[Retro Bunker] Phantasm

Name: Phantasm
Birthday: March 28, 1979
Miscellanea: Director and writer Don Coscarelli is more awesome than Chuck Norris. Along with his devotion to the “Phantasm” franchise, Coscarelli has also written and Directed “Bubba Ho-tep,” “The Beastmaster,” the best episode of Masters of Horror, “Incident on and Off a Mountain Road,” and it has been announced that he is making Ho-tep sequel “Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires.”

For anyone is familiar with the works of Don Coscarelli, it is obvious that the guy likes to spend time between this realm and some other realm that would like to eat this one like a wanton Zombie would eat brains. Even a relatively straight up story (for fantasy anyway) like “The Beastmaster,” has plenty of Holy shit, what? and That ain’t right! moments that makes one wonder if Coscarelli’s inspiration is derived form Golden Teacher mushrooms or a family history of mental illness. Phantasm is the physical embodiment of that exploration.

When We Met

Imagine a little chubby cherubic boy with brown hair and wide brown eyes peddling his yellow-over-painted-with-flat-white fixed gear bike down a sun glossed street in a suburb of Charleston, WV. It’s the summer of 1987 and the boy is dressed in a neon blue tank top, JAMS shorts, and is adorned with a bright red bandanna – rolled tight and circling his forehead.

The boy is aged 13, the JAMS are likely knock-offs, and he is me. It was on this summer day of 1987 on one of my daily trips to the rental shop to rent a movie that I discovered Phantasm. The building in which the rental place was housed was a lonely unattached structure in the heart of the suburbs. Weeds broke through the parking lot and the business was both a movie rental place and a tanning salon. The name was something like Suntastic Movies. It was as fitting place as any to find what would become one of my favorite films of all time.

Our Relationship

It was not an open relationship. Other movies that I discovered around that time I would share with my friends. Usually because of gross violence, naughty humor, or gratuitous nudity, other movies became quotable fixtures of my teen-hood. Not Phantasm. I kept that movie to myself. I am not sure of the reason for my tight lipped attitude, but it was resolute. If a kool-aid high conversation turned to favorite horror movies, I might have said Phantasm much to the puzzlement of my friends. “What’s it about?” they would ask. Shiny spheres and squashed little people from another dimension, I would answer. After a moment of silence the conversation would move on and I would be silently pleased.

My initial love for the movie came from the kinship I felt toward Mike, the resourceful kid that used his wits to stay alive, and the fear inducing The Tall Man played note perfect by Angus Scrimm. I believed that everyone feared The Tall Man in some way. I thought paranoid lyrics by David Bowie and the screeching preachers under a tent that my parents dragged me out to see were all inspired in one form or another from fear of The Tall Man. The fear that these letters feel when they see that gaping emptiness at the bottom of the page waiting for them to slide down into its maw. That is the fear of The Tall Man.

When It Was Over

It’s not over. “Phantasm” spawned sequels 2,3, and 4. According to Quiet Earth by way of fan sites, there is another incarnation of Phantasm on its way. Each sequel regardless of their varying quality from the original hold a special place for me. A place where I can still revisit that fear of The Tall Man – that I discover never left me – and the hopes of the clever kid looking to escape.

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