‘You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die…’
At a time when there has never been a bigger disconnect between movie fans and critics, it occurs to me that one aspect that your average moviegoer struggles to engage in is context. Take a film like Don Coscarelli’s 1979 cult classic Phantasm. Sure, the story is often incoherent and the film looks and feels like a B movie, but in the context of the film’s super low-budget, amateur cast and auteur director the film must be considered a success. Taken at face value, Phantasm is hardly a masterpiece, but in the world of Coscarelli, it kind of is…
I’ll just treat you to the opening sentence of Wikipedia’s plot summary of Phantasm: “While having sex in Morningside Cemetery…”. And that’s the kind of film we’re dealing with here. Things just happen with little to no explanation. The main thrust of the story concerns 13-year-old Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) and their loyal ponytailed friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and their attempts to defeat The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and his evil plan to erm… turn everyone into hooded zombie dwarves? It’s something along those lines.
Phantasm’s dreamlike ethereal aesthetic and Coscarelli’s imaginative practical effects and filming style ensure that despite its low budget, the film is always compelling. The acting is amateurish but charming and Scrimm makes for a genuinely unsettling villain with his constant cries of ‘Boyyyyyy!’ whenever he happens upon Mike. Having such a young protagonist is key to the film’s success. The whole thing feels like something that a pre-teen would conjure up with their friends on the playground… or in their nightmares. This is borne out by the fact that much of the film concerns anxieties around losing a loved one – something that children struggle with through play every time someone ‘dies’ during their own games.
Many will watch Phantasm and be utterly baffled by it. Consider the context, however, and the scale of Coscarelli’s ambition and skill cannot be denied.
