It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Phantasm is one of my favorite horror movies that holds up really well as the years pass by. Don Coscarelli 's masterpiece of horror is very original and a nightmare vision of existential weirdness. Angus Scrimm gives an intense and brooding performance as menacing horror icon The Tall Man. The Tall Man is mortician at the Morningside Funeral Home which our kid Michael as well as his brother Jody and pal Reggie discover some nefarious activities of The Tall Man where he reanimates the dead for his own evil purposes which do not always take place on our plane of existence. Phantasm is a very cerebral horror film, but also delivers on gore, atmosphere and cool characters. The series of films is essential viewing for horror fans and the films get weirder and more sci fi as they go. In my opinion, the first and second film are remarkable and by in large the best. The score is incredible and iconic and in my view Phantasm is untouchable as well as one of the finest horror movies of all time.

I first heard of Phantasm when its sequel came out. Barry Norman reviewed it and admitted that he hadn't even heard of the first film. Neither had I.Fortunately my sister in law had a friend who had closed down their video business and so gave her a lot of the videos he used to rent out. She lent me two films that could be classed as life- changing. One was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The other was Phantasm.The film starts off like standard horror fare- sinister goings on at a small town American mortuary. But then the film starts to get more and more surreal. Its like a lot of the film inhabits a dark dream-like world.Check out the scene where the lead character goes to see a local seer. Add to that the chase scene in which Michael chops off The Tall Man's fingers and takes one home. This film is most famous for the flying silver spheres within the funeral home. These spheres certainly don't disappoint.And then there's the soundtrack which fluctuates between gritty analogue synths of doom and funereal organs. I found the soundtrack on CD and within the sale section of a local and long gone record store. One of the best purchases I've ever parted money for.Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man deserves recognition as one of the scariest and most sinister baddies of all time. Hes unrelenting, otherworldly and the inhabitant of many viewers nightmares.This film was remastered and released at cinemas across America last year. And it deserved the 4K treatment.File this film under 'underrated'. Also file it under 'masterpiece'.

A film overwhelmed by its own amateurishness, "Phantasm" is widely regarded as a classic...which only proves that the word "classic" means different things to different people. Presumably, the same criteria that a film in any other genre must meet to be considered a classic are applicable to horror movies, too: things like plot, characterization and atmosphere. "Phantasm" has none of these. It's just a patchwork quilt of visuals, a ninety-minute-long exercise in throwing nutty, surreal images at the wall to see what sticks. This gimmicky onslaught is accompanied by poor acting, crummy dialogue and lots of screaming (because, you know, it's a horror movie). But why are all these strange things happening to the characters? Why have Angus Scrimm and his army of dwarf slaves singled out these young men? Why is a shiny metallic ball equipped with multi-pronged blades hurtling through the corridors of the mortuary? Well, just because. It's like a story that one twelve-year-old kid might tell another, making it up as he goes along: "So there were these guys, and one day some really scary stuff went down." That's the level of intellectual sophistication one finds in "Phantasm". It scores a couple of points for sheer novelty, but that doesn't make it a good or even tolerable film.

Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) and his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) are mourning the death of their parents in a small Oregon town. Together with their friend Reggie (Reggie Bannister), an ice cream man, they must do battle with a nefarious undertaker known only as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and his various minions...not to mention a neat flying sphere that can puncture skulls.Writer / director / cinematographer / editor Don Coscarelli truly hit paydirt with this enduring fan favorite, a horror / fantasy classic that spawned a franchise spanning over three and a half decades. A great film it is not, but it sure is a fun and entertaining one. Admittedly, the acting is mostly amateurish and our heroes less interesting than our villain. But Coscarelli clearly enjoys himself playing with as much "it's all supposed to take on the tones of a nightmare" shtick as he can. He never does worry about any of this making sense.Baldwin, Thornbury, and Bannister are at least likable as our heroes, especially Bannister, whose character turned into more of a badass as the series went on. Kathy Lester is alluring as a mysterious "lady in lavender". But "Phantasm" ultimately belongs to the imposing Scrimm, whose appearance is very memorable. "BOOOYYY!!!"The film also benefits from a music score by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave that is pretty catchy, in particular its haunting, somewhat "Halloween"-esque main theme.The main set piece involves the sphere mutilating a caretakers' face; Coscarelli fought the MPAA to keep this sequence in the film and actually succeeded.Worth watching, at least once, by devotees of the horror genre.Seven out of 10.