Product Details

• Actors: David Arntzen, A. Michael Baldwin, Reggie Bannister, Bill Cone (II), Kate Coscarelli
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures
• DVD Release Date: September 28, 1999
• Run Time: 88 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (200 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792841344
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #56,165 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Phantasm" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Jody is the kind of guy that every 1970s teen looked up to. He's in his early 20s, has a cool car, splendid '70s hair, leather jacket, plays guitar and (naturally) snags all the girls. His little brother, Mike, in particular, admires him and emulates him at every turn. Things start to go astray, however, when the two brothers and their friend Reggie attend a funeral for a friend. Mike notices a tall man working at the funeral home; in the course of his snooping, he sees the tall man put a loaded coffin into the back of a hearse as easily as if it was a shoebox. Jody doesn't believe his little brother's stories, though, until he brings home the tall man's severed finger, still wriggling in what appears to be French's mustard. From there, the film picks up a terrific momentum that doesn't let up until the sequel-ripe twist ending.

Phantasm was one of the first horror movies to break the unspoken rule that victims were supposed to scream, fall down, and cower until they were killed. Instead, Mike and Jody are resourceful and smart, aggressively pursuing the evil inside the funeral home with a shotgun and Colt pistol. Furthermore, the script has a great deal of character development, especially in the relationship between the two brothers. The film even has a surprisingly glossy look, despite its low-budget origins, and little outright gore (except for the infamous steel spheres that drill into victims' heads). This drive-in favorite was a big success at the time of its release, and spawned three sequels. Little wonder; it includes an inventive story, likable characters, a runaway pace, and, of course, evil dwarves cloaked in Army blankets. The end result is one of the better horror films of the late 1970s. Hot-rod fans take note: Jody drives a Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda, the pinnacle of 1960s muscle cars, rounding out his status as a Cool Guy. --Jerry Renshaw

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark dreams are made of this..., May 24, 2004

By	Wing J. Flanagan (Orlando, Florida United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If good films are like waking dreams, then good horror films are like waking nightmares. Few can match the power of Phantasm in this regard. Masquerading as a B-shocker, it gradually develops a kind psychological depth shared only by the best in the genre - films like The Exorcist and Silence of the Lambs.

To begin with, the story is frankly outrageous: after the death of a close friend, two brothers (Mike and Jody, played by Michael Baldwin and Bill Thornbury) discover some strange things about the Morningside Funeral Home where their friend - and their parents, who died two years earlier - are interred. It seems the dour funeral director (a character known only as The Tall Man, indelibly rendered by Angus Scrimm) is not quite human. He's able to lift fully occupied coffins by himself, as the younger Mike secretly observes; he bleeds yellow blood; he has a strange reaction to cold; and he is aided by small silver spheres that roam the halls of the mausoleum, doing unspeakably gruesome things to intruders. It seems his main activity, though, involves a novel use of the corpses of the dearly departed - a use we learn in the striking left-turn the film takes in the third act.

Somehow, what could have been a very silly film takes on an unnerving, Lynchian kind of surreality, thanks in large measure to a well-developed subtext about abandonment, isolation, despair, and guilt. These are the anxieties that drive nightmares, and - despite the frequent humor throughout - writer/director Don Coscerelli infuses the proceedings with a poignant sense of sadness and dread. Like Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, or Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Phantasm isn't just a scary film; it has the authentic texture of a dark, disturbing dream.

And this, in a film where a major sequence involves a large, obviously rubber insect flown around on a fishing line! It could have been a real Ed Wood moment, but instead, we buy into it somehow. Amazing.

In The Tall Man, Angus Scrimm has created a classic horror film villain, in the Frankenstein's monster/Dracula/Wolfman/Mummy sense, rather in than the Freddy/Jason tradition. There is no sense of irony in his conception or performance. No camp. No winking, wisecracking, or self-aware irony. Just a powerful, implacable, evil presence.

Reggie Bannister rounds out the cast as a musician/ice cream vendor (!) who assists the brothers in their quest to rid the world (or at least their town) of the evil that has descended.

The performances (a couple of minor characters notwithstanding) are remarkably skilled, walking that fine line between believability and exaggeration virtually demanded by the genre.

The DVD is crisp and well produced. There is a delightful introduction by The Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm, to get things rolling. There is a good deal of supplemental material to be found on the disc, and a thorough commentary track by Coscarelli, Scrimm, Baldwin, and Thornbury.

All told, an excellent addition to any horror fan's collection.

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beware the Tall Man, Booooyyyy!, April 14, 2004

By	Michael R Gates (Nampa, ID United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"If this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead." Or so goes one of the taglines used in the promotions for PHANTASM, the 1979 low-budget film from auteur Don Coscarelli that has become a much-loved horror classic. By today's standards, the film doesn't quite reach the level of fright promised by that slogan. But PHANTASM is nonetheless a well-made indie flick that has always been a real crowd-pleaser due to its enigmatic, unpredictable script; the ingenious and effective low-budget special FX; excellent directing and cinematography by Coscarelli; good acting, especially from the four principals; and a very memorable, haunting score.

PHANTASM follows precocious 13-year-old Michael (Michael Baldwin), his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury), and friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister) as they investigate the enigmatic goings-on at the creepy nearby funeral parlor. Just who or what is that terrifying Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) that seems to have the run of the place? What is his part in the recent disappearance of corpses at the mortuary, and what is his relationship to the elfish eidolons lurking in the graveyard shadows?

PHANTASM's script is loosely structured and rather weak in spots, but this actually heightens the unpredictability of the plot and thereby gives the film an unnerving surrealistic quality. And when combined with bizarre imagery (e.g., an airborne chromed sphere drilling into a human head); gloomy, atmospheric sets and on-location sites; and a genuinely creepy, inscrutable antagonist like the Tall Man, the movie transcends the script and evolves into a 90-minute spine-tingling nightmare-on-film.

The excellent musical score also adds much to the nightmarish quality of PHANTASM. Composed by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave, it is stylistically reminiscent of John Carpenter's score for his groundbreaking film HALLOWEEN, released a year earlier. But unlike Carpenter's one-man synthesizer score, Myrow and Seagrave's music is performed on multiple instruments, delivering a rich, three-dimensional sound that makes PHANTASM's aural atmosphere seem much more ominous than that of HALLOWEEN.

Though it has been over 20 years since its initial release, PHANTASM has aged surprisingly well. As with its aforementioned predecessor HALLOWEEN, the gore is minimal, especially when compared to the wave of bloody horror films that splashed up on the cinematic shore in the 1980s and beyond. But the eerie, surreal ambiance of PHANTASM can still make a viewer's skin crawl, and the malignant Tall Man, with all his accursed accoutrements and paranormal paraphernalia, is still pretty damned creepy. Yes, PHANTASM has a certain ineffable 1970s drive-in quality that identifies it as a product of its era, but rather than being an annoyance, this seems to add yet another layer of "otherworldliness"--at least from a contemporary standpoint.

MGM's DVD release of PHANTASM offers the film in a non-anamorphic letterbox format in the film's original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The digital transfer is pretty clean, with only moderate filmic and digital artifacts sometimes apparent. Colors are bright and vivid, though darks are a bit on the muddy side. Soundtrack audio options include a new Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound remix, which sounds good, or the film's original 2.0 mono.

The supplements on MGM's DVD release of PHANTASM are outstanding. First off, the disc comes packaged with a very nice booklet that contains a note from writer/director Don Coscarelli, as well as a myriad of interesting tidbits about the film and its stars. On the disc itself, a really cool alternate audio track offers a feature commentary with Coscarelli and the film's principal actors. Also included are outtakes, deleted scenes, trailers and TV spots, TV interviews with Coscarelli and Angus Scrimm, and much more! These extras alone are worth the very reasonable retail price, but buyers get the cool film, too!

To recap, PHANTASM is a minor cult classic that both ardent horror fans and casual viewers alike will find genuinely enjoyable, and the loaded-with-extras DVD from MGM is nothing short of Phantastic!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ODDLY ENTERTAINING, April 26, 2000

By	The No Evil Killer "Know No Evil" (Everywhere, Anywhere, Nowhere) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I don't quite understand this film. It's odd but certainly original. It is just so weird I don't know how to describe it. The whole film is like this bizarre dream. It's great to see it get such fab treatment on DVD though with tonnes of extras. Although the commentary is recycled as the cast and crew constantly refer to it as as "Laserdisc". This is probably why it is non-anamorphic too. None of the cast seemed to amount to much except the sequels (none of which I have seen). This film pre-dates the stalk 'n' slash genre of the '80's incase you didn't know. The sequels must be released on DVD soon.