Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Phantasm
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. And as we enter the Halloween season on Weird House Cinema, one of our favorite times of the year. Why would I even say one of? Clearly our favorite time of the year. We are going to be doing a series of horror movies on Weird House this month. And we're kicking it off today with Phantasm. I first saw this movie projected onto a wall when I was in college and

I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about it going in. I just knew they're showing a horror movie, projecting it on a wall. I got to go see it. And I think it was about the time we got to Reggie Bannister in his ice cream man outfit that I started to really wonder what I had gotten myself into. By the end, I was totally amazed. I was in fact a gog and I could not tell you if what I had just watched was a good movie or a bad movie, but,

Either way, I was transfixed. Yes, it is a film that transfixes one. It's a film that hypnotizes you. And yeah, I...

I think I, you know, I have a hard time remembering when I saw this one for the first time because I think I saw Phantasm II first. I think I saw it on Joe Bob Briggs' Monster Vision on TNT back in the day. I think they would show this film quite a lot. But at that point I was hooked and then I started picking up these other Phantasm films, renting them and so forth.

But yeah, this is 1979's Phantasm we're going to be discussing. This is definitely a film with a dreamlike quality to it. It's one we've kind of had in the back pocket for a while because it is a quintessential psychotronic film.

All the boxes check off on this one. I would say that it is more than just a dreamlike quality. So you might compare it to the films of Lucio Fulci or this Italian filmmaker who made strange, kind of beautiful but gross horror films that

Often many scenes feel like a dream because you're like, wait, why are we here? How did we get here? Why is the person doing that? There's a kind of dream logic connecting everything. Phantasm does have that, but I would say it goes a step farther in that unlike full cheese films, uh,

Phantasm is literally a recursive series of dreams, as best I can tell. I mean, who knows? There are at least four times in the movie where a character appears to wake up from a dream. It is not clear when the dream started or when the dream ended. What's a dream and what's reality? Yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way of putting it. Now, I want to also note from the get-go here, this is a film with both a devoted following and multiple sequels.

that build on its lore to varying degrees. We're mostly just going to be focusing on the first film, on 1979's Phantasm. I'm going to bring up the sequel a little bit, but for the most part, I haven't seen the other Phantasm films in a long while, and I haven't seen the final entry in the series, 2016's Phantasm Ravager at all.

So, yeah, we're mostly going to be discussing Phantasm from 79 on its own terms. I have not seen any of the sequels. If this were years ago, I might try to mount an attempt to watch them all, kind of like I did when I was like...

Oh, this is the year I watch all the hell razor movies. That was a good use of my time. Uh, uh, but, uh, I don't know if I'm going to make it now. I don't know if I will get past P2. Yeah. P2 is a good stopping point in place. So I'll, I'll discuss P2 in a little bit. Uh,

I think that they're both very different films and they're both very fun in different ways. But coming back to 79's Phantasm, let's hit the elevator pitch on this one. I'd like to paraphrase the words of one Shaq.

by saying, you can summarize this one as, flying balls, dwarves, just weird. Phantasm does not shy away from the otherworldly imagery, probably the most iconic of which is the first thing you mention, the flying ball. In a way...

What Jason's hockey mask is to the Friday the 13th series, I believe the ball is to the Phantasm series in that it is not really the human villain, but it is like the symbol of the villain's power. Right. And also it is something just in terms of like elements of the film that cannot just be passively copied by another film. Like if you have a character, a killer, especially in another movie, put on a hockey mask, you

well, you just crossed the line. You're in Jason's territory now. And not necessarily mean that from a legal standpoint, but from just a creative standpoint, like you are now clear.

clearly in the shadow of Jason. You may have already been in the shadow, but now you've stepped entirely within the umbral shade there. Likewise with this film, yeah, flying silver balls of death. You can't just have a flying silver ball of death in your film or your story or what have you without clearly saying, yes, I come in the wake of Phantasm. Before you even understand the context of the ball, we should describe what the ball is. It's a metal ball that flies through the air

Flies at your face. It attaches itself to your forehead via a couple of little hooks, I guess, that get in your head. And then it drills into your head and then drains your body entirely of blood in a jet that shoots out the back of the ball. Yeah. And they're so great because, and I love just thinking about what makes them great because they're,

and again, largely keeping things relegated to the original film here, they seem to be machines. They are pieces of technology. They're very good at what they do, but they can be evaded. They can be to certain degrees outsmarted. And then there's also something about the way they function that feels not only alien in origin, but also maybe alien in function. Like it makes me think of

parasitic infections where the parasite goes awry because it's not supposed to be in a human body and it's not supposed to wind up in the brain. Like, you almost feel like this is a machine that was made to interface with a different biological form. And what we're seeing here is it executing its purpose on a body that it wasn't designed for.

That's a very good comparison. Yes, this flying metal ball is sort of like the Toxoplasma Gandhi of the red planet that the aliens in this movie come from. In fact, I was reading a bit of trivia about this movie and a

apparently the idea for phantasm traces back to a dream that the director Don Coscarelli had when he was a teenager. He dreamed that he was running down these endless corridors, marble corridors that never stopped. And he just kept running and running because he was being chased by a chrome sphere, a floating chrome ball that wanted to penetrate his skull with a needle and

And that's a pretty scary image. I am surprised how well that worked on screen. Yeah, it did. It absolutely does. All right, well, let's go ahead and hear the trailer for Phantasm. Phantasm, is it a nightmare? Phantasm, is it an illusion? Phantasm, whatever it is.

If this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead. Phantasm. All right. I love this trailer. Great trailer. I love the line, if this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead. Because it makes it sound like they should have another message at the end of the movie that says, like, are you alive? Then we're pleased to hear you enjoyed Phantasm.

So we've already compared Phantasm to some Italian horror movies, especially full cheese movies because of its dreamy quality and colorful, lucid imagery. But another point of comparison I would like to raise is that Phantasm kind of reminds me of the films of...

uh, very, uh, low budget, independent amateur filmmakers, or maybe not necessarily amateur, but, but low budget, independent filmmakers, even going back to the fifties, like Ed Wood and Roger Corman. Of course, you know, you're going to have different levels of, uh,

to realize one's vision in there, but it has that same scrappiness. It feels like an improvised production of young people who didn't necessarily always know what they were doing or have all the permits they needed or have the money to realize everything in the book.

glossiest possible way and yet it does kind of come together with an infectious enthusiasm and a kind of irresistible energy even though it kind of lacks a sense of worldliness or experience yeah absolutely it does have that that scrappiness to it so let's let's get into the individuals behind the this scrappiness because yes this is a Don Casarelli picture

Don Cossarelli was born in 1954. He is the director, the writer, the cinematographer, and the film editor on this movie. He was, I believe, 23 years old when filming started and 25 years old when it was released. And this was his third picture following 1975's Jim, The World's Greatest, and 1976's Kenny and Company.

Phantasm makes so much more sense once you shared this fact with me that Coscarelli was 23 when he started making it.

it has such early twenties energy again, coming back to that lack of wisdom and worldliness, but at the same time, a thing that makes up for it, which is an absolutely like, it is a leaky vessel of, uh, the essence of fun. It's just like kind of, you feel the excitement about making a movie within this movie. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's, um,

I think there's a lot to this film that does line up perfectly with this idea of a 23-year-old filmmaker of an early 20s dreamer who's also exploring some familiar topics. A lot of horror films deal with sex and death. Too many horror films probably deal with the dichotomy of sex and death. But this one does so in, I thought, a very...

fascinating way. Like you get the feeling of the, of, of the youth standing, you know, outside of childhood, but not within the adult world confronted by the mysteries of death, of, of sex and, and, and just trying to figure out what these are and like what, and to what extent they are threats to him, to what extent they are his destiny. We see all of that wound up in the character of Mike, Mike,

Uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's really fascinating to, to look back on and really gaze long and deep into the phantasm here. So you mentioned that Coscarelli had made a couple of movies before phantasm that were not horror movies. Uh, though there is a, uh, there's a story that I think comes from the audio commentary track that he recorded for the movie, but, uh, anyway, wherever it comes from, the story is that he got the idea to make a horror film because

Because when he was sitting in an audience that was watching his earlier movie, Kenny and Company, which I've never seen. I don't know what the deal with it is. Apparently there's a jump scare moment in it. Like a character puts on a scary mask and jumps out. And he watched the way the audience reacted to this jump scare moment. And he was just, he was so into it. The way that they literally jumped from their seats and screamed. And he was like, I got to make a whole movie of this. I'm doing horror now.

Yeah, I do like that he came into this after having made two non-horror films that I think both – I haven't seen either of them either, but I think they both revolve largely around young people and the lives of young people. And then he moves on into horror. A lot of people jump right into the horror world.

And so I think that's another reason that Phantasm works so well is that it's not just obsessed with like, let's get some gore up there on the screen. Like there is also this attention to the central youth character in the film and what he's thinking and how he's processing everything. Another way that Coscarelli's vision feels different.

it is distinctly young to me is the way the movie tries to pack in a lot of elements that are not necessarily, they don't necessarily like fit smoothly, but he's just trying to get a lot of stuff in there. And I think part of that is also explained by another trivia fact. I read about the movie, which is that he apparently at one point talked about how he remembered when he was a kid and

he would see, uh, like ads and trailers for horror movies, uh, that would seem really exciting. But then when you would go watch the actual movie, it would just be people sitting around talking for most of the movie. There were actually very few scares in them. The scares were already in the trailer and he wanted to make a movie that had a scary moment at least every five minutes that is just packed with, with little scares and weird things. Um,

And it kind of reminds me of the story of Roger Corman telling Charles B. Griffith, okay, when you ride Attack of the Crab Monsters, the important thing is it has to have action or horror on every page. Yeah, phantasm doesn't really hold anything back. And it keeps you on your toes that way. It is, and I think also builds into that dreamlike quality. If things are making sense and seeming normal, how long are they going to do that? What can happen? And eventually you feel like anything can happen at any moment.

Now, this film, like we said, the scrappiness of it, it was made for, I think it's been estimated for around 300,000, though I think the estimation there is kind of rough because I don't think they were really keeping super accurate records. It ended up grossing millions, though.

success with audiences and some critics. I was looking back, I noticed that Ebert was not a big fan of Phantasm and liked Phantasm II even less. But Michael Weldon of the Psychotronic Film Guides, he loved it. It's one of his favorites. He celebrated it as, quote, a unique and fascinating horror hit with more satisfying surprises than you could find in a dozen other recent offerings. And that was written in, I think, 83.

So this film really established Casarelli within the horror realm. He followed this up with 1983's Beastmaster, which I think is also a pretty solid film, in my opinion anyway, and certainly one that has achieved cult status. You got some stars for that one, right? Yeah. Who's in it? Rip Torn? Rip Torn is in it. The Beastmaster, they got the Beastmaster for it, which is ideal since it's about the Beastmaster. What, Mark Singer? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, we talked about Beastmaster 2 on a past episode of Weird Al. So if you want more Beastmaster action, go back to that one. But again, I think 83's Beastmaster, pretty solid. In Coscarelli's defense, he did not direct Beastmaster 2. That was somebody else. Right.

Now, Coscarelli did come back to direct and write Phantasm II in 1988, Phantasm III, Lord of the Dead in 1994, and Phantasm IV, Oblivion in 1998.

His non-phantasm directional credits also include Survival Quest in 88, Bubba Hotep in 2002. He did a Masters of Horror episode titled Incident On and Off a Mountain Road from 2005. Both that and Bubba Hotep are based on Joe Lansdale's stories. He did John Dies at the End in 2012. And he also directed the Dio music video The Last in Line in 1984.

A Dio music video. I got to look that up after this. Yeah, I'm not familiar with their music videos. So I read a few more internet trivia anecdotes about Don Coscarelli in the making of this movie, one of which, again, contributing to the general idea of budgetary scrappiness. Apparently they really juiced every last drop they could get out of their camera and equipment rentals. So one of the stories is that

They would shoot on the weekends. I think it took them like over a year to shoot this movie because they were pretty much just shooting on weekends and they would rent their camera equipment on Fridays and return it on Mondays. So they're technically only paying for one business day of rental, but then they would use it all weekend.

Another thing is some of the stories about the production make it sound like they were not practicing industry safety standards for, say, stunts and kind of dangerous, the achievement of dangerous shots. So there are stories of the director, like personally doing camera work.

for filming some of the car chase sequences in not the best way. One thing they did is, usually when you see characters inside a car in a movie talking, the car's not actually moving. They'll have them sitting in a stationary car, and then they'll somehow simulate the movement of the outside world around the car. If it's at night, they might just move lights around, or they might have a rear projection, or something like that.

that. That's often how they do it in this movie. They just, they just actually had characters driving the cars and they were acting at the same time. That's not usually a great idea. But another story is that there's a scene in the movie where there's like a car chase where one of the characters, Jody is shooting a gun at another car that's chasing them. And I think they actually did film this with moving cars with the director sort of like sitting on

on the trunk of a moving car filming, you know, the actor playing Jody popping up out of the window and shooting at the car behind them. With a shotgun, right?

I think it had blanks, but even that can be dangerous. I love realistic effects too, but movie production, no movie is worth somebody actually getting hurt or killed. Practice safety on sets, people. Now, this was very much a Coscarelli family labor of love here because the producer on this was Dat Cosarelli, who was also Dad, right?

investment counselor at the time who helped his son fund the film and later served as EP on Don's other films. And then mom was also involved. Kate Casarelli, who lived 1927 through 1999. She did makeup, production design, wardrobe,

She also – this is super interesting. She was already a novelist apparently if I'm understanding this correctly. She wrote books like Leading Lady, Fame and Fortune. But she herself wrote the novelization of Phantasm based on her son's screenplay, which I think is – that's adorable. I love that. She had to knife fight Alan Dean Foster for the rights though. Yeah.

I don't know how that went down, but it's yeah, it's apparently I was looking around for any signs of apparently a very sought after book for diehard Phantasm fans. But I did run across a few quotes here and there of her talking about adapting it and, you know, picking up on little details in the film and working those out. So, yeah, it seemed like a labor of love for her.

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All right, let's get into the cast. We mentioned Mike. Mike is the youth. Mike is the central character in Phantasm. And Mike was played by A. Michael Baldwin, born in 1963, apparently son of animator Gerald Baldwin, who worked on a number of older animated shows.

So A. Michael Baldwin was a child actor who appeared as early as 1976 in episodes of Starsky and Hutch and Eight is Enough later on. He starred as Doug in Kenny and Company from 76. That's one of Don's previous films.

And his post-phantasm acting career is pretty phantasm heavy. And I believe he went on to teach acting. None of this matters though, because I think he's absolutely perfect in phantasm. He's just believably awkward and childlike, but still, you know, clearly, you know,

beyond the limits of childhood. But he's also, even though he's awkward, he's still charismatic enough to serve as the hero of the film and to be this action-based character when it's right. So yeah, I absolutely love A. Michael Baldwin's performance here. And I can understand why

fans were disappointed that his role was recast in Phantasm II. I'm going to ask a question about Mike, but this also applies to Jody and especially Reggie. How old is anybody in this movie supposed to be? Yeah, it's a little foggy, right? Because Mike, for instance...

I think it would be reasonable to think of him as being a high school graduate. But we have no idea where he is in terms of high school. I assume he's done—I don't think we really see much in the way of friends. There are a few people here and there. I don't think mention of school. I don't remember anything about his plans for the future. But in a way, that's kind of perfect. It's perfect for this kind of character who is adrift.

in the very early stages of adulthood that has no concept of like what the future means for him and is already feeling himself detached or partially detached from the protective aura of childhood. That's interesting. You read him as a high school graduate. I don't know. So he drives a car that you can't tell if he's supposed to be doing that legally. And he like knows how to fix cars and things like that.

and there were other things that would suggest he's older, but sometimes also he, he acts like his character is supposed to be 12. Yes, definitely. But how much of that is he like just kind of a, an immature, you know, young adult, uh, like, but it is very vague. And I think that's one of the things that works about it. Like he's, he's a child, but he's, he's a youth, but he's, he's not, he's certainly, I don't think we would say that he's fully, you know, in the area of adulthood yet, because I, I'm

On one level, I don't think he has a job or anything. And his room, as we'll discuss in a bit, is still very much feels like a fortress of childhood. It feels like a place where you are safe or you should be safe from sex and death and other complexities of the grown-up world.

I love Mike's room, especially because he's got a, I don't know how they achieve this. He's got like a wall sized poster of the surface of the moon with the earth in the background. Is that supposed to be just a single poster that you buy somewhere? I don't know how they achieve that, but it's floor to ceiling. It's gigantic. It's absolutely dope. And then he has this, this seventies crocheted blanket. It's like yellow and green. And I love those things. I think I've, I've napped with that very blanket before.

You're wrong. It's not yellow and green. It is white, brown, and gold. Ooh, that's very good. 70s colors. All right, so that's Mike. But Mike has...

A brother? Jody's Mike's brother, right? Yeah, yeah, he's supposed to be his brother.

The Lost Empire, and also in Phantasms 3 through 5. He also wrote the song in Phantasm, Sittin' Here at Midnight.

This is a perfectly fine performance. No notes. Oh, is this when we talk about sitting here at midnight or should we save that for the scene in the movie? We should save that because it involves characters and actors we haven't introduced yet. Okay. All right. But really one of the true stars of this film and phantasm films in general is the character Reggie played by the actor Reggie Bannister, born 1945.

horror action icon and musical legend Reggie Bannister. Reggie is great in this and all subsequent Phantasm films. He's the perfect mix of the improbable and the believable. He's cool, but he's like everyday cool. He's relatable, but can sell the extreme situations and threats happening all around him. Reggie Bannister is such a weird and wonderful presence. I could not imagine this movie without him, but every scene where he shows up, it adds an additional level of

of humor, just like, because of, um, I don't mean to be insulting in this way, but like the way he looks and the way he's dressed and everything is almost always funny in this movie. Uh, it's, uh, they, they give him this ice cream man outfit that we'll, we'll have to discuss later, but he also brings a very strange kind of, uh, winking attitude to things. I, for the longest time after I saw this movie, uh,

I did not realize this actor was a different guy from Dean Norris. I used to think that Dean Norris was in Phantasm and he was playing Reggie. Yeah, they have similar looks. He kind of looks like Dean Norris with a ponytail and sideburns. I feel like the character of Reggie here is kind of, again, coming back to this youthful energy, it is like a child or a young person's idea of an adult who has it all together. Yeah.

Yes.

You know, a good guy, but, you know, he did not have it all together. But he seemed so cool. Yeah. And he is, within the context of this movie, yeah, Reggie's cool. Yeah. And part of it is, yeah, you don't know anything else about him, really. I mean, you know a little stuff, but yeah, you don't have all these other details.

In subsequent films, they have to make him more tragic and revenge-focused and so forth. But in this one, he's just a dude going about his life, and then some stuff starts going down around him, and he gets involved. Is Reggie supposed to be 20 or 50? Yeah.

I don't know. It's as unknown as it would be to the youth who is looking up to him, I guess. But I don't think he's supposed to be too old, right? No, he's just generally adult. But within the range of adult, it's up for grabs. Yeah. So the real Reggie Bannister was slash is a Vietnam vet turned actor who started out in these early Cosirelli films. I

I think he was in all of his films except for Beastmaster and the Masters of Horror episode that I mentioned earlier, like at least had some sort of small role. He branched out into some other works such as L.A. Law, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4, Wishmaster, and many other horror titles over the years. I think a lot of it is like he had this, he cemented his status as an icon in the Phantasm films, and that got him a lot of work. He's apparently does a lot of conventions or has over the years.

He also put out an album in 2008 titled Naked Truth by the Reggie Bannister Band.

And yeah, Reggie rocks. There needs to be an official action figure of him because we have action figures of less noble characters. Oh, well, I wouldn't I wouldn't going to say less noble about this, but I've got a great action figure of Tom Atkins from Night of the Creeps. If we've got that, we should get a good Reggie Bannister action figure. Get Reggie on the horn. I'm sure you can work out the licensing on this.

All right. Since we're talking about a phantasm film, we are, of course, also talking about The Tall Man, played by Angus Scrimm, who lived 1926 through 2016. I love the vibe of Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man because...

It is once again, not, it doesn't just totally go down smooth. It doesn't feel like, yes, this guy, you know, he's not Doug Bradley as pinhead or something. It just feels like born to play this character. There's a kind of occasional awkwardness to him and awkwardness in the way it like his posture or the way he'll like reach out for a character in a, you know, jump scare or something.

But that awkwardness fits like it almost makes the movie better. Yeah, I think part of it to the awkwardness is that he the real Angus Scrimm was six four and

And they made him seem even taller, you know, by various, you know, very practical effects. But one of them was by putting him in a smaller suit. So he looks a little awkward just in the way he's wearing his clothing. And it makes him feel like he's not 6'4", but like 7'4", or something. So Angus Scrimm was his acting name, but his real name was Lawrence Rory Guy. Yeah.

He adopted the Angus Scrimm name for this film. He'd previously been in some other works, including Casarelli's Jim, the World's Greatest, and went on to star in all subsequent Phantasm films, as well as appearing in, I think, often smaller roles in films like The Lost Empire, Chopping Mall. He has a very brief career.

in that. I think he's just present. I think he's like a reporter at a news conference about the new mall robots. Laughter

I don't remember that at all. Even if you know it's coming, you can miss it. It's such a small role. He is also in Subspecies, Mind Warp, Munchie, I Sell the Dead, and John Dies at the End. He was also the opening narrator on Wes Craven's Wishmaster. So if you check out the first 10 to 15 minutes of Wishmaster, which is all you need, you'll get a little audio from him.

He was also a five-time Grammy nominated and one-time Grammy winner for writing liner notes on classical albums. Huh. Yeah. He began his career as a writer and a journalist, though his degree was apparently in drama. Yeah, and apparently the stage name Angus Scrimm goes back to his college days when he was getting a drama degree. I read that he was...

doing plays off campus when he technically was not allowed to do that by the theater department that he was studying at. So he tried to keep his off-campus theater work secret by using a different name, using a stage name. So in case he got mentioned in a review or something, they wouldn't be able to trace it to him.

Yeah, it's a great moniker. I love it. And yeah, I mean, Angus Scrimm was ultimately, like, this dude was a horror icon. Like, he's as much a part of these Phantasm films as Flying Silver Balls and Killer Dwarves. So you mentioned he's in Munchie. Is that a Groblins movie? Yes. I don't think it's one I've seen, but there were at least a couple of Munchie movies. I think Munchie and then Munchie's...

Or Munchies 2. Don't take me to the bank on that one. But yeah, those are Gremlin's movies. Okay, a couple of other humans involved in this. We have the Lady in Lavender, who is the tall man's female form slash sex incarnation. She's played by Kathy Lester. Yeah.

Lester is an actor and a musician, but her main roles are this, 1994's Phantasm III, Lord of the Dead, and I think she also came back in the 2016 Phantasm movie, Ravager. Oh, and then Sally is a character that pops up in this, played by Lynn Eastman Rossi. She was only active until 1994, but during that time she appeared in

A number of notable, or at least notable to us films, the Savage Sasquatch film, Night of the Demon from 1980. Night of the Demon. I remember. I think we watched that one for trailer talk years ago. Yeah, definitely. There are two types of Sasquatch movies as we've discussed.

there's the noble squash and the savage squash. And this is a savage squash film. This is where Bigfoot is killing people. I think I've been torn on, uh, whether night of the demon is worth covering on this show because it's got some really funny, fun stuff in it. But I think it's also got some really gross bummer stuff too, as a lot of Sasquatch movies do. Uh,

Lynn Eastman Rossi was also in Project X. This is the Matthew Broderick 8 movie from 1987. And she was also in 1992's Unlawful Entry featuring Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta, and Sonny Carl Davis, a.k.a. Rabbit. Oh, it took me a minute to figure this. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Trancers, yes. Yeah, yeah. Trancers 2, Rabbit. Notable performance.

All right, getting into the effects here, I mainly wanted to comment, the effects are mostly really good in this in Hold Up, with one notable exception, but all the stuff with like the flying silver balls and so forth, I think still look really good. But I want to call out the fact that Gene Corso, who lived 1932 through 1996, has sound effects credit on this, shared with Lorraine Mitchell. But yeah, the sound effects in Phantasm are really great, and I think certainly helps sell that weird aura of,

the film especially the weird r of the flying death spheres as a sound editor corso worked on such films as queen of blood star wars the china syndrome mutant predator deep star six and the rift um and then lorraine mitchell who also worked on this worked on some of these films as well along with conan the destroyer and rambo 3. i think

in general audiences really underestimate how much difference a good audio element makes in a horror movie. Good, good sound effects, atmospheric sound design, and good music.

Would this movie be remembered anything like the way it is if it did not have the quality of sound effects and music that it does? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I'm not sure it would have because, yeah, the sound effects are great, but yet the music is wonderful as well. Iconic, really.

The music is credited to Fred Miro, who lived 1939 through 1999, and Malcolm Seagrave, who lived 1928 through 2001. Seagrave's only film credits are for the Phantasm theme, but Miro...

Has more of a history as a, well, first of all, a third generation musical professional. His father, Joseph Miro, wrote You Make Me Feel So Young, that song. And Miro also worked on Phantasm II and Phantasm III. But his other scores include 1973's Soylent Green and Scarecrow.

You got the gears turning on some mild thematic connections between Phantasm and Soylent Green. Both involve a discovery of a secret science fiction manufacturing process where one of the ingredients is people. That's an interesting... You know, it's interesting. You can think of these various films. You can think of Season of the Witch, Halloween 3. Films about at least...

about industrial malfeasance, some sort of evil industrial plot to mass produce something that is destructive to humanity. Yeah. But anyway, the Phantasm score, absolutely great. I have no reservations about saying that. The theme is catchy and creepy, perfectly matching the dreamlike quality of the film. And it's...

Even outside of the main Phantasm theme song, there are all these wonderful hypnotic soundscapes as well. So you have synth and guitar in there, but you also have just gongs and chimes and cymbals and bells creating this wonderful hallucinatory effect. I agree. Love all that stuff. There is one thing I noticed. I didn't compare them side to side to see exactly how similar they are, but I did hear some

strong overlap between, I think it was the main synth theme from Phantasm and one of the tunes that is used in John Carpenter's The Fog. Though, of course, I'm not alleging musical plagiarism or anything. There are only so many notes, so you're going to get some similar eerie tunes. But I heard that kinship. Of course, The Fog didn't come out until 1980. Wait, what?

My God, you're right. I had the order inverted in my head. So if there is any inspiration, it would have gone the other way. Yeah. But like you said, there are only so many notes you can play. All right. We're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe and paired all those weird shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses. And I plugged in the partition partition. It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails. Plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites too. I just got it for

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All right, well, let's jump into Phantasm. Well, mercifully breaking our streak of movies that begin by looking at the stars in space, this film does not begin in space. Instead, it's just Phantasm in red letters on a black background. And then we cut to an establishing shot of a mansion. It's a...

Oh, I did not look up architectural styles. Do you know what style of house this is? It's like a big white mansion with columns out front, three columns and sort of a wraparound veranda, I believe. Yeah, old American, I think, is the architectural styling here. And then we're just straight on from this to an absolutely hilariously awkward sex scene in a cemetery. Yeah.

featuring a dude who looks like Lemmy from Motorhead and a lady with blonde hair and purple eye makeup.

This would be our lady in lavender, we find out. Yes, she's a recurring character. In fact, we find out she is just sort of a glamour, a mirage. And in fact, she is Angus Scrimm, but just in a different form. And we see that because, okay, they're having sex in a cemetery. And then suddenly the lady pulls out a dagger and she stabs Lemmy. She stabs the dude. And then through the magic of film editing, she transforms into an old man. And it is Angus Scrimm.

We will see him many more times in the film. The soundtrack in the scene is cymbals and whooshing wind noises. So it's this weird mix of kind of cool atmosphere, but the staging of the sex scene is so funny. Yeah, it's absurd. I mean, obviously depictions of human sex in film should always be considered with a grain of salt. But this one feels like it was constructed via youthful hearsay about what the grown-up world of sexuality actually consists of.

Yeah.

But it is greatly confusing at what angles these two people's bodies are supposed to be positioned. Yeah. And it just, it makes you, it feels like something like Ralph Wiggum would explain, you know, and then the baby looked at me. Yeah. I have no idea. Yeah. It's absurd. But it also, again, I think it falls in line with that youthful energy of the film. You know, it's like, what is sex? What is death? Yeah.

Mike doesn't know. And part of this film is Mike's dream quest to try and figure that out. But okay, the lady in lavender is actually Angus Grimm. She kills Lemmy. And then it's morning in the cemetery. And we're back at the mansion, but it's daylight. And here we meet two of our main characters. By the way, we see a sign that says it's Morningside. Morningside Cemetery.

And we meet our main characters, Jody and Reggie. Jody is tall, handsome, big mane of messy hair. Reggie is shorter. He's wearing cool sunglasses. And I was going to say, so he's like bald in front with a horseshoe of hair and then a ponytail. So I was going to say it's like business in front, party in back. But really, it's more like clothes for business in front, party in back.

And close for business mostly on the top as well. It's a substantial bald pattern there. But

still very, very cool. Look, he's got some nice sideburns there that come to a nice little, uh, you know, goring point. I mean, there's no denying Reggie's cool. Yeah. So they, they meet up and they say, Hey, Tommy's gone a hell of a way to end a trio. So Tommy, I think meaning the guy from the opening scene who got stabbed was their friend. They believe he committed suicide. I don't know why, uh, they think that, but that's what, what they have been led to believe. Uh,

Do you, Rob, did you detect that they were supposed to all be in a band together? Yeah, I kind of got that vibe, but I don't remember if there was a specific line that

that actually cemented that concept. I mean, clearly Jody looked like a dude that was in a band. It's just a question of, was he in the band with these two? Jody looks like he would fit right in, in a one piece disco jumpsuit doing a musical number in like a variety show. Yeah. Anyway, we go into a nice creepy atmospheric scene where Jody walks around alone in the halls of the funeral home and the

The halls are lined with white marble covered in a weird pattern of blue veins. I love the atmosphere of the inside of the funeral home. Yeah, I mean, in many ways it's an obvious set, and yet the uniformity I think gives it a nice otherworldly vibe. Yeah.

And, you know, it feels sterile and like a place between. And at the same time, it does feel authentically like a mausoleum, like many mausoleums also have that vibe, except I don't think it's quite as—the ones I've been in anyway, it doesn't feel quite as monotonous. It's not quite as uniform. You do have some little details that differentiate one thing.

area from another. There might be flowers in front of these remains, etc. But yeah, this whole vibe here, it feels just enough like a mausoleum that it doesn't feel like they're on a spaceship, but it also kind of feels like they're on a spaceship. I have questions about how this mausoleum is supposed to work, because I think we see later that

like many mausoleums, it has these vaults. They're built into the walls. They have like a name on them and then what appears to be some kind of covering or door. But later we see that you can just open them up like a file cabinet and there is a, like a file cabinet drawer and then there's a coffin inside which you could presumably just open up and see the body. Yeah, yeah, I...

I'm not sure. I've never opened one up. But if you take this movie at face value, it's telling you that, yeah, these are just like morgue drawers. You can just roll one open and look at the body. I am not an expert in the funerary arts and sciences, but I think there would be problems with that design. Anyway, so Jody's walking around and hears these strange sounds that in the subtitles for the version of the movie I watched, it called the sounds warbling. I would call it...

squawking or growling, maybe snarling. And of course in a bit, we'll find out what is making that sound. Right. Uh, and we see that, uh, let's see, Jody visits the grave of his parents. We find out they've passed away. And then we meet Mike, Jody's little brother, who is just tearing through the grass of the cemetery on a dirt bike. It's like, he's riding a chainsaw and,

Trivia fact I found is that the motorbike used here is called a Hodaka Road Toad. But he's literally just driving like between the grave markers. Yeah, some kind of psychomania vibes to this motorcycle ride here. And he also hears the weird chittering and snarling sounds. And we see a few glimpses of what appear to be little figures in dark cloaks dashing behind gravestones. Ooh.

Oh, the dwarves. I think we're supposed to understand that Mike is sort of a little engineer. Like he has an affinity for machines. We see him later repairing Jody's muscle car at multiple points. And like, there's a part where he's working on the engine while Jody is just standing there talking to a friend like, yeah, I'm going to ditch this kid and get out of town. And,

Anyway, Jody inside the funeral home goes investigating the weird sounds, but he doesn't quite figure it out. Instead, there's a great jump scare where we first hear Angus Scrim talk. He comes up behind him and slaps down on his shoulder and says, the funeral is about to begin. Yeah.

Yes.

and the columns lining both sides. So it's totally symmetrical. We already saw shots like that when Jody was walking through the mausoleum. You know, he'd be framed in a doorway with all these decorations that are exactly symmetrical on both sides.

The movie seems to be fond of shots like this, where the subject is in the middle and then it's just mirror images on both sides of the screen. Yeah, yeah. And I think especially with this scene, but also with the mausoleum scenes as well, there is this impression of narrowing, you know, as if narrowing towards the death point.

which I think lines up nicely with the theme of the movie. And then the idea that, you know, we're propelled through it, that Mike is propelled through this world.

And, you know, it keeps the pacing contributes to that as well. Also, I want to point out, I don't know if you notice this, but in this particular, I assume this is like an actual church, an actual location. And they didn't build any of this or decorate it a lot. But there's a weird painting above the altar in this scene that I, again, I assume is just a legit in-church painting. But it has kind of zombie Jesus vibes to it. Like Jesus has his arms up like Frankenstein a bit. Oh, interesting. I didn't notice that.

I was just thinking what church let phantasm shoot inside? I mean, maybe they, I don't know how it went down. Maybe they didn't tell them what the film was about, or maybe they explained the theme and the church was like, yeah, it works for us. As long as you get the Jesus painting in there, we're very proud of this. Okay. Anyway, so Reggie and Jody are there for the funeral of their, their friend. They're, I guess their bandmate maybe. Yeah.

And Mike, the younger guy is trying to peep on the funeral with binoculars. I didn't understand this at all. Like, why isn't he just there instead? He's like in the bushes with binoculars, watching them carry the coffin. He, Mike is a consummate voyeur. He has just,

he's just constantly spying on sex and death as is the, you know, the very definition of the, of the voyeuristic impulse, like his brother's meeting some lady. Well, Mike's in the bushes. He's going to see what's happening here. Somebody's moving a casket around Mike's in the bushes. He's got the binoculars out. He wants to see how these worlds work, these worlds that he is not yet entered into, but seems destined to be a part of.

But because he's spying on the funeral, he's still watching after all of the mourners leave. And he gets to see something very odd happen. The tall man, Angus Scrimm, after everybody's gone, instead of letting the workers bury the casket, he picks up the casket, takes it back to the hearse, and puts it inside. And he's carrying the entire thing by himself. Nice.

Not only is he most probably evil, he's also cheap. He's not hiring anybody else to carry these for him. He's just picking it up himself. We also get a sense of this when we see Jody's body in the casket. Jody looks a little ghoulish. It's like the tall man is not doing a good job. Wait, Jody? I'm not sorry, not Jody. What's his name? Tommy. The dead friend, Tommy. Yes. Tommy looks ghoulish.

does not look like he's been embalmed to the degree that you would want your loved one embalmed, I would say. But he looks like a movie corpse. Yes. Mission accomplished. Right. Okay, so we got the setup. Mike has seen something very weird at the Morningside Cemetery. And after that weird reveal, Mike walks around alone with excellent theme music playing, some great 70s horror movie atmosphere. A lot of great horror movies from this time around.

Yes.

Yeah, this is where we get to our wonderful Bene Gesserit scene. Straight Dune ripoff, and I love it. Clearly, Don was a fan of Dune. In fact, it's explicit later when Jody goes to a bar. Did you notice this in the bar? It's called Dune's Bar. Yeah, yeah. He was obviously a big fan of the book. The Lynch adaptation wouldn't come out to 84, so yeah, definitely Dune.

a written sci-fi fan. In fact, we see, there's another scene where we see a sci-fi paperback

on Mike's desk or bedside table. And I looked it up, I forget what it is offhand, but it is a particular sci-fi novel that was included, I guess, to let you know that Mike's into sci-fi, that maybe he's a little more creative than other people in the community around him. The book was I Am Legion by Roger Zelazny. Oh, is it? Oh, good. My Name is Legion, maybe? I don't know. I've never read it. Okay. But that sounds right. Yeah, I looked it up and then forgot it, promptly forgot it. But

But it has very cool late 70s paperback sci-fi cover art. I love it. So clearly this scene is just taken from Dune, the book. But what would you say is literally supposed to be happening here? Is this lady supposed to be a fortune teller? She's like dressed in all black, wearing dark sunglasses inside and in a room full of candles. And she speaks through her granddaughter. Yeah, yeah. And it's...

you know, it's already got a creepy vibe that you're probably, if you've not seen the film, you're thinking, well, it's not like then they make him put his hand in a box and experience phantom pain. Um, and then tell him that fear is the mind killer. Um, well actually all of that happens. That's exactly what happens in this scene. They don't say mind killer. She says fear is the killer. Yes. Yeah.

Doesn't quite have the same ring. No. And then I think the box vanishes, right? It like straight up vanishes in front of our eyes, the viewer's eyes on the table. Yes. Suggesting that not only is the pain in the box an illusion created telepathically by the Reverend Mother here, but that the box itself is. There wasn't even a box. Now, what does all this mean within the context of the film? I don't know. No idea. Unknown. Unknown.

Well, Mike is told not to fear. He said, the granddaughter says, fear is the killer. Don't fear. That's what grandmother wants you to learn. It was all in your mind. And then Mike says, oh yeah. Yeah.

I guess we will come back around to this later. This film does do a pretty good job of if it establishes something, it will come back around to it. Okay, I think it's time to talk about sitting here at midnight. So at Jody and Mike's house, Jody is sitting there on the front porch playing a Stratocaster plugged into a Fender amp, and then Reggie pulls up. Reggie now is in his work outfit. He is wearing an ice cream jacket

I don't know. He's wearing like a white shirt and white pants with a black bow tie. And he's driving a truck that says Reggie's ice cream. And it's got a guitar tucked into one of the, I don't know, the cooler boxes, I guess. Um,

And so Reggie gets out of the car, comes up and plays guitar alongside Jody. They play a song called Sitting Here at Midnight, where the lyrics are, I'm just sitting here at midnight and I'll be sitting here till noon. You see, my lady left me lonely. Yes, she did. My baby left me blue. And then they both go, oh, and then play a riff. It's and I will give them credit. Both actors are actually playing guitars here. Nice.

Yeah. Just like moving their hands while the soundtrack plays. I'll also say that a lesser movie would have only played part of the song or would have cut away, done some sort of a montage or something. But no, we get the full short performance of this song right here on the porch. And I dig it. Awesome.

Also, you mentioned that the ice cream truck says Reggie's Ice Cream. Somehow I missed out on that every time I watched it. That's an interesting detail. Not only is Reggie the ice cream man, he's apparently a business owner. Yeah, he owns his own business. He's really plugged in at the local chamber of commerce. Yeah.

Now we do get a nice weird moment there at the end of the performance with the tuning fork, though. Yes, we do. Well, first of all, after they play, I think Jody goes, not bad. And then Reggie says, we're hot as love, you know, which makes me think hot as love was the name of their band.

Oh man, that's a good, that would have totally fit. But so Reggie pulls out a tuning fork, I guess to tune his guitar, but instead we just really zone in on the fork and we listen to it, it humming out a tune until Reggie mutes it by putting his two fingers on the end of the fork tines. We will come back to this detail as well.

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Now, uh, some more stuff happens. We see random, like a random blonde lady walk into the funeral home and then open a door and light shines on her and she screams. I don't know. There are a few things in the movie that are just like random things happen and I can't really connect them to anything else. So, you know, something like that happens.

Uh, but Hey, let's go to the bar with Jody. He's going to go to dunes, cantina, have a beer and, and try to try to make some friends. And Mike is here for this. Mike is, is watching the whole time. Yes. Mike, of course follows Jody everywhere. So he's outside peeping through the window of the bar as, as Jody's like, uh,

chatting up a lady, chatting up a blonde lady who they're hitting it off. And he doesn't know who she is, but we do because we saw that, that horribly awkward opening scene. It's the lady who stabbed Tommy and turned into Angus Scrimm. So Jody don't go home with Angus Scrimm, but it looks like he's gonna.

She leads him off to the cemetery. I guess the goal is to kill him. Mike is still following them, peeping on everything. And then suddenly everything is interrupted because snarling, warbling noises start up again. And some little creature that looks like a Jawa, like a short figure in brown robes charges out at him from the darkness. And Mike runs away screaming. This interrupts everything. Everybody runs off and Jody runs after Mike and,

There are some really goofy sex jokes in the scene I don't feel like describing. But anyway, so Jodi ends up running off after Mike. Yeah, the scene's a little bit cringy in some respects. But yeah, this is our first glimpse of the dwarves actually scampering about and causing mischief. One of the key aspects of the Phantasm films. Now, is this a good place to talk about the...

between the dwarves in this movie and the Jawas in Star Wars because we got to admit in the brown robes with the pointy hoods, they look extremely similar. Yeah, there is a strong comparison to be made. Very similar vibes. It, of course, different

ultimately different energies involved like Jawas and Star Wars. They are just, uh, technological scavengers looking to, uh, pick up the pieces and make a few deals here and there. They're not evil. They're very neutral creatures. And when, as we've seen in later installments of Star Wars, you know, you can have quite good relations with the Jawas. They're, they're, they're not indecent folk. Uh,

These creatures, the dwarves of Phantasm, these are little monsters. They're snarling little zombies. Yeah, they are up to no good. They will attack you. They will do God knows what. Now, I think a lot of people have assumed that these creatures were inspired by the design of the Jawas. But in Don Coscarelli's defense, they're not.

They had apparently they had this idea and started shooting the movie before Star Wars came out So I think it looks like this is just a coincidence Yeah, and and we do unlike the Jawas which in which we we never see the jaw was face We will get to see the face of one of these dwarves later on and I should also point out that by the time they make Phantasm - in which they had a much bigger budget by the way

One of the things they use that budget on is always showing the dwarves' faces. So the dwarves look extra evil and nasty in that film because their faces are never really – their faces may be obscured in some scenes, but there are a whole lot of scenes where you get to see their little snarling faces.

So anyway, coming back to the plot, here's what is some weird stuff happens. So Jody runs off after Mike because Mike was scared and screaming, uh, uh, chased by a necro dwarf. And, uh, Mike tries to explain to Jody what happened. And Jody says, uh, it was probably just a gopher in heat. Okay. Uh, and then, and then Jody sends Mike home with his car, uh,

And then Mike wakes and then Mike like wakes up and he's in his bed with the groovy blanket with the, the, the brown, white and gold stripes. But the tall man is standing over his bed and his bed is in the middle of a cemetery. And then zombies like scream and grab him. So I guess this is a dream. And then he wakes up, but like,

If this was a dream, how far back does that go? Like how much of it was a dream? We don't know when the dream sequence started. Yeah. Or when does it end? Is it still going? Is the tall man about to do a jump scare right behind you right now, Joe? It might happen.

But those questions aside, this is a fabulous scene. This is one that I think is used in the trailer as well. Yeah. Just the symmetrical shooting of it, the way it's all framed up, the darkness. And it also just like, it sums up a lot of the attitude of Phantasm. Like here is Mike, the youth Phantasm.

in bed, clearly troubled and like death, the personification of death is like literally at the head of his bed, leering over him. And then these things jump out and start, you know, presumably about to just tear him in half. Then one of the funniest things is it goes from, he's waking up from a dream sequence and then it goes straight to another scene that feels like

so dreamlike. He's, it's, it looks kind of gauzy and Mike is wandering down the sidewalk, like sucking on a lollipop and, uh, checking the, the change tray and pay phones for change. And then he looks across the street and there's the tall man just walking past like a clothing store and,

And then there's Reggie's ice cream truck in the foreground and Reggie is opening up the freezer and pulling ice cream out. And there is fog emanating from the freezer. And then the tall man stops right behind Reggie and stands in the freezer fog and turns and looks at Mike and says,

does this monstrous sniff. He's like, you know, breathing in, uh, looking in some, some kind of weird agony or something. Uh, and what, what the heck is going on here? Did this really happen? Is this a dream? What is the tall man doing when he's sniffing the freezer fog? I don't know. Yeah. It's definitely another great scene that has dreamlike qualities and,

And I think has that strong youth vibe of like, here the youth is seeing the true creepy nature of reality that's lost to all the other adults. You know, like here's Reggie. Reggie doesn't notice this going on at all. Reggie's just doing his thing, doing his job. I also love how the scene, it seems to imply, or it's always struck me this way, this being a moment where the tall man is looking right at us, the viewer. He's looking right back at Mike, right?

So it's like the abyss staring back. It's game recognizing game here. It's like Mike and the tall man have a connection. And we'll see another version of this later on in the picture. Yes, we will. But I just want to flag again that I have completely lost track of what's a dream and what's reality by this point in the movie. This is probably a good point to mention. In Phantasm 2, again, Universal comes in, gives them a bunch of funding to finally make a sequel to Phantasm.

And apparently they made some demands, as you might expect when a big studio comes in and gives you a whole bunch of money. They said, well, we need some romantic interest for our characters, especially for Mike. You can't bring back Baldwin and Reggie Bannister. You get to bring back one and the other one you have to recast. So in Phantasm II, they recast Mike, which given the choice was the correct choice.

choice to make. Like you don't recast Reggie. You gotta, you can't recast Reggie. Must have Reggie Bannister. Yep. Yeah. But one of the other, uh, apparently, apparently one of the other studio demands was no dream sequences. Nobody's dreaming in this film. It's, I guess it was, they thought it was too confusing and they're like, everything needs to be linear. Nobody has any dreams, which is a weird demand to make on a sequel to this film, a film that like you said, it's,

on one hand, like that's the whole quality of it. It's like, we don't know when it's a dream and when it's not. Even the title of the film is Phantasm. It is supposed to be like an illusion, something you're not sure about. But you also understand where the studio is like, look, this is too much. We need it to be nice and linear. No dreams. That's a tragedy. I'm going to have to, I wonder if I'll get mad when I watch P2. Oh, P2 is still a lot of fun. It's very much an action film. It's kind of like,

aliens to this film's alien, but without the consistency of quality. Like Phantasm II is a dumber film, but also a film that clearly had more money to throw at killer ball effects and dwarf effects.

And also, yeah, Reggie is transformed into a pure action hero. And so it's a lot of fun as well, but it's very different. And definitely there's something to be said for it's moving away from the dream imagery for the most part.

So the next thing is we're going to spend some time with Mike and Jody in their house. I love their house. There's a part where Mike is like underneath Jody's muscle car doing repairs on it again, because apparently, you know, he's got full mechanic training, even though he is only 12 or 19.

And he is attacked by the Necro-Dwarves while he is under the car, but then in trying to defend himself, he ends up bonking Jody on the toe with a hammer. But anyway, this is when we finally get a really good look at their house and all of the length of the carpet fibers will amaze you.

Yeah, there's the scene where, I think this is later on, but there's a scene with the stairs in the house where they have these like floating stairs and they're all carpeted. And man, you just want to take your shoes off and walk on those things. Except that...

They also look like they would have protruding hidden nails. Well, it is the 1970s, so everything in the house looks comfy and yet possibly dangerous. Anyway, Mike chills out for a bit in his glorious bedroom with the shot of the moon on the wall and a John Lennon poster, I think. One of those maps of the world that cuts Asia in half instead of dividing in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah.

Um, and, uh, we see him tuck a gigantic Bowie knife into a sheath strapped to his calf. And the, the knife is as thick as his leg. So when he pulls his pants leg down over it, it looks really funny. Uh, he also packs a crucifix, but this is your classic suiting up scene. It's like when Van Helsing is packing his steaks and his holy water into the kit.

But it's time to head off to the Morningside Cemetery at night for some reason, I guess, to figure out what's going on with the tall man and the Jawas. So Mike heads over. He breaks through a window to sneak in. He's walking around in the dark with a lighter. He ends up hiding in a coffin in a classic horror movie trope. Somebody's got to hide in a coffin because somebody's looking for them. While a very blank faced man in a white hat creeps around looking for him.

Rob, did you understand that this man in the white hat is supposed to be of the same species as Angus Scrimm? I think he's more... Well, you know, it's hard. This is a point where it's difficult to sort of think about this film completely on its own terms because knowing what we know about later installments, I feel like it's clear that this guy's just an underling. But if I were just watching this film for the first time, yeah, I might think this must be...

being must be of the same species or origin as the tall man, because they're both, I don't think they exchange any words. They have this kind of like wordless correspondence energy. But the scene here is really cool though, you know, with him hiding in the casket, I feel like it has genuine tension to it. And there's this cool bit where he's used the lighter that he was showing off earlier to keep the casket from closing completely, because

I don't know, maybe it would self-lock and then he would be stuck in there and buried or found later. I wonder if there are unused scenes that describe who the man in the white hat is. Like maybe he's a human Renfield to the tall man. Because...

Did you read the same thing I did, Rob, about how the original cut of Phantasm was over three hours long? Oh, wow. Well, I guess, I mean, that's not out of character with a lot of films where the initial cut is just really bloated. But if that's the case with this film, I mean, good job on them cutting it down and it being this long.

consistently entertaining. There's not a dull moment in the film. It's like an hour and 20 something. So if that's true, that would have mean that would have meant we lost half the movie. I think they pull some stuff out later in, uh, some of the sequels, like even like pretty, you know, like decades later in some of the sequels, they like were able to pull out whole sequences that they didn't use. Yeah. Well, anyway, uh,

Mike is attacked by the man in the white hat, but at the same time, he is being pursued by the ball. This is when we first really meet the ball. There is a shiny metal sphere that flies through the air at Mike and

And it's coming at him to drive into his face while the man in the white hat is holding him. But Mike bites the guy on the arm and then ducks down and then the ball hits the guy in the white hat instead.

and it, I remember when I first saw this, the, the entire room was just in shock watching what the ball did. It's, it's a roll that beautiful ball footage moment where the drill goes in between the eyes and then it just squirts out a jet of blood from the back of the ball. Yeah. Like it's not trying to keep the blood. It's just take the blood out of the thing that it is embedded in. It's just absolutely glorious sequence. Uh,

One of the coolest, weirdest horror movie deaths you'll ever find in a horror movie. To take it out of the context of horror movie violence, this device, if it existed, would be a wonderful fruit juicer. It can fly into the side of a watermelon and then just drain all the watermelon juice straight out. Yeah, I mean, you'd have to stand behind it and I guess catch it all in your mouth or something.

Yeah, you need a receptacle, yeah. But that's, again, that's another quality of the sphere that I like because it doesn't feel like it was designed to function in this world or in these circumstances, you know, just attaching to things and sucking all the liquid out of them and just blasting the liquid over whatever's behind it.

I love it. It's so weird. But there are a lot of effects in this movie that are great, low-tech, low-cost effects. And the ball effects, I think this is a great example because there are scenes where this metal sphere is actually flying through the air toward the camera and you don't necessarily see any wires or anything. So how did they do this? I think what they did was they just had somebody stand behind the camera and pitch the ball or they might've used a pitching machine. In any case, the ball was being...

thrown or ejected down the hall past the camera and then they just use the shot in reverse so the ball is just flying toward the camera from out of nowhere it looks good it looks good however they did it like these are sequences um that that hold up absolutely uh you know these you totally buy this flying silver sphere from another world

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Well, anyway, there's a big chase scene. The tall man chases Mike. At one point, Mike manages to...

Where they freeze. They freeze. Mike kind of like cautiously walks up. The tall man's cautiously walking up. And then in their kind of mirror images of each other, but kind of one to one side, one to the other. And then boom, Mike runs for it and the tall man chases after him. And the tall man, he's got a lot of go. He's got some energy. He may look...

Like he's somewhere between the ages of 50 and 80. Again, his age is also suitably vague. And of course, he's probably not of this world anyway, so it doesn't matter. But yeah, he can move. This leads to the finger sequence, which is a whole like series of scenes, which are so...

Mike manages to escape from the tall man and cut off some of his fingers. It squirts out yellow blood and his fingers are like still moving around on the floor. Mike takes one of the fingers, takes it home, keeps it in a box and falls asleep on the floating shag carpet stairs with a shotgun in his hand. That's not safe. Um, then Jody finds him asleep on the stairs and,

And Mike explains it to Jody. He's like, here's what happened. I'm going to show you a finger in a box. And then he shows him the finger. And then Jody's like, okay, I am convinced. I appreciated that, that he didn't persist in denying it once he saw the finger and the yellow blood in the box. And then the finger turns into a beetle demon, which attacks Jody and Mike. And then they try to kill it in the garbage disposal in the sink. And then they try to kill it in the garbage disposal in the sink.

And then Reggie arrives to witness this. So now Reggie's in on the whole demon conspiracy and,

And then after this, Jody starts giving Mike a gun safety lesson. And then Jody heads off to the funeral home to investigate things for himself. Yeah. And I love how we go from this scene where Jody's giving Mike the gun safety lesson. And then Jody goes into the basement of the mausoleum at night, is immediately attacked by dwarves. And there's a scene where a dwarf is on Jody's back.

And Jody is trying to shoot the dwarf off of his back with a handgun by essentially aiming the gun at his own head. Like, it's just so dangerous. It's like, really? You were just given pointers on gun safety and now you're doing this? That scene is so funny. Yeah.

But anyway, Jody, yeah. So he, Jody has this fight with one of the necro dwarves in the funeral home and then he flees. And then this leads into a car chase where Jody and Mike are driving around shooting at a hearse. I think that's being driven by one of the creatures, uh,

And then they crash. They get the other car to crash and they go up to the creature and they pull back its hood. And you're wondering, what's its face going to be like? And they realize, oh, no, this was our friend Tommy. This is the Lemmy guy, but he's covered in yellow slime.

Oh, and this is great. The reveal that the dwarves are the bodies of the dead that have been like compressed down into little necro-dwarves. Like this, I remember when I was

watched one of these films for the first time and realized this. And I was like, Oh my goodness, that's, that's genius. That's so beautiful. So they summon Reggie's ice cream truck, which is now doubling as a body removal truck. Uh, so they're putting it in the, in the freezer and Reggie. And by this scene, I,

I think he was dressed like this earlier, but he looks so funny because he's wearing a black vest over his ice cream outfit. So he looks like a combination of a milkman and a riverboat casino dealer. Yeah. So Reggie, Jody and Mike go back to their house and they have a strategy session. Jody's going, why, why, why, why are they taking people's bodies and crushing them down to half size? And,

And then Reggie suggests, well, we got to catch the tall man and drive a stake through his heart. I don't know why they think that would work. And then Mike is incredulous. He's like, how do you think we could drive a stake through his heart? That mother is strong. Many times in this movie, people use the word mother as a general noun to refer to a person or a thing. Yeah. Yeah.

It works so nicely with Mike here, though, because it's like Mike's talking tough. He's talking like he thinks an adult should be talking in this situation. I love it. Okay, well, we're heading into the final sequence here. So I think Reggie and Jody are going to go investigate the funeral home again, and they're going to make Mike stay at Sally's, an antique store. I think these are characters who we should have met before, but we haven't actually. Maybe that got cut.

The antique store is a nice sequence, though, because it's just Mike wandering around looking at strange things in an antique store. And we get some fabulous percussion, like all the gongs and bells. It's a scene that, yeah, without the music, I guess it might be a little boring. But with the music, it's really cool and creepy. Yeah. And he just wanders around looking at things until he finds an old photograph of the tall man in the 19th century driving a horse-drawn carriage. Hmm.

And then from here, he's like, you must take me home immediately. I don't know what this changes. Why does that mean? He must leave. Your guess is as good as mine. Yeah. Didn't they already know that the tall man was other world? Like, why would he be that surprised? I don't know.

So they're driving around and the car gets attacked by the creatures again. And then, let's see, Mike goes back home and then Jody locks Mike in his bedroom where he's like, I'm going to go to the funeral home. You have to stay here. And then we get one of the moments that actually stuck in my mind the most from when I first saw this movie. It is when

Mike comes up with a system to escape being locked in his room, and it is an improvised explosive device that he makes out of a shotgun shell, a hammer, a tack, and some tape. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely do not do this at home. Yeah. So he like, yeah, he puts a tack in the back of a shotgun shell and then tapes it to the end of a hammer and then like, and then swings it at the door. And this makes the shell explode and it shoots its shot through the door. And then he's able to reach through and, and open up the knob or dislodge a screwdriver. I think that Jody jammed in there to prevent the door from opening. Um,

I was trying to figure out would this technique actually work? I have no idea. All I could find was people doing forum posts on it. So can't vouch for this at all, but people on the forum posts, some people were saying, yeah, it seems like this would work except the shot would not explode, you know, going straight forward. Like it would, if it were coming out the barrel of a shotgun, it would explode in all directions because of the lack of a barrel.

Please do not try this out. We are not asking anybody to experiment and create and generate an answer on this. Do not attempt. But it was all for nothing, really, because Mike gets out and then immediately runs into Angus Scrimm ambush at the door. Angus Scrimm's like, I've been waiting for you. So he takes him.

Tall man takes him to the funeral home where he escapes a hearse by shooting out a window. Meanwhile, Jody's already there. We get a bunch of action. There's like the, the ball attacks again and we get ball cam. Jody comes to the rescue with a shotgun and blows up the ball. And, and,

Now they got to check out the scary door. So they're creeping over to the scary door that we saw the blonde girl open earlier. She sees the light and then she screams. Yeah. And this is the point in the film where if you've never seen it before, you might wonder, like, how do they keep it going? How do they up the ante here? But they do. Like, the weirdness intensifies in this scene. Well, first of all, we get jump scare Reggie. Reggie just comes up from behind them.

Yeah. He's like, Hey. And they're like, Oh, we thought you were dead, but no, he's good. And he reveals that he found Sally and Susie and some other people in there and they're not dead. They're all okay. And he's like, yeah, I snuck him out a window. So just a whole other story was happening while we were watching the characters. We barely knew are also now safe. So don't worry about it. They're fine. Yeah.

So, okay, they want to go in the room. They open up the door and inside the room is full of these black barrels with little glass windows on them. Huh? What's going on there? We get a loud hum. And then also in the room with the black barrels, there is some weird furniture. There are just these two metal prongs coming up from the floor.

And they look inside the barrels and they're like, oh, it's those Necro Dwarves. There they are. So they're being created in these barrels, I guess. Yeah, or at least created and then like pickled in the barrel, finished in the barrel or stored in the barrel for transit. I don't know. And then Mike realizes that the two metal prongs coming up from the floor are actually a trans-dimensional portal.

And he reaches his hand through and then he falls entirely through and sees what's on the other side. And it is a desert planet made of just like stones and gravel with a red sky where all of the necro dwarves are lined up in a row going all the way to the horizon as if they're like carrying stuff.

And then Jody and Reggie save Mike. They pull him out from the portal and they put everything together. They figure out, aha, the tall man is using the human corpses as alien slave labor on another planet. But because of that planet's gravity and I guess atmospheric pressure or heat, they have to be crushed down to a smaller size so they can work there.

As zombies. Yeah, I absolutely love this. This is a marvelous reveal. Like there's another world out there, some sort of giant high gravity world where crushed down necro dwarves are being sent to serve as labor. And also, I don't know if they ever really draw this line or not, but I wonder if that's also why the tall man is so tall. Because he comes from one of these worlds with higher gravity. He comes from a lower gravity world and it like makes him taller somehow. I don't know. Huh.

Huh. Okay. Well, anyway, there's a bunch of fighting after this. The lights go out and then Jody and Mike end up chasing around with some of the creatures. Reggie is left behind in the room and there's a great moment where Reggie thinks back to the tuning fork as he is looking at the two metal prongs coming up from the floor and he figures out how to do something to them.

He puts his hands on the prongs like he did with his fingers on the tuning fork earlier, and that does something. It opens a portal, and then all the wind starts rushing, and he almost gets sucked in. It's a great sequence, and I like how it connects to that moment with the tuning fork earlier in the film. He's like, this is it. I know what this is. I mean, I don't really know what this is, but I know the basic...

relationship here. I bet if I reach out with both hands and I stop the vibrations, I'm going to close this portal. Another trivia thing I saw alleged on the internet is that the idea to connect that to the tuning fork and everything was an idea that came from Susan, who was Reggie Bannister's wife.

Well, it was a great idea. So Reggie makes it outside. He sees the lady in lavender. I think he does not know, like the audience does, that she is actually Angus Grimm. So he goes and tries to help her, but he gets stabbed. And there's general wind and chaos. There's the tall man standing over Reggie with a knife. And Reggie apparently dies. And then we get the final showdown where Jody and Mike escape. And Jody's like, this is so out of nowhere. Like,

not earned at all. Jody's like, there's an old mine shaft up by singer's Creek, thousands of feet down. We just got to find a way to get him up there. And so he sends Mike into, into the house to get ammo. And Jody says, he's going to go remove warning signs from around the mine shaft. Um, but I don't know why they'd send Mike into the house. Cause don't they already know that the tall man knows that's where they live. I don't know.

Tall man shows up in a tax mic in the house. You know, he says, boy, you play a good game boy, but now the time is finished.

And so they run around chasing and Mike's repeating the litany against fear, except not really. Instead, he's just saying, don't fear. And they succeed. They lure the tall man into the mine shaft, which does not look like a mine shaft at all. It looks like somebody dug a square shaped hole in the dirt. Yeah, this is the one moment in the film where I feel like the effects feel a little bit shoddy.

especially when the boulders roll in to fill up the pit after they dropped the tall man down there. It's not a deal breaker for the movie or anything, but, um, but yeah, everything else feels fresh and believable. And this is a little like, you can see the seams, you can see the tarp, uh, there in that sequence. And I was like, are they going to wake up and it's all a dream? And you know what happens? The next thing Mike wakes up as if from a dream. And then Mike and Reggie are hanging out next to a roaring fire, uh,

they're talking about how Jody died. Huh? It's like the, like, so instead of Reggie dying, they're saying Jody died. And then they show Mike visiting Jody's grave. And then Reggie's like, I'm going to take care of you, Mike. And then Reggie starts play. He's like, let's go on a road trip. You know, we'll leave when the sun comes up, you go pack your bags. And Reggie sits there by the fire and starts to play.

to play that song sitting here at midnight again. And it is violently dissonant with the non-diegetic soundtrack that's playing at the same time. It sounds horrible. And then up in Mike's room, the tall man appears in a mirror and he's like, boy, and then there's a jump scare and pulls him into the mirror. And that's the end of the movie. I have no idea how to make sense of any of that. It does, does not connect at all. Yeah. I don't know. Uh, dreams within dreams or, uh,

and images caused by traumas and losses because it's like we start off with a growing understanding that Mike has lost both his parents. And then here at the end, we get this revelation that he's lost his brother and that the only parental figure left in his life is Reggie. And yeah, it's... I don't know. It's...

it's hard to connect all these things together. And yet everything shapes up in a way where you can, you kind of buy it. You're like, there's a pattern here. I just can't quite piece it together. But if I watch it enough times, maybe it'll begin to sink in. I have a question about the theory of this movie.

Why is the tall man doing murders at all? Because we discover in the end that his goal is to create Jawa zombies to work for him on this other planet. And he does that just with human corpses. So he just needs corpses. But he already operates a funeral parlor.

So why is he going out of his way to, to do murders? Like, I guess it would suggest that like at the normal rate of natural death, he is not getting enough bodies to do what he needs to do. I guess so. Yeah. Like in, in the second movie, they, they add this nice detail where the, the tall man moves around from town to town and he leaves just decimated, uh,

funeral homes and decimated graveyards in his wake. Like all the bodies get claimed and turned into dwarves and sent to this other world.

So, yeah, maybe he just like juices the numbers a little bit more. It's like, well, today I could get just 30 dwarves from raiding the cemeteries and, you know, getting some natural deaths rolling in. But I could also juice it a little bit and maybe kill a couple people on the side. Yeah. That's just more profits for me. He's trying to hit those Q4 numbers. Yeah. I guess also it's like people who, in some cases, there's a sense of like people who interfere with the...

the process here with the scheme. They get killed and turned into zombies, because why waste a good body when you could turn that into a dwarf as well? But yeah, other times, like he's turning into this woman to go out and clearly lure people to the cemetery for death. But I guess that's ultimately more about this connection between sex and death in Mike's mind. But

But what if he goes to the trouble of doing that and then the person's family decides that they want that person buried somewhere else? Oh, I don't think the tall man would stand for that. He's got to use mafia tactics on grieving families to make sure he gets all of the bodies. I guess so. But it's like a small town. Like how many rival... I mean, he's probably put the rival groups out of business.

Like you're not going to operate a funeral home in competition with the tall man. I guess so. Rob, this has got to be one of our longest episodes ever. We must cap it here. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll go ahead and cap it off here. But yeah, Phantasm. It's a lot of fun. It's widely available in all formats. But the Phantasm remastered Blu-ray or digital release is certainly where you want to go for this one. I think I streamed the remastered version via Prime, but you can, again, find this film just about anywhere. And yeah, it's a load of fun. It's a great Halloween viewing choice.

All right, we'll be back next Friday with more Weird House Cinema calibrated for your seasonal Halloween needs. In the meantime, we'll remind you that we are primarily a science podcast with our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

On Mondays, we do Listener Mail. On Wednesdays, we do a short form artifact or monster fact. On Fridays, we do Weird House Cinema. If you're interested in seeing what movies we've covered in the past, there are two places you can go. You can go to SubmutedMusic.com. That's my blog where I just do some very casual blog posts about these movies that we watch. But also, if you use Letterboxd, that's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D.com, we are on there as Weird House Cinema.

You will find our profile there and you'll find a list of all the movies we've covered on the show. And sometimes there'll be a little hint or a little spoiler of what the next film will be. Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your mind dot com.

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