Oct 26 2009
31 Days - 31 Films of the Macabre - Day 26
#26 was a successful merging of scifi and horror.
Phantasm - 1979
Forget your chainsaws, your machettes, your butcher knives, your bladed gloves, and even your Scanner-like head ’splodings. There is nothing scarier than a shiney, metal flying sphere that holds more drills and razors in it than a demented dentist, and it’s zooming at your face at 100 miles and hour!
The film was directed, written, photographed, co-produced and edited by Don Coscarelli, which is usually unheard of, but makes sense when you hear that the film was started in 1977 and released in 1979. Phantasm was a creepy scifi/horror that starred a local news man as the villian, The Tall Man (who was portrayed in the film and its sequels by Angus Scrimm), a supernatural and sadistic undertaker who turns the dead into dwarf zombies to do his bidding and take over the world.
Fun Facts:
There is a blantant reference to Frank Herbert’s “Dune” book. There is a bar named Dune. One of the scenes is a near word for word copy from Dune, with “fear is the killer” rather than “fear is the mind killer”.
