Tag: Phantasm

Phantasm (1979)

DAY 27, PHANTASM

PHANTASM (1979) Three-and-a-half stars
Child protagonists have been used to great effect in literature and films.

In the world of film, we’ve had all the Disney films, all the Hayao Miyazaki films, THE WIZARD OF OZ, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, FORBIDDEN GAMES, THE 400 BLOWS, WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, PAN’S LABYRINTH, and Harry Potter, just to name a few greats.

We can add Don Coscarelli’s low-budget horror film PHANTASM (estimated at $300,000) to that distinguished list and I don’t know if a child protoganist has ever been as resourceful or such a relentless little fighter as the 13-year-old Mike (A. Michael Baldwin).

He’s our entry point into the strange and bizarre world created by Coscarelli, who not only directed but wrote, photographed, and edited this little labor of love.

Mike’s not a passive observer reluctantly drawn into the action, rather his innate curiosity gets the best of him.

Mike fears that his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) will leave him at any moment and there’s one rather poignant scene when Mike follows Jody in medium long shot. Mike’s always following Jody and this bothers Jody, who’s considering hitting the road for a while and leaving Mike in the care of their Aunt Belle.

Mike and Jody’s parents died two years before the events in PHANTASM.

Mike and Jody are joined by Reggie (Reggie Bannister), a family friend and an ice cream vendor. Their family and friends seem to be dropping left and right.

They go up against The Tall Man (Angus Schrimm) and I’ll let the “Slender Man Connection Wiki” describe him, “The Tall Man is the primary antagonist of the PHANTASM horror film series and one of the main influences on the Slender Man mythos. Originally a human known as Jebediah Morningside, the Tall Man was a mysterious, malevolent entity disguised as a mortician, who would rob graveyards of their corpses to reanimate them into his vast interdimensional army.”

Both Jody and Reggie are reluctant to believe Michael and his overactive imagination, but boy oh boy are they believers well before the end of PHANTASM.

The Tall Man’s minions include dwarfs who have a nice little back story and he also dispatches flying metallic spheres known as the Sentinel Sphere or the Flying Death Sphere or Brain Suckers. They are one of the most nifty death devices in any horror movie, and every PHANTASM movie includes at least a couple sphere scenes.

The spheres are eight inches tall and 50 pounds, and they fly rapidly through the air relentlessly tracking their potential victims.

Apparently, they contain the shrunken brains of The Tall Man’s victims and The Tall Man controls the spheres with his mind.

The spheres have drills, dual blades, saws, telescopes, explosives, and spikes at their disposal and the golden spheres (that originate from The Tall Man’s body) have tri-blades, lasers, and dual saws. The spheres drain the victims of all their blood.

The spheres do have three weaknesses: extremely cold temperatures, direct hits with a projectile weapon (Jody shotgun blasts one in PHANTASM), and the frequency emitted by a tuning fork. The golden spheres are tougher to kill.

Basically, we have three solid protagonists who take us from the beginning to the end of the picture, one especially malevolent antagonist, and one ripped, twisted instrument of death. What else do we need?

Unfortunately, some viewers have complained about the story.

However, I think the title PHANTASM itself clues the viewer in to the basic nature of the plot. Phantasm means “a figment of the imagination or disordered mind.”

Coscarelli’s imagination created some memorable moments in the history of horror.
For example, Mike’s snooping around one night at The Tall Man’s lair and he survives his first encounter with a sphere, but one of The Tall Man’s henchmen does not.

Then, Mike meets The Tall Man up close and personal for the first time.

The Tall Man chases Mike down the corridors of terror and Mike eventually traps The Tall Man’s hand in a heavy door. This affords Mike the opportunity to cut off The Tall Man’s fingers. The Tall Man emits a ghastly, inhuman sound and yellow blood (embalming fluid) shoots out from the severed fingers on the floor.

Mike takes one of the still-moving fingers and puts the evidence in a box to convince the skeptical thus far Jody.

Jody (Thornbury) plays his reaction to the finger just perfectly, and it’s a great moment of course when the older brother finally believes the younger brother.

As they’re about to take their evidence to the authorities, that yellow finger transforms into a monstrous bug and it attacks the brothers.

I live for moments and scenes like that.

At one point, The Tall Man, in a voiceover, tells Mike, “You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die.”

Now, if you’re nice to me and ask me politely, I’ll do my best Tall Man impression and recite that dialogue for you.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

KILLER KLOWNS

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988) Three-and-a-half stars
Sociologists would undoubtedly have a field day unpacking why KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE retains cult classic status.

We can start at the first two words in the title and focus upon our seemingly eternal fascination with both killers and clowns.

Then, our nostalgia for 1980s kitsch.

I don’t know, that’s not why I dig KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, because, to begin with, I don’t quite have the same obsession with killers and clowns that most Americans have or I don’t suffer from “coulrophobia,” the irrational fear of clowns.

I know several people who seriously consider 1980s mass entertainments THE GOONIES, DIRTY DANCING, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, et cetera, not only their favorite movies, but they’ll go on record and proclaim their favorite “the greatest movie ever made.” Talk about a conversational cul-de-sac, it’s happened so many darn times over the years especially during college. I lost track of how many times I stood there in stone face silence (like Buster Keaton) while my brain pondered exactly how many films these other people have seen and why they’re stuck in 1987, for crying out loud.

I did not see KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE until many years later, though I always remembered that glorious title before I put the down payment on the DVD.

I love KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE because it’s a demented cartoon (the best kind of cartoon) that has ingeniousness to spare: “The Big Top” for the Killer Klowns’ spaceship; popcorn ray-guns; cotton candy cocoons that produce a dread end for dead humans; an invisible Clown car; shadow puppetry; killer pies; and the 18-foot tall Killer Klown leader known as “Jojo the Klownzilla,” a man-in-a-suit Godzilla parody or tribute.

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE will remind some viewers of Steve McQueen’s debut motion picture, THE BLOB (1958).

You know, kids on lovers’ lane see what could be Halley’s Comet … no, hey, wait, that’s what a crusty old farmer named Gene Green (Royal Dano) mistakes “The Big Top” for when he sees the same unidentified flying object streaking across the sky in the opening sequence and boy, oh boy, that’s a dread mistake for Mean Gene and his poor, poor loyal dog Pooh Bear when they go investigate. Ol’ Man Green speaks a few great lines before his inevitable exit, “What in tarnation is going on?”

Straight out of THE BLOB, teenage sweethearts Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder) also investigate further and they go to the local authorities with their findings, centered on “The Big Top” and its inner workings. Our two local authorities, of course, are hesitant to believe these wacko teenagers and their whacked out stories of popcorn-shooting guns and cotton candy cocoons.

Damn kids and their elaborate pranks.

We do have a more sympathetic police officer in Dave Hansen (John Allen Nelson) and I seem to remember every other more sympathetic police officer travels by the name “Dave.” You just know you can have total faith in a guy named Dave.

Yes, at least one more sympathetic police officer did have that first name, “Lt. Dave” in THE BLOB, who patiently listened to and believed the cockamamie stories of Steve (McQueen) and Jane (Aneta Corsaut).

Just like THE BLOB, we have one policeman more sympathetic to the kiddos in KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and then we have Curtis Mooney, who seems like a relative of Dean Vernon Wormer from NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE.

Of course, there’s a brilliant reason for that, both characters are played by the same actor.

The late John Vernon (1932-2005) has a fabulous start to his IMDb biography: “John Vernon was a prolific stage-trained Canadian character player who made a career out of convincingly playing crafty villains, morally-bankrupt officials and heartless authority figures in American films and television since the 1960s.”

He’s great in KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, picking up right where he left off in ANIMAL HOUSE.

Maybe Wormer relocated to Crescent Cove and changed his name to Curtis Mooney.

Cramer plays a protagonist named “Mike Tobacco” and it took me a little bit to remember a character from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY named “Mike Teavee.” Are they distant relatives? While the TV obsessive Mike Teavee brought his obsession to another level in both the book and the 1971 film adaptation, we never see Mike Tobacco smoke tobacco in KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, although we can be sure that Curtis Mooney believes that Mr. Tobacco’s smoking something stronger than tobacco when he descends upon the police station with that “killer clowns from outer space” story.

The Chiodo Bros. — Stephen, Charles, and Edward — are the auteurs behind KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, siblings who specialize in clay models, creatures, stop motion, and animatronics. Their credits, in addition to the main film under discussion, include puppets and effects work for CRITTERS, ERNEST SCARED STUPID, and TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE, as well as the Large Marge claymation scene from PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE.

They deserve a spot alongside such icons as Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen.

On a certain level, KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE deals in a nostalgia for animation, horror, and science fiction entertainments of the past.

The IMDb lists numerous references, but the most important ones seem to be GODZILLA, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, FORBIDDEN PLANET, PHANTASM, and ALIEN, as well as THE BLOB, of course, all of which seasoned viewers will be able to notice.

The film’s tagline captures the spirit of the enterprise: “In space, no one can eat ice cream.”