Blu-ray Review: “Phantasm” Has Never Looked So Good

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A teenage boy and his friends face off against a mysterious grave robber known only as the Tall Man, who keeps a lethal arsenal of terrible weapons with him.

“Phantasm” is one of those movies that had a big impact on me as a child. For years, before we had a VCR, I would frequent our local video store in Dublin and just browse the multitude of VHS video box covers, specifically the horror titles. At 10 years of age, horror interested me, and I think a lot of it was the fact that the video covers showed some pretty creepy monsters and images that stayed with me for a long time. The original artwork for “Phantasm,” which you can see here, intrigued me until a few years later when we finally bought our very first VCR player and I was finally able to see what the artwork on the video box represented. “Phantasm” was released in 1979, one year after John Carpenter’s classic “Halloween” and a year before Sean S. Cunningham’s “Friday the 13th,” so it many ways, it ended up in a sort of limbo, never achieving the fame and cult status that Carpenter and Cunningham’s movies would go on to achieve.

But it does have a cult following and with four sequels to boast, the latest, “Phantasm: Ravager,” coming out on Blu-ray and DVD the same day “Phantasm Remastered” does, Tuesday, December 6th, one fan in particular, J.J. Abrams, helped director Don Coscarelli bring his movie to a new generation. In interviews promoting the new release of “Phantasm Remastered,” Abrams stated that he had been a fan of the film since he was a kid and through his company, Bad Robot, he and his crew painstakingly restored the movie to ultra-high-definition 4K resolution, the highest in the industry right now. And it shows. For generations, “Phantasm” was only ever available on VHS and a standard DVD release but in watching the remastered version, it looks as though it could have been made yesterday, not way back in 1979. The images are crystal clear and for any fans of the series, especially the first one, this is most certainly a must-have.

“Phantasm” takes place in a sleepy little Oregon town. After the death of their parents, Jody (Bill Thornbury) takes it upon himself to look after his younger brother Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) the best he can. Along with their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister), the local ice-cream man, they discover strange goings-on at the local Morningside Cemetery and Mortuary after a friend of theirs mysteriously dies on the premises. They quickly realize that the local mortician, called the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), is responsible for the deaths of many of the local townspeople and after their funerals, when family and friends have left, he then shrinks them down to dwarf size and reanimates them. The trio discover a room inside the mausoleum with a gateway to another dimension, where the dwarves are used as slaves. With the Tall Man and his minions in hot pursuit, including Sentinel Spheres, flying metallic silver orbs that employ an arsenal of weapons including drills, blades and lasers, our heroes must try and lead the Tall Man to a local abandoned mine shaft where they plan to trap him inside forever.

Watching “Phantasm” again for the first time in years, brought back many childhood and teenage memories but I also realized just how little blood there is in the movie. Director Don Coscarelli, like John Carpenter at the time, relied more on atmosphere and ambience than an over-abundance of blood and guts, something more and more horror films began to incorporate. While the story herein is unsubstantial, Coscarelli’s emphasis is squarely on tone and mood, including some genuinely creepy locales and set-pieces. The imagery throughout the movie is enough to give newbies nightmares and while the film is somewhat dated, seeing the Sentinel Spheres zoom down the mausoleum corridors for the first time, will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Well Go USA have done a tremendous job restoring “Phantasm” to a new level of HD and for any diehard fans, like I stated earlier, this is a must have. Personally, “Phantasm II” is my favorite as it had the backing of a major studio, Universal Pictures, therefore it had a bigger budget, and better special effects but when the movie didn’t perform very well at the box office, Coscarelli was forced to make parts 3, 4 and 5, just like he had made the first one, independently. Highly recommended.

Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, December 6th