorize this under my guilty pleasures… no wait! This is a guilty pleasure because I am proud to say that this movie is a favorite of mine. Sure, it’s not the original and it no longer holds to place as being my favorite of the series but it’s a pretty good film. It’s 80s cheese at it’s best and for me, it’s the nostalgia of the film that will always make me sit through it from beginning to end.

The Phantastic Phantasm

From Blogger Pictures

I have always loved “Phantasm” even the second one had some great scenes in it but what I never understood was the Sentinel Spheres. Yes, I understand that they drill into your head and suck out all the blood from your body… but in second movie, from what I remember, they replace your blood with yellow liquid; what is that yellow liquid. I was always under the impression that it was formaldehyde or ammonia.  

Another thing, after watching the first one… in the ending when Reggie was talking to Mike he kind of was acting a little creepy. He said that he was going to take him far away on a road trip, and then he began hugging him and petting him. Just an observation that I noticed that would have been frowned upon in today’s society.