Violence/Gore: Does yellow alien ooze count? If so, then watching the Tall Man lose some fingers and spew goo might qualify. But surely the show-stopper is the silver sphere attack on the caretaker. And watch for a - dare I say - realistic touch at the end of that scene, when the caretaker falls to the ground and apparently loses control of a little more than just his blood.

Sex/Nudity: There are a couple completely unappealing topless scenes, especially if you consider that the lady in lavender is apparently the Tall Man…ugh.

Best Line: “Boyyyyyy!” (This was too easy)

Score:

Forget for a moment that this film went on to spawn three sequels (and counting), and that it led to further elaboration on the history of the Tall Man (although not much and all of it ambiguous). Just think of it as a one-off experience, which indeed it was when it first came out. In that case, evaluating it purely on its own terms, it’s one of the most effective dramatizations of a grief-induced nightmare ever made. Nothing that happens in the movie is necessarily real, but all of it is certainly creepy and a superb example of low-budget horror cinema.

By picking through the clues strewn throughout the movie, we can gather that Mike’s older brother Jody has just died. Suffering from the immense loss, Mike descends into a convoluted series of feverish dreams that mix elements evidently drawn from reality - the graveside service, the funeral parlor, life with Jody and their friend Reggie before the accident - and throws in a few bizarre additions - the dwarves, the dimensional gateway, the flying bug-thing - to create a dark landscape of the mind in which Mike and the audience are trapped. It’s a nifty piece of work when interpreted in that light, but even if you want to watch it as a straight-forward (if surreal) story about an alien posing as a funeral director and ensnaring a local boy in a web of intrigue and mind-bending horror - and who wouldn’t when you put it that way? - then by all means feel free. It works on both levels. But really - crushing down and re-animating human corpses, canning them, and then sending them through a dimensional rip in order to provide slave labor for a distant desert world? Doesn’t really sound too cost effective, does it? And don’t you love how quickly our heroes just accept the sheer insanity of the premise with little more than a shrug?

The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm, is one of those men whose physical presence is so innately unsettling that he could only have been put on this Earth to become one of our undying icons of sheer terror. The rest of the cast tries very hard, but it may be to Scrimm’s benefit that he has little dialogue and only has to glower menacingly. The others have to tackle actually speaking, and occasionally their acting is rough around the edges. But earnestness counts, and everyone is doing their best to be “in the moment.”

While the acting may not be top-notch, what makes this movie a classic is its suitably languid pace and visual style, enveloping you in the nightmare world of the Tall Man while one of the eeriest musical scores ever written chills your very bones. The otherworldly hum of the gateway hidden in the funeral parlor is also cause for goose bumps, and there are numerous inexplicable bits and pieces that enhance the dreamscape, like the Jawa-esque dwarf zombies and the cackling psychic lady in shades. But surely the most horrific sequence ever filmed features Jody and Reggie in an interminably long “jam session” that involves the two ‘musicians’ using guitars to produce a sound that even the Tall Man might find soul-numbing. Thankfully, the sequels don’t bother to delve too deeply into this part of their sad little lives.

Despite its flaws, PHANTASM is an indispensable example of modern horror with tableaux that stay with you forever, particularly if you saw it first as a child. Could there be anything more terrifying than the sight of the Tall Man standing menacingly at the end of a long corridor with the whine of a silver sphere close behind? After all, you can run all you like, but the game is over boy, and now you die!

DVD Extras: A really great package here, celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary at the time of the DVD release in 1999. The feature-length audio commentary by creator Don Coscarelli and all three lead actors is one of those laid-back reunion experiences that make a ‘commentrak’ worthwhile. While fans would later see a lot of chopped footage from this movie in the fourth installment, there’s plenty deleted material here to examine, including a sequence that reveals what happens when you spray the Tall Man with cold fire extinguisher foam (which would also up the gore quotient if it had been left in). There’s an extensive collection of behind-the-scenes footage with commentary by Coscarelli and Reggie Bannister, trailers, TV and radio spots ("If this one doesn’t scare you, you’re already dead"), tons and tons of stills - does anybody ever really look at that stuff? - and much more. Perhaps most interesting from a fan perspective, however, will be the very strange Australian promo film that Scrimm performs partly in character; the 1979 interview on some godforsaken local public access show with Coscarelli and Scrimm - again hamming it up partly in character - talking with a very ’70s mustachioed interviewer about the movie and the nature of horror film-making; and finally the raw video footage of a Fangoria-sponsored convention showcasing Scrimm entertaining fans with a very uncomfortable yet appropriately surreal act in which he slips in and out of the Tall Man persona and recites all of his lines from the first two films verbatim. He must not get out much. And if you want to subject friends to the kind of nightmare that Mike is having in this movie, have them listen to the disco version of the theme tune, or play them the complete 1995 recording of Bill “Jody” Thornbury’s composition, “Sittin’ Here at Midnight.” Yup, the jam session song…brr.

ATB