Phantasm is a 1979 American supernatural horror film directed, written, photographed, and edited by Don Coscarelli, and stars A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Kathy Lester, and Angus Scrimm. The first installment of the Phantasm franchise, the film follows Mike, a teenager in a small Oregon town who, along with his older brother Jody and family friend Reggie, investigates strange goings-on at the local funeral home, which is operated by a mysterious mortician known as "the Tall Man".
Coscarelli based Phantasm on a nightmare he had as a teenager, which he developed into a rough screenplay. The film was a fully independent production, financed by Coscarelli, his father, and local investors, and with a cast and crew made up mostly of amateurs and aspiring professionals. The film was shot over the course of a year, mainly in and around Chatsworth, California. Coscarelli continued to alter and develop the screenplay throughout the filming process. A months-long post-production followed, during which the film underwent significant editing.
Avco Embassy Pictures acquired Phantasm for theatrical distribution in the United States, premiering it in Los Angeles in the spring of 1979. Following its expanded theatrical release, the film went on to become a box office hit, with an international gross of $22 million. It was met with mixed reviews from film critics, though it garnered praise for its visual elements and unique screenplay. In the years since its original release, it has become a cult film with a devoted following. It has appeared on several critics' lists of the best horror films and has been cited as a significant influence on the horror film genre. Film scholars have noted Phantasm for its surrealistic qualities and prominent themes of mourning, loss, and sibling relationships.
In 2015, the film underwent restoration supervised by Coscarelli and the production company Bad Robot, whose co-founder J. J. Abrams is an outspoken fan of the film. The restored version of the film was given a limited theatrical release in 2016, followed by several Blu-ray releases in the United States and United Kingdom.
Plot While having sex with a woman in Morningside Cemetery, a young man named Tommy is stabbed to death by the woman, who is revealed to be the local mortician, in supernatural disguise as "The Lady in Lavender". At the funeral, Tommy's friends, Jody Pearson and Reggie, state they believe he died by suicide. Jody's 13-year-old brother Mike secretly observes the funeral and sees the mortician—dubbed "The Tall Man"—placing Tommy's heavy coffin, with seemingly little effort, back into the hearse instead of completing the burial. Mike visits a local fortune teller and tells her what he saw. She has him stick his hand in a box, and at first, something seems to grab it, but then he removes it unharmed after being told not to be afraid.
Later, Jody is seduced by the Lady in Lavender and taken to the cemetery to have sex. However, they are interrupted by Mike, who has been following Jody and has been driven out of his hiding place by a short, hooded figure. Mike tries to tell Jody about the hooded figure, but Jody dismisses him. Inside the mausoleum, Mike is chased by a flying silver sphere and accosted by a caretaker, but escapes when the sphere kills the caretaker. Mike then flees the Tall Man and slams a door to escape; the Tall Man's fingers get caught and cut off, but continue to move, dripping yellow ichor. Taking one of the fingers with him, Mike escapes the mausoleum.
The still-moving finger is enough to convince Jody about Mike's stories. Before Jody can bring the finger to the sheriff, it transforms into a flying insect. Reggie, who witnesses the insect attack them, joins the brothers in their suspicions. Jody goes to the cemetery alone but is chased away by dwarves and a seemingly driverless hearse. He is rescued by Mike in Jody's Plymouth Barracuda. Running the hearse off the road, they discover that it was driven by one of the hooded figures, a re-animated and shrunken Tommy, whom they hide in Reggie's ice cream truck.
Reggie and Jody resolve to defeat the Tall Man, while Mike is hidden at an antique store owned by Jody's friends Sally and Sue. There, Mike discovers an old photograph of the Tall Man and insists on being taken home. On the way, Mike, Sally, and Sue come across the overturned ice cream truck. They are attacked by a mob of hooded dwarves. Mike manages to escape, presuming the girls and Reggie are dead.
Jody locks Mike in his bedroom for safety and goes to the mausoleum to kill the Tall Man. Mike escapes, but runs into the Tall Man, who is waiting for him outside his front door. He kidnaps Mike in a hearse, but Mike escapes and causes the hearse to strike a pole and explode. Looking for Jody in the mausoleum, Mike is targeted by the silver sphere until Jody destroys it with a shotgun. Mike and Jody are reunited with Reggie, and together they enter a brightly lit room filled with canisters containing more dwarves. Mike catches a brief glimpse through an interplanetary portal or wormhole, seeing a red, hot world where the dwarves are toiling as slaves.
A sudden power outage separates the trio. Left alone in the room, Reggie activates the portal, creating a powerful vacuum from which he narrowly escapes. In the ensuing storm, Reggie is stabbed by the Lady in Lavender while Jody and Mike flee, and the mausoleum vanishes. Jody devises a plan to trap the Tall Man in an abandoned mine shaft. The Tall Man attacks Mike at home and chases him outside, eventually falling into the mine shaft where he is buried under an avalanche of rocks triggered by Jody.
Mike then wakes up in his bed, still worried about the Tall Man. Reggie, still alive, says that Jody died in a car wreck the week before; everything Mike experienced thus far was a grief-induced nightmare. Promising to look after Mike, Reggie proposes a road trip. When Mike enters his bedroom to pack, the Tall Man appears, and hands crash through the bedroom mirror, pulling Mike inside.
Cast
Themes Film scholar John Kenneth Muir interprets Phantasm as being about mourning and death. The protagonist, Mike, is grieving the death of his parents and is on the cusp of young adulthood. The imagery alternates between the mundane and the surreal, blurring the lines between reality and nightmare while exploring the broader themes of confronting death, grief, and coming of age.
Many of the film's fans are adolescent boys or men who saw it during adolescence. According to star Angus Scrimm, the film "gives expression to all their insecurities and fears". Scrimm states that the theme of loss and how, by fantasizing about death, the young protagonist Mike Pearson deals with the deaths in his family drives the story. Don Coscarelli identifies it as a "predominantly male story" to which young teens respond. Scrimm explains the popularity of the film as fans responding to themes of death, and the Tall Man himself represents death. Muir describes the Tall Man as embodying childhood fears of adults and states that the Tall Man wins in the end because dreams are the only place in which death can be defeated. American views of death are another theme, of which Coscarelli said:
Dreams and surrealism are also important elements of Phantasm. In Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film, author David J. Hogan describes the film as "very much like a dream. It provocatively bends the rules of the real world as it rushes to meet horror after horror." Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle compares Phantasm to the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Luis Buñuel in terms of strangeness. Savlov describes the film as existentialist horror and "a truly bizarre mix of outlandish horror, cheapo gore, and psychological mindgames that purposefully blur the line between waking and dreaming." Gina McIntyre of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as surreal, creepy, and idiosyncratic. Muir writes that Phantasm "purposely inhabits the half-understood sphere of dreams" and takes place in the imagination of a disturbed boy.
Alex DiVincenzo, writing for Bloody Disgusting in a 2024 retrospective on the film, summarized that the film is "ultimately about Mike coming to terms with the passing of Jody, portrayed as the cool older sibling every adolescent wishes they had. Mike confronts his fear by dreaming up a final adventure with his dearly departed brother, in which they defeat death itself, represented by The Tall Man. Upon doing so, he’s awakened to the harsh reality that Jody died in a car accident, allowing Mike to reach the final stage of grief: acceptance."
Production Development Most of the ideas for Phantasm were developed by Coscarelli from a nightmare he had as a teenager, in which he was chased down a long corridor by a flying chrome sphere which he feared would drill his brain out. After seeing the audience reaction to jump scares in Kenny & Company, Coscarelli, who was the writer and director for the film, decided to do a horror film as his next project. His previous films had not performed well, and he heard that horror films were always successful; branching into horror allowed him to combine his childhood love of the genre with better business prospects. The original idea was inspired by Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Coscarelli had initially sought to adapt the story into a film, but the license had already been sold. The theme of a young boy's difficulty convincing adults of his fears was influenced by Invaders from Mars (1953). Dario Argento's Suspiria (1977) and its lack of explanations was another influence on Coscarelli. The soundtrack was influenced by Goblin and Mike Oldfield. The synthesizers used for the film were so primitive that it was often difficult to reproduce the same sound twice. When writing the film's conclusion, Coscarelli intentionally wanted to shock audiences and "send people out of the theater with a bang."
Casting Coscarelli cast the film using actors who had appeared in his previous work, often writing the parts exclusively for them. Michael Baldwin's character of Mike Pearson was written specifically for him after Baldwin appeared in a minor role in Coscarelli's second feature, Kenny & Company (1976). Coscarelli attributes the enduring popularity of the film to young audiences who responded to the character of Mike and his adventures throughout the film.
After being intimidated by Scrimm on the set of a previous film, Jim the World's Greatest (1976), Coscarelli decided that Scrimm would make a great villain and cast him as the Tall Man. Initially, Scrimm had little input on the character, but began contributing to the character's construction after Coscarelli began to trust his instincts. Scrimm was outfitted in lifts and a suit too small for him in order to make him seem even taller and skinnier. Coscarelli says of Scrimm: "I really didn't have any idea that he would take it to the level that he did. ... I could see it was going to be a very powerful character."
Coscarelli based the character of Reggie on his friend Reggie Bannister, for whom the role was also written. Reggie was designed to be an everyman, a loyal friend, and serve as comic relief in the film.
The Tall Man character also appears in the shapeshifting form of the Lady in Lavender, a female figure he embodies to seduce and kill Tommy, Jody's friend. In this role, Coscarelli cast Kathy Lester, with Laura Mann appearing as Lester's double, credited as Double Lavender.
Filming