Horrorfest 2010: Phantasm

I first heard of director Don Coscarelli in connection to the horror comedy vehicle for Bruce Campbell, BUBBA HO-TEP. That movie was well intentioned and good enough, but not the masterpiece many Bruce Campbell fans would have you believe it is.

Still, I remembered the name and saw it again when Showtime was running that anthology series, "Masters of Horror." I noticed I didn't recognize a lot of the names of the so-called "masters" but I did recognize Don Coscarelli.

So, it was only a matter of time before I saw his real claim to fame, the late 70s indie horror flick, PHANTASM. Told from the point of view of 13 year old Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), PHANTASM is the story of unexplained deaths in a small town that seem to be centered around a funeral home presided over by a creepy undertaker known only as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). Mike's also dealing with the recent deaths of his parents, and his worries that his brother and guardian, a musician in his mid-20s, Jody (Bill Thornbury) is on the verge of leaving town. Jody's band consists of ice cream man by day Reggie (Reggie Bannister) and the recently-found-dead Tommy (Bill Cone). This was apparently a suicide, but we, the audience, know a mysterious blonde woman (Kathy Lester) lured him out to the cemetery and killed him.

This is one of those flicks where young Mike runs around trying to convince everyone that something messed up is going on, but no one will listen. Eventually, the bodies start piling high enough and the mayhem gets crazy enough that people start to come over to his side. By the end of the film, it's an all out fight for survival as Mike and Jody team up to battle the Tall Man and his undead dwarf minions. There's even a cool MACGUYVEResque scene in which Mike has to break out of his bedroom using only a shotgun shell and a hammer.

The film is pretty inventive, doing a lot with a little -- the interiors of the funeral home are big expensive looking sets apparently done on the cheap, there are some sci-fi elements thrown in for good measure that make the whole thing a little more epic than it could have been, and the music is groovy.

I liked how the horror story, worthy of comic books, was scene through the eyes of a kid. I also liked the relationship between the kid and his brother, and their friend Reggie. It was unexpectedly touching. And, I liked the sci-fi elements.

Still, the ending fell apart a little bit for me and the middle dragged some. I read that the movie was originally 3 hours long and was cut down to its current 90 minute length. That might be a little apocryphal, but it still feels a little long. Maybe it's the pacing -- I don't know. On one hand it kind of helps with the dream like quality of the whole thing but on the other I could kind of do without the dream like quality -- why not just have this be the straight forward telling that you can tell it wants to be?

So, Horrorfest 2010 comes to a close. I've successfully watched 31 horror movies I'd never seen before in 31 days, and written about each of them. In fact, I watched more than 31, but only 31 of them were actually on the top 100 list that I was working off of. So now, by my count, adding the ones I had already seen with the ones I saw this month, there are still around 26 from the list I need to see. So, that's a little short of the 31 I'll need for next year, but a good starting point.

Happy Halloween.