Uh, wait... were the dwarves the second-cousins once removed of the girl with the knife?

July 10, 2007 6:09 AM

Phantasm! Damn you, Coscarelli! *shakes fist helplessly* Having just seen it for the first time, does this damn thing ever makes any sense or should I give up right now? (For the record: I did like it.) Spoilers surely up the kazoo follow inside, so don't complain later.

Was the creepy funeral director an alien slave-driver then? Who the hell was that blonde chick that walked into the mausoleum and opened a door, cried, and was never seen again? Was the chick-with-knife just a mental projection-disguise of the creepy f.d.? Or does he shapeshift (the first guy she, er, did on the cemetery didn't seem to find anything anatomically amiss, to put it that way)? If the whole damn thing wasn't a dream after all why is icecream-man still alive? And what about the two other blondie chicks that the dwarves kidnapped in the small car? Do the portadwarves also count as a portapotty or are the compressed dear departed ones naturally beyond such weaknesses of the flesh? Was Coscarelli totally tripping all the time when he wrote this thing?

I swear, not even David Fucking Lynch had me pondering so many stupid points after a movie, geez.

posted by Iosephus to media & arts (11 comments total)

I can't help you to parse the film, but I can tell you this:
My big sister took me to see this when I was 8.
I'm fairly sure I've been scarred for life, and have desperately avoided every opportunity to see it again.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 6:14 AM on July 10, 2007

I've seen it, oh, eight times, and it made as little sense the eighth time as the first. Later films may explain things, but they are all explanations after the fact, and shouldn't be taken seriously. Were it not for the film's legitimately creepy tone, sustained throughout, it would be considered a work of amateurish nonsense, much like Manos: Hands of Fate.
posted by Astro Zombie at 6:17 AM on July 10, 2007

The film is a confused mess. And I think its only in the aftermath of David Lynch's success that people are going back to such bad films and asking "Woah! What was going on there?"

Some films are just badly made, poorly written, and edited by shit-for-brains hacks. DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE STONED. Such is Phantasm.

Not to say that the movie is completely awful. I think it has some remarkable creepiness and falls squarely into a genre of horror/fantasy films from the 70s and 80s that aren't exactly great, but still worth a view. (Hellraiser, et al.)
posted by wfrgms at 6:25 AM on July 10, 2007

The acting is horrible, the editing is horrible, the flow is horrible, the characterization is horrible, the plot is horrible, the sound is horrible, the special effects are horrible. So, you know...classic horror movie.

does this damn thing ever makes any sense

No.

should I give up right now

Yes. Do not plate of beans this movie, ever. Even one flying, homing bean equipped with retractable razors is one bean too many.
posted by iconomy at 6:26 AM on July 10, 2007

Did you check out the imdb.com entry?

The trivia section says the original cut was 3 hours. If it EVER made any sense, maybe the sensemaking got lost in the edit.
posted by The Deej at 6:55 AM on July 10, 2007

Basically the damn thing does not make sense, and is supposed to be a nightmare on film. It does have a kind of dream-logic to it.

In an interview Coscarelli said that it just didn't work as a conventionally edited film, so he went back and edited it specifically to make it as weird and disturbing as possible. Only after that did people audiences react favorably.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:09 AM on July 10, 2007

Have you seen the sequel? Do you really want to?
posted by malaprohibita at 8:36 AM on July 10, 2007

DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE STONED.

Heh. I saw this film on TV when I was a teen. I was home from school with a 104-105 degree temperature, which caused halucinations. The movie scared the living crap out of me.

I saw it again a few years later at a drive-in; I have to admit that I enjoyed it more with the hallucinations.
posted by jknecht at 10:09 AM on July 10, 2007

Don't watch the sequels. They lose the nightmarishness in favor of kicks, 'splosions and CGI metal balls. And they shed absolutely no light on the events of the first movie—in fact, they use deleted scenes to intentionally muddle what actually happened.
posted by infinitewindow at 11:07 AM on July 10, 2007

So, I'll admit right up front that I have a soft spot in my heart for Phantasm. It was the first movie to ever completely scare the piss out of me (I was ten years old at the time, and really shouldn't have been watching it), and I have loved it irrationally ever since. Several years ago I attended Phantasmania, a three night festival in Austin at the Alamo Draft House where all four movies were screened with Don Coscarelli, Angus Scrimm, and Reggie Bannister all in attendance. I had a great time, met some amazing people, and had the very rare opportunity to see all of the films on the big screen.

As to your question: Ultimately the movies, while following their own nightmare logic, never make conventional sense.

The second film was made on a Hollywood budget, but was severely edited by the studio and some major connective storytelling was lost. Also, the lead (Michael) was recast in order to meet the demands of the studio. (Fun fact: Brad Pitt auditioned for the roll and went as far as to do a screen test. Don Coscarelli still kicks himself for not hiring him.) I thought it did a great job of reconstructing the ending of the first movie (although if you watch them back to back the differences in the house are readily apparent), and as a whole I quite liked it.

The third film is mostly mediocre-to-awful. It was played more for laughs, and most of the laughs fell flat. On the other hand, it did bring back the older brother and also brought back Michael Baldwin in the lead role. It also features an amazing hearse crash, that is even more amazing if you know the whole story behind that night of filming. (Very long story, you are welcome to email me if you want to hear it.)

The fourth film is kind of an odd duck, but ultimately I quite liked it. It was shot with almost no budget. It gave an origin (of sorts) for the Tall Man, in that you got to see kindly Jebadiah Morningside before he was possessed by the alien entity that turned him into the Tall Man. You got to see Reggie Bannister: World's Toughest Ice Cream Man gear up for war. And you got to see some very interesting revelations about Michael and why the Tall Man is so obsessed with him. This is the one, by the way, that used outtakes from the first movie to tie everything up. On the one hand it ends on a complete cliffhanger, but on the other hand it ends as kind of a sweet goodbye to the diehard fans. It's not for everyone, but as I said I enjoyed it quite a bit.

That being said, I am not surprised that a lot of people don't like the movies.
posted by Lokheed at 5:53 PM on July 10, 2007

My god, if ever they succeed in creating an alternate-universe travel machine, the first place I want to visit is one in which a teenage Brad Pitt has battled compressed dead dwarves and vampiric flying droneballs in an alien funeral house. Screw world peace and the answer to life...
posted by Iosephus at 6:36 PM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]