This review brought to you by the 2016 Beyond Fest in Los Angeles. A super fun festival that brings both old and new horror and sci-fi features to the big screen. ALSO SPOILERS FOR A MOVIE FROM 1978.
PHANTASM
A Nightmare on Elm Street has the allure of suspicion when it comes to whether or not the teenage characters are actually awake or sleeping. Like a well written joke, the dream sequences all rely on a hard punch, the kind of moment that will either shock the character awake or kill them where they lay. Coming out of Phantasm, a film that predates Elm Street by six years, the comparison was inevitable if not completely valid. The dreamy quality of Phantasm is much more surreal, the entire movie is an on-going waking dream where the rules and logic are never truly established in the same way. The incoherence of the film, particularly with the closing moments, makes it not nearly as satisfying as when Nancy Thompson deduces that the power to defeat Freddy relies only in herself and her believing in him.
But what Phantasm lacks in any sense, it makes up for with surrealism and style (and a great soundtrack). The movie doesn’t verge so far on the spectrum into the realm of Suspiria for example, where the visual and audio style characterizes the film more than the plot and characters, but Phantasm has its own elements of style over substance imagery; unusual sets and creatures, interesting colors, creative cinematography, and haunting music. This makes sense considering the Argento classic was one of the influences for writer, producer, director, editor, and accountant Don Coscarelli. His film even has likable and memorable characters.
If the likes of Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers are the A-Squad of iconic horror characters/franchises, then Phantasm is definitely C-Squad distinguished by its team captain Angus Scrimm (RIP) aka The Tall Man. The coherence of how this character works doesn’t make sense, a sentiment that’s going to come up a lot, but his presence regardless is none the less intimidating and eventually dreadful. The Tall Man is the obsession of the film’s young protagonist Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) a thirteen year-old kid with surfer’s hair and big beautiful blue eyes, who has an increasing fear of being left behind by his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) after their parents are killed in an accident. He begins to suspect something isn’t quite right with the Tall Man who works at the Morningside Mortuary, which isn’t helped when the Tall Man chases after him and haunts his nightmares.
Any time Mike and The Tall Man share a scene is when the movie is at its most bizarre and engaging. Mike, just a kid but still weary and intuitive of darker elements around him, is curious and brave even though he internally is terrified of being alone. The presence of the Tall Man at first is just boyish fascination, the kind of mistrust of older authoritative figures any young person has to some degree, but the supernatural elements pick up rather quickly and Mike isn’t stupid enough to sit around and be devoured by the creepy Jawa-like monsters that seem to be stalking him. The contrast of Mike and the Tall Man works both thematically and visually. There’s Mike who is young and innocent but haunted by maturity he wasn’t prepared for versus the old Tall Man, who is threatening and removed from normal behavior that would suggest a kind of other-worldly presence. Arguably the most memorable scene in the movie involves Mike waking up in his bed as the Tall Man looms over watching him, which cements this never-ending pursuit to defeat one another.
There are a few themes to go off of here when considering Mike and the Tall Man’s relationship; young and old, life and death, dreams and nightmares, and the most basic: good and evil. Arguably, the movie focuses on the imagination of one boy bleeding into reality when he cannot cope with the death that surrounds his family. The torment of knowing that death is around any corner and is going to eventually take you is truly played off in the film’s final moments when arms break out of a mirror to drag Mike into an infinite space of blackness while the Tall Man watches. There’s a turning point in the film when Mike knows his inevitable doom with the Tall Man will be coming, he says so as much in his last conversation with Reggie (Reggie Bannister). The question is, when does this turning point happen? Did it happen within the movie or did it previously happen with his parent’s deaths, or more specifically, when Jody died? (The problem here of course being: when the hell did Jody die?)
For a movie made on a tight budget of 300,000 dollars, the movie is ambitious and makes great use of shadows and darkness. In all sincerity, Mike’s eyes really stand out in the scenes where he’s creeping around in the dark, bringing a kind of subtle lightness and innocence to the darkness that surrounds him. It’s clear that they reused most of the exterior shots repeatedly and the actors themselves are no-names who barely did any work outside of this series, but regardless for the structural flaws the movie has stuck with me for several days since watching it. It’s not the best of its kind, but it’s worth watching.
PHANTASM: RAVAGER
So this film was shown as a double-feature with the original Phantasm and is acting as the film’s fifth and probably final film (seeing as Angus Scrimm passed away in January). Allow me to be much more informal now, because there’s a huge gap of information I’m missing when talking about this fifth film. This was my first time seeing either movie on Saturday, which means I have no knowledge of the movies in between, (I mean I looked them up but I haven’t watched them). What was fascinating was to see how this series took not quite an 180 degree turn from a small budget horror film that had a lot of interesting ideas and creative visuals that needed to be properly buffed out and polished, to a schlock-fest. If you’re at all familiar with these movies you’ll note above I barely mention Reggie or the sphere balls or the dwarves and any of the silly humor and violence that accompanied the first and subsequent films. That’s not because I didn’t like those things about the first film, but rather they were ornaments to a much darker and thematically interesting story that the first movie tried to tell and didn’t stick the landing. But all the schlockier things are played at full force in Ravager, including the four-barrel shotgun (which is from part 2).
To be perfectly honest, I almost walked out of this movie for a few reasons. First and foremost it was disappointing to see how the horror elements of the original movie were dropped for a sillier and brighter story, even though the movie itself is dealing with things like the end of the world and dementia. The budget of the first movie as I said didn’t show really, whereas the budget here is all on the screen. I imagine the audience for a Phantasm sequel isn’t on par with other horror franchises, and I can see how the series is alienating with it’s confusing narrative and ridiculousness so investing a lot of money into it particularly after 3 sequels seems redundant. But the most frustrating thing is mostly how the movie is just fan service that spins its wheels for 90+ minutes if that. It’s just Reggie wants to find Mike, he runs into the Tall Man, hops back and forth between realities, is this all a dream?, sphere ball to the face, repeat. Again, because I was not familiar with the other movies and I was just coming off of the first, the jarring switch was more of a let down than anything. I didn’t hate the movie, and I was happy they brought back A. Michael Baldwin to join Reggie Bannister (they clearly had fun), but the problems of the franchise are painted plainly on the walls here. There’s no cohesion and not really an effort to make anything make sense, within the context of Ravager‘s narrative or within the entire series. That’s upsetting to me to see that for whatever reason the series doesn’t live up to the potential of the first film. I’m going to make an effort to watch the other three films, but dare I say maybe this is one of those that would suffice with a rebooting of sorts.