Only now does it occur to me... PHANTASM (1979)

Only now does it occur to me...  I've written a little about PHANTASM (1979) a few times before. It's a surrealistic indie melancholy horror which owes more to Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau (and a little Ray Bradbury) than, say, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or the Universal horror classics.

Fred Myrow's spooky-rockin' soundtrack. The yellow blood. The Jawa-men. The box of pain (a DUNE homage?). That sleazy lean-to shack-bar that looks like a stiff wind could blow it over. The noiseless, alabaster-white corridors of the mausoleum. The angry red sky of the other dimension. The phantasm balls, and their hidden secrets. The Tall Man. "BOYYYYYYYYY!"

Few films build such a wonderful impression of the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. Ultimately, it's a grim coming-of-age, and minus the supernatural elements, I think that its honesty and sheer quality should have even made the establishment critics take notice. In fact, Coscarelli's first two films were slice-of-life coming-of-age pictures played straight (the excellent KENNY & CO. and JIM, THE WORLD'S GREATEST). But let the establishment have their films, and let genre fans have PHANTASM. 

And despite all of its wonderful bells (and balls) and whistles, it all really comes down to a feeling, an emptiness, a melancholy born of grieving. That secret urge to wander the graveyard on an overcast day, and see what you can see...

 

I also once wrote about THE OTHER (1972) as the missing link between SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES and PHANTASM, but I'd like to add a few new observations as well. 

First, that it's incredible how deeply PHANTASM aligns––more psychically than literally––with STAR WARS. Both take deep inspiration from DUNE (STAR WARS with Tatooine, the Tusken Raiders, spice-running, Jedi spirituality, and the Butlerian jihad reflected in "we don't serve their kind here," etc.; PHANTASM with the faux-Bene Gesserit "put your hand in the box/fear is the mind killer" scene, 

 

a hostile wasteland planet, and "Dune's Cantina"), 

 

and both feature little people in desert robes (in STAR WARS, the iconic Jawas; in PHANTASM, the compressed bodies of the dead... reanimated by the Tall Man and used as interdimensional minions). 

Director Don Coscarelli has described this as a coincidence. He was apparently midway through production on PHANTASM when a friend told him he had seen "a trailer for this new movie Star Wars and your characters, the little brown dwarf guys, are in it." Later, STAR WARS fan and THE FORCE AWAKENS director J.J. Abrams helped restore the original print of PHANTASM and named Gwendoline Christie's shiny chrome STAR WARS character "Phasma" as a tribute.

Anyway, PHANTASM is great. It's meandering and dreamlike and a true indie, with bold editorial choices and stunning visuals. It's a little rough around the edges, and the performances (aside from A. Michael Baldwin's lead (child) performance and Angus Scrimm's elementally terrifying Tall Man) are uneven, but it's spooky, charming, and in a class of its own. 

 

It makes the time for multiple Reggie the Ice Cream Man (Reggie Bannister) guitar jam sessions

 

and definitely is not a screenplay they're going to teach in SAVE THE CAT or Robert McKee-inspired film schools. This gives it time to develop its potently weird dream energy, like a more adult ALICE IN WONDERLAND (or like VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS or LEMORA: A CHILD'S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL).

 

 Like most melancholy horror films, it's about grief, abandonment, and fear of the unknown.

A strong recommend if you've never seen it, especially in its gorgeous new restoration.