Year: 1979
Country: U.S.
Subgenre: Sci-Fi/Old Dark House
Runtime: 89 minutes
Director: Don Coscarelli
Okay...this is low hanging fruit. I know this Don Coscarelli indie is a BIG cult classic, but I am partially recommending horrors here based on my personal favorites. So...I would be irritated with myself for not including this one sooner rather than later. Though, at the time of it's release, it was far from clear that it would become the classic that it regarded as today. Filmmaker Coscarelli actually paid audiences to view an early edit of the film. It eventually found a distributor due to the success of Halloween--though the two films couldn't be more different! Phantasm is most definitely NOT a slasher, and in fact, has more in common with some of the science fiction films of the 1950's & 1960's, than it does with the newly emerging slasher genre. There is no point in trying to explain the "plot" of the film; as 1) it contains way too many spoilers for those who haven't seen it [if such a person exists], and 2) it wouldn't make a lot of sense anyway. What makes this film work is that is horrifying and really strange. Or, more precisely, it's horrifyingly strange. It is unsettling, shocking in places, and a bit haunted. The first time that I saw it way back when (!), it felt a little like going through a really upscale version of one of those "fun houses" that you find at the county fair. Reportedly, Coscarelli said that he developed the script from a nightmare that he had as a teen...I believe it! The film manages to hew much more closely to what it feels like to have a really weird dream than do a lot of films that purport be about, or show, nightmares (I'm looking at you Elm Street!). For me, it has a ton of stuff that I love in a horror film: musicians that can actually play, a really spooking old dark house, scenes that harken back to old horror (see the fortune teller scene & the coffin/hearse shot) and one seriously kick ass car! I don't think that Coscarelli ever in his wildest dreams [see what I did there? 😉] thought he was creating a franchise when he managed to secure the distribution; let alone create a new horror icon in the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), but he did. To date there have been four more Phantasm films. Some of them a bit fun, but none nearly as good or scary as this original!
