Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And as
Speaker 1: we enter the Halloween season on Weird House Cinema, one
Speaker 1: of our favorite times of the year. Why would I
Speaker 1: even say one of clearly our favorite time of the year.
Speaker 1: We are going to be doing a series of horror
Speaker 1: movies on on Weird House this month. Uh, and we're
Speaker 1: kicking it off today with Phantasm. I first saw this
Speaker 1: movie projected onto a wall when I was in college.
Speaker 1: I had absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about it going in.
Speaker 1: I just knew they're showing a horror movie projecting it
Speaker 1: on a wall. I gotta go see it. And I
Speaker 1: think it was about the time we got to Reggie
Speaker 1: Banister in his ice cream Man outfit that I started
Speaker 1: to really wonder what I had gotten myself in too.
Speaker 1: By the end, I was totally amazed. I was, in
Speaker 1: fact agg and I could not tell you if what
Speaker 1: I had just watched was a good movie or a
Speaker 1: bad movie, but either way, I was transfixed. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is a film that that transfixes one. It's a film
Speaker 1: that that hypnotizes you, and yeah, I think I you know,
Speaker 1: I have our time. Remember when I saw this one
Speaker 1: for the first time, because I think I saw Phantasm
Speaker 1: to first. I think I saw it on Joe Bob
Speaker 1: Briggs Monster Vision on T and T back in the day.
Speaker 1: I think they would they would show this film quite
Speaker 1: a lot and at that but at that point I
Speaker 1: was hooked. And then I started picking up these other
Speaker 1: Phantasm films, renting them and so forth. But yeah, this
Speaker 1: is N nine Phantasm. We're going to be discussing this.
Speaker 1: This is definitely a film with a dreamlike quality to it.
Speaker 1: It's really it's one we've we've kind of had in
Speaker 1: the back pocket for a while because it is a
Speaker 1: quintessential psychotronic film. Um, it just all the this check
Speaker 1: off on this one. I would say that it is
Speaker 1: more than just a dream like quality. So you might
Speaker 1: compare it to the films of Luccio Fulci years that,
Speaker 1: you know, this Italian filmmaker who made strange, kind of
Speaker 1: beautiful but gross horror films that often many scenes feel
Speaker 1: like a dream because you're like, wait, why are we here,
Speaker 1: how did we get here? Why is the person doing that?
Speaker 1: There's a kind of dream logic connecting everything. Phantasm does
Speaker 1: have that, but I would say it goes a step
Speaker 1: farther in that. Unlike full cheese films, Phantasm is literally
Speaker 1: a recursive series of dreams as best I can tell,
Speaker 1: I mean, who who knows? Like there are at least
Speaker 1: four times in the movie where a character appears to
Speaker 1: wake up from a dream. It is not clear when
Speaker 1: the dreams started or when the dream ended. What's a
Speaker 1: dream and what's reality? Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's
Speaker 1: a good way of putting it now. I want to
Speaker 1: also note from from the get go here that this
Speaker 1: is a film with a both a devoted following and
Speaker 1: multiple sequels that build on its lore to varying degrees.
Speaker 1: We're mostly just going to be focusing on the first
Speaker 1: film on nine Phantasm. I'm going to bring up the
Speaker 1: sequel a little bit, but for the most part, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the other Phantasm films in a long while,
Speaker 1: and I and I haven't seen the final entry in
Speaker 1: the series, sixteen Phantasm Ravager, at all. So yeah, we're
Speaker 1: mostly going to be discussing Phantasm from seventy nine on
Speaker 1: its own terms. I have not seen any of the
Speaker 1: sequels if this were years ago, I might try to
Speaker 1: mount an attempt to watch them all, kind of like
Speaker 1: I did when I was like, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: year I watch all the hell Raiser movies. That was
Speaker 1: a good use of my time. Uh, But I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm going to make it now. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I will get past P two. Yeah. P
Speaker 1: two is a good stopping play in place, So I'll
Speaker 1: discuss P two in a little bit. I think I
Speaker 1: think that they're they're they're both very different films, and
Speaker 1: they're both very very fun and they're in different ways.
Speaker 1: But coming back to seventy nine Phantasm, let's let's hit
Speaker 1: the elevator pitch on this one. I'd like to paraphrase
Speaker 1: the words of one Shack by saying, um, you can
Speaker 1: summarize this one as flying balls, dwarves just weird. Phantasm
Speaker 1: does not shy away from the otherworldly imagery, probably the
Speaker 1: most iconic of which is the first thing you mentioned,
Speaker 1: the flying ball. In a way, what Jason's hockey mask
Speaker 1: is to the Friday Thirteenth series, I believe the ball
Speaker 1: is to the Phantasm series in that it is not
Speaker 1: really the human villain, but it is like the symbol
Speaker 1: of the villain's power. Right. And also it is something
Speaker 1: just in terms of like elements of the film that
Speaker 1: cannot just be passively copied by another film. Like if
Speaker 1: you have a character a killer, especially in another movie,
Speaker 1: put on a hockey mask, well, you just cross the line.
Speaker 1: You're in Jason's territory now, uh, And not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that from a legal standpoint, but from just a crea
Speaker 1: ative standpoint, like you are now clearly in the shadow
Speaker 1: of Jason. You may have already been in the shadow,
Speaker 1: but now you stepped entirely within the you know, the
Speaker 1: Umbrell shade there. Likewise in with this film, Yeah, flying
Speaker 1: silver balls of death. You can't just have a flying
Speaker 1: silver ball of death in your film or your story
Speaker 1: or what have you without clearly saying yes, I come
Speaker 1: in the wake of phantasm. Before you even understand the
Speaker 1: context of the ball, we should describe what the ball is.
Speaker 1: It's a metal ball that flies through the air, flies
Speaker 1: at your face. It attaches itself to your forehead via
Speaker 1: a couple of little hooks I guess that get in
Speaker 1: your head, and then it drills into your head and
Speaker 1: then drains your body entirely of blood. In a jet
Speaker 1: that shoots out the back of the ball. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they're so great because and I love I love just
Speaker 1: thinking about what makes them great because there, and again
Speaker 1: largely keeping things relegated to the original film, here, they
Speaker 1: seem to be machine means, they are pieces of technology.
Speaker 1: They're they're very good at what they do, but they
Speaker 1: can be evaded, they can be to certain degrees outsmarted.
Speaker 1: And then there's also something about the way they function
Speaker 1: that feels not only alien in origin, but also maybe
Speaker 1: alien in function. Like it makes me think of parasitic
Speaker 1: infections where the parasite goes awry because it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be in a human body and it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to wind up in the brain. Like you almost feel
Speaker 1: like this is a machine that was made to interface
Speaker 1: with a different biological form, and what we're seeing here
Speaker 1: is it executing its purpose on a body that it
Speaker 1: wasn't designed for. That's a very good comparison. Yes, this
Speaker 1: flying metal ball is sort of like the toxoplasma Gandhi
Speaker 1: of the Red Planet that the aliens in this movie
Speaker 1: come from. In fact, I was reading a bit of
Speaker 1: trivia about this movie, and apparently the idea for Phantasm
Speaker 1: traces back to a dream that the director Don Costcarelli
Speaker 1: had when he was a teenager. He dreamed that he
Speaker 1: was running down these endless corridors, marble corridors that never stopped,
Speaker 1: and he just kept running and running because he was
Speaker 1: being chased by a chrome sphere, a floating chrome ball
Speaker 1: that wanted to penetrate his skull with a needle. And
Speaker 1: that's a pretty scary image. I am surprised how well
Speaker 1: that worked on screen. Yeah, it did, It absolutely does.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear the trailer
Speaker 1: for Phantasm. Phantasm. Is it a nightmare? Phantasm? Is it
Speaker 1: an illusion? Phantasm? Whatever it is. If this one doesn't
Speaker 1: scare you, you're already dead Phantasm. All right. I love
Speaker 1: this trailer, great trailer. I love the line if this
Speaker 1: one doesn't scare you, you're already dead, because it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like they should have another message at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie that says like, are you alive,
Speaker 1: then we're pleased to hear you enjoyed Phantasm. So we've
Speaker 1: already compared Phantasm to some Italian horror movies, especially full
Speaker 1: cheese movies, because of its dream equality and colorful lucid imagery.
Speaker 1: But another point of comparison I would like to raise
Speaker 1: is that Phantasm kind of reminds me of the films
Speaker 1: of very low budget independent amateur filmmakers, or maybe not
Speaker 1: necessarily amateur, but but low budget independent filmmakers, even going
Speaker 1: back to the fifties, like Ed Wood and Roger Corman.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know you're gonna have different levels of
Speaker 1: ability to realize one's vision in there, but it has
Speaker 1: that same scrappiness that it feels like an improvised production
Speaker 1: of young people who didn't necessarily always know what they
Speaker 1: were doing or have all the permits they needed, or
Speaker 1: have the money to to realize everything in the in
Speaker 1: the glossiest possible way. And yet it does kind of
Speaker 1: come together with an infectious enthusiasm and a kind of
Speaker 1: irresistible energy, even though it kind of lacks a sense
Speaker 1: of worldliness or experience. Yeah, absolutely, it does have that
Speaker 1: that that scrappiness to it. So let's let's get into
Speaker 1: the individuals behind this scrappiness, because yes, this is a
Speaker 1: Don Cosarelli picture. Don Cosarelli was born in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: He is the director, the writer, the cinematographer, and the
Speaker 1: film editor on this movie. He was I believe twenty
Speaker 1: three years old when filming started, in twenty five years
Speaker 1: old when it was released, and this was his third picture,
Speaker 1: following Jim the World's Greatest in nineteen seventy six. Is
Speaker 1: Kinny and Company. Phantasm makes so much more sense once
Speaker 1: you shared this fact with me, that that Costcarelli was
Speaker 1: twenty three when he started making it. It has such
Speaker 1: early twenties energy, again coming back to that lack of
Speaker 1: wisdom and worldliness, but at the same time a thing
Speaker 1: that makes up for it, which is an absolutely like
Speaker 1: it is a leaky vessel of the essence of fun.
Speaker 1: It's just like kind of you feel the excitement about
Speaker 1: making a movie within this movie. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: um there's I think there's a lot to this film
Speaker 1: that does line up perfectly, this idea of the twenty
Speaker 1: three year old filmmaker, um of you know, early twenties
Speaker 1: dreamer who's also exploring exploring some familiar topics. A lot
Speaker 1: of horror films deal with sex and death, too. Many
Speaker 1: horror films probably deal with the dichotomy of sex and death,
Speaker 1: but this one does so in a I thought a
Speaker 1: very uh fascinating way, Like you get the feeling of
Speaker 1: the of of the youth standing you know, outside of
Speaker 1: childhood but not within the adult world, confronted by the
Speaker 1: mysteries of death, of of sex and uh and and
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out what these are and like
Speaker 1: why and to what extent they are threats to him,
Speaker 1: to what extent they are his destiny. We see all
Speaker 1: of that wound up in the character of Mike. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's it's really fascinating to to look
Speaker 1: back on and really gaze long and deep into the
Speaker 1: phantasm here. So you mentioned that Costcarelli had made a
Speaker 1: couple of movies before Phantasm that were not horror movies. Uh, though,
Speaker 1: there is a there's a story that I think comes
Speaker 1: from the audio commentary track that he recorded for the movie.
Speaker 1: But anyway, wherever it comes from, the story is that
Speaker 1: he got the idea to make a horror film because
Speaker 1: when he was sitting in an audience that was watching
Speaker 1: his earlier movie Kenny and Company, which I've never seen.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to deal with it is Apparently
Speaker 1: there's a jump scare moment in it, like a character
Speaker 1: puts on a scary mask and jumps out, and he
Speaker 1: watched the way the audience reacted to this jump scare moment,
Speaker 1: and he was just he was so into it the
Speaker 1: way that they like they literally jumped from their seats
Speaker 1: and screamed, and he was like, I gotta make a
Speaker 1: whole movie of this. I'm doing horror now. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: do like that he came into this after having made
Speaker 1: two non horror films that I think both reviven't seeen
Speaker 1: either of than either, but I think they both revolved
Speaker 1: largely around young people in the lives of young people.
Speaker 1: And then he moves on into horror. A lot of
Speaker 1: people had jumped right into the horror, and so I
Speaker 1: think that's another reason that Phantasm works so well, is
Speaker 1: that it it's not just obsessed with like, let's get
Speaker 1: some gore up there on the screen, Like there is
Speaker 1: also this attention to, uh, this the central youth character
Speaker 1: in the in the film, and what he's thinking and
Speaker 1: what he now he's processing everything. Another way that Costcarrelli's
Speaker 1: vision feels it is distinctly young to me is the
Speaker 1: way the movie tries to pack in a lot of
Speaker 1: elements that are not necessarily they don't necessarily like fit smoothly,
Speaker 1: but he's just trying to get a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: in there. And I think part of that is also
Speaker 1: explained by another trivia fact I read about the movie,
Speaker 1: which is that um he apparently at one point talked
Speaker 1: about how he remembered when he was a kid, he
Speaker 1: would see like ads and trailers for horror movies that
Speaker 1: would seem really exciting, but then when you would go,
Speaker 1: why the actual movie of just be people sitting around
Speaker 1: talking for most of the movie. There were actually very
Speaker 1: few scares in them. The scares were already in the trailer,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to make a movie that had a
Speaker 1: scary moment at least every five minutes. That is just
Speaker 1: packed with with little scares and weird things. And it
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of the story of Roger Corman
Speaker 1: telling Charles B. Griffith, Okay, when you write Attack of
Speaker 1: the Crab Monsters, the important thing is it has to
Speaker 1: have action or horror on every page. Yeah. Phantasm doesn't
Speaker 1: really hold anything back, and it keeps you on your
Speaker 1: toes that way it is, and I think also builds
Speaker 1: into that dreamline quality. If things are making sense and
Speaker 1: seeming normal, how long are they going to do that?
Speaker 1: What can happen? And eventually you feel like anything can
Speaker 1: happen at any moment. Now, this film, like we said,
Speaker 1: the scrappiness of it, it was made for. I think
Speaker 1: it's been estimated for around three hundred thousand. Though um,
Speaker 1: I think the estimation there is kind of rough because
Speaker 1: I don't think they were really keeping super you know,
Speaker 1: accurate records. Uh ended up grossing millions though, Uh it
Speaker 1: was a success with with with audiences and some critics.
Speaker 1: I was looking back, I noticed that Ebert was not
Speaker 1: a big fan of Phantasm and like Phantasm to even less.
Speaker 1: But Michael Weldon of the Psychotronic film Guides, Uh, he
Speaker 1: loved it. It's one of his favorites. He celebrated it
Speaker 1: as quote a unique, confascinating horror hit with more satisfying
Speaker 1: surprises than you could find in a dozen other recent offerings.
Speaker 1: And that was written and I think eighty three. So this,
Speaker 1: this film really established Casarelli within the horror realm. He
Speaker 1: followed this up with three's Beast Master, which I think
Speaker 1: is also a pretty solid film in my opinion anyway,
Speaker 1: and certainly one that is a chief cult status. You
Speaker 1: got some stars for that one, right, Uh, who who's
Speaker 1: in it? Ripped horn? Ripped horn? Is in it? Um
Speaker 1: the beast Master. They got the beast Master for it,
Speaker 1: which is ideal since it's about the beast Master. What
Speaker 1: Mark Singer? Yeah, yeah, so yeah, we we We talked
Speaker 1: about beast Master two on a past episode of Weird House.
Speaker 1: So if you want more beast Master, actually go back
Speaker 1: to that one. But again, I think eighty three beast
Speaker 1: Master pretty solid. Uh. In In Coscarelli's defense, he did
Speaker 1: not direct beast Master two. That was somebody else, right now.
Speaker 1: Coscarelli did come back to direct and write Phantasm two
Speaker 1: in Phantasm three Lord of the Dead in and Phantasm
Speaker 1: four Oblivion in. His non Phantasm directional credits also include
Speaker 1: Survival Quest in eighty eight Bubba Ho Tap in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. He did a Masters of Horror episode
Speaker 1: uh titled in Incident On and Off a Mountain Road
Speaker 1: from two thousand and five. Both that in Bubba Ho
Speaker 1: Tap are based on Joe Landsdale stories. He did John
Speaker 1: Dies at the End in twelve, and he also directed
Speaker 1: the Dio music video The Last in Line in four,
Speaker 1: a Dio music video, I Gotta look that up after this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar with their their music video, so I've
Speaker 1: I read a few more Internet trivia anecdotes about about
Speaker 1: Don Coscarelli in the making of this movie, one of
Speaker 1: which again contributing to the general idea of budgetary scrappiness.
Speaker 1: Apparently they they really juiced every last drop they could
Speaker 1: get out of their camera and equipment rentals. So one
Speaker 1: of the stories is that they would shoot on the weekends.
Speaker 1: I think that took them like over a year to
Speaker 1: shoot this movie because they were pretty much just shooting
Speaker 1: on weekends and they would rent their camera equipment on
Speaker 1: Fridays and return it on Mondays. So they're they're technically
Speaker 1: only paying for one business day of rental, but then
Speaker 1: they would use it all weekend. Another thing is some
Speaker 1: of the stories about the production make it sound like
Speaker 1: they were not practicing industry safety standards for for SAE
Speaker 1: stunts and and kind of dangerous uh the achievement of
Speaker 1: dangerous shots. So there were stories of the director like
Speaker 1: personally doing camera work for like filming some of the
Speaker 1: car chase sequences uh in and not the best way.
Speaker 1: Like one thing they did is you know, usually when
Speaker 1: you see characters inside a car and a movie talking. Uh,
Speaker 1: the car is not actually moving. They'll have you know,
Speaker 1: them sitting in a stationary car, and then they will
Speaker 1: somehow simulate the movement of the outside world around the car.
Speaker 1: If it's at night, they might just like move lights
Speaker 1: around where they might have a rear projection or something
Speaker 1: like that. Uh. That that's often how they do it.
Speaker 1: In this movie, they just they just actually had characters
Speaker 1: driving the cars and they were acting at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's not usually a great idea. But another story is
Speaker 1: that there's a scene in the movie where there's like
Speaker 1: a car chase where one of the characters, Jodi, is
Speaker 1: shooting a gun at another car that's chasing them. And
Speaker 1: I think they actually did film this with moving cars,
Speaker 1: with the director sort of like sitting on the trunk
Speaker 1: of a moving car filming. Uh you know, the actor
Speaker 1: playing Jody popping up out of the window and shooting
Speaker 1: at the car behind them with a shotgun. Right. I
Speaker 1: think it had blanks, But even that can be dangerous that.
Speaker 1: I love realistic effects too, but uh, movie production note.
Speaker 1: You know, no movie is worth somebody actually getting hurt
Speaker 1: or killed. You know, practice safety on sets. People now
Speaker 1: This was very much a Costcarelli family labor of love
Speaker 1: here because the producer on this was Dat Coscarelli, who
Speaker 1: was also dad investment counselor at the time, who helped
Speaker 1: his son fund the film and later served as EP
Speaker 1: on Don's other films. And then mom was also involved.
Speaker 1: Kate Cosarelli, who lived seven through nine. She did make up, production, design, wardrobe.
Speaker 1: She uh. She also this is super interesting. She was
Speaker 1: already a novelist apparently, if I'm understanding this correctly, She
Speaker 1: wrote books like Leading Lady, Fame and Fortune, but she
Speaker 1: herself wrote the novelization of Phantasm based on her son's screenplay,
Speaker 1: which I think is that's that's adorable. I love that
Speaker 1: she had to knife fight Alan Dean Foster for the rights. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how how that went down, but it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's apparently I was looking around for any signs of
Speaker 1: apparently a very sought after book, uh for a die
Speaker 1: hard Phantasm fans, But I did run across a few
Speaker 1: quotes here and there her talking about at adapting it
Speaker 1: and you know, picking up on little details in the
Speaker 1: film and working those out, so uh, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: it seemed like a labor of love for her. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the cast we mentioned Mike. Mike is
Speaker 1: the youth. Mike is the central character and Phantasm and
Speaker 1: Mike was played by A. Michael Baldwin born nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: apparently son of animator Gerald Baldwin, and Will worked on
Speaker 1: a number of older animated shows. Uh So. A. Michael
Speaker 1: Baldwin was a child actor who appeared as early as
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six and episodes of Star Ski and Hutch
Speaker 1: and Eight Is Enough. Later on, he started as Ug
Speaker 1: and Kenny and Company from seventy six. That's Doun's one
Speaker 1: of Don's previous films, and his post Phantasm acting career
Speaker 1: is is pretty phantasm heavy, and I believe he went
Speaker 1: on to teach acting. Um, none of this matters though,
Speaker 1: because he's I think he's absolutely perfect and phantasm. He's
Speaker 1: this believably awkward and childlike but still you know, clearly,
Speaker 1: you know, be beyond the limits of childhood. He's. But
Speaker 1: he's also even though he's awkward, he's still charismatic enough
Speaker 1: to serve as the hero of the film, and you know,
Speaker 1: to be this action based character when it's right. Uh So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love a Michael Baldwin's performance here, and I
Speaker 1: can understand why fans were disappointed that his role was
Speaker 1: recast in Phantasm too. I'm gonna ask a question about Mike,
Speaker 1: but this also applies to Jody and especially Reggie. How
Speaker 1: old is anybody in this movie supposed to be? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little a little foggy, right because Mike, for instance, I,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it would be reasonable to think
Speaker 1: of him as like as as being a high school graduate.
Speaker 1: We haven't, but we have no idea like where he
Speaker 1: is in terms of high school. I assume he's done.
Speaker 1: Like we don't see we don't I don't think we
Speaker 1: really see much in the way of friends. There are
Speaker 1: a few people here and there. There's no I don't
Speaker 1: think mentioned of school. I don't remember anything about like
Speaker 1: his plans for the future. But in a way that's
Speaker 1: kind of perfect, like that it's perfect for this this
Speaker 1: kind of character who is adrift in the very early
Speaker 1: stages of adulthood, that has no concept of like what
Speaker 1: the future means for him, and he's already a feeling
Speaker 1: himself detached or partially detached from the protective aura of childhood.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, You read him as as a high school graduate.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So he drives a car that you
Speaker 1: can't tell if he's supposed to be doing that legally, um,
Speaker 1: and he like knows how to fix cars and things
Speaker 1: like that, and there are other things that would suggest
Speaker 1: he's older. But sometimes also he actually his character is
Speaker 1: supposed to be twelve, Yes, definitely, but how much of
Speaker 1: that is he like just kind of an immature, you know,
Speaker 1: young adult like, but it is very vague, and I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things that works about it,
Speaker 1: Like he's he's a child, but he's he's a youth,
Speaker 1: but he's he's not he's certainly I don't think we
Speaker 1: would say that he's fully you know, in the area
Speaker 1: of adulthood yet because on one level, I don't think
Speaker 1: he has a job or anything. Uh. And his room,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss in a bit, is still very much
Speaker 1: feels like a fortress of of of childhood. It feels
Speaker 1: like a place where you were safe, or you should
Speaker 1: be safe from from sex and death and other complexities
Speaker 1: of the grown up world. I love Mike's room, especially
Speaker 1: because he's got I don't know how they achieve this,
Speaker 1: he's got like a wall sized poster of the surface
Speaker 1: of the moon with the Earth in the background. Is
Speaker 1: that supposed to be just a single poster that you
Speaker 1: buy somewhere. I don't know how they achieve, but it's
Speaker 1: it's floor to ceiling. It's gigantic. It's absolutely dope. And
Speaker 1: then he has this the seventies crocheted blanket. It's like
Speaker 1: yellow and green, and I love those things. I think
Speaker 1: I've I've napped with that very blanket before You're wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not yellow and green. It is white, brown and gold. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's very good, seventies colors. All right, So that's Mike.
Speaker 1: But Mike has a brother. Jody's Mike's brother, right, yeah, alright.
Speaker 1: It's pretty sure on that, but you know, you know
Speaker 1: how it goes, okay. So Jody is played by Bill
Speaker 1: Thornbury born two actor, a musician. Prior to Phantasm, he
Speaker 1: appeared in Summer School Teachers and an episode of The
Speaker 1: Rockford Files. Afterward, he appeared in the TV series Secret
Speaker 1: of Midland Heights, The Lost Empire, and also in Phantasms
Speaker 1: three through five. He also wrote the song in Phantasm,
Speaker 1: sitting here at Midnight. Uh, this is a perfectly fine performance.
Speaker 1: No notes always, is this when we talk about sitting
Speaker 1: here at midnight? Or should we save that for the
Speaker 1: scene in the We should say that because it involves
Speaker 1: characters and actors we haven't introduced yet. Okay, alright, but
Speaker 1: really one of the true stars of this film and
Speaker 1: Phantasm films in general, is the character Reggie, played by
Speaker 1: the actor Reggie Banister. Born horror action icon and musical
Speaker 1: legend Reggie Banister. Uh. Reggie is great in this and
Speaker 1: all subsequent Phantasm films. Uh. He's the perfect mix of
Speaker 1: the improbable and the believable. He's cool, but he's like
Speaker 1: every day cool. He's relatable but can sell the extreme
Speaker 1: situations and threats happening all around him. Reggie Banister is
Speaker 1: such a weird and wonderful presence. I could not imagine
Speaker 1: this movie without him. But every scene where he shows up,
Speaker 1: it adds an additional level of of humor, just like
Speaker 1: because of UM. I don't mean to be insulting in
Speaker 1: this way, but like the way he looks and the
Speaker 1: way he's dressed, and everything is almost always funny in
Speaker 1: this movie. Uh, it's that they give him this ice
Speaker 1: cream man outfit that we'll we'll have to discuss later.
Speaker 1: But he also brings a very strange kind of winking
Speaker 1: attitude to things. For the longest time after I saw
Speaker 1: this movie, I did not realize this actor was a
Speaker 1: different guy from Dean Norris. I used to think that
Speaker 1: Dean Norris was in Phantasm and he was playing Reggie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have similar looks. He's he kind of looks like
Speaker 1: Dean Norris with a ponytail and sideburns. I feel like
Speaker 1: the character of Reggie here is kind of again coming
Speaker 1: back to this youthful energy. It is like a a
Speaker 1: child or a young person's idea of an adult who
Speaker 1: has it all together. You know, they're like, oh, look
Speaker 1: at look at uncle Reggie. Man, he's got it not
Speaker 1: he's He's got this cool job as the ice cream man,
Speaker 1: and he still has time to jam on front porches.
Speaker 1: I want to be like Reggie when I grow up.
Speaker 1: And what of course, when you grow up, you realize, like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: Reggie's life was kind of a mess at the time.
Speaker 1: He was going through some stuff. Um, you know, a
Speaker 1: good guy, but you know, he did not have it
Speaker 1: all together, but he seemed so cool. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: is within the context that, Yeah, Reggie's cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: part of it is yet you don't know anything else
Speaker 1: about him, really, I mean, you know a little stuff,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you don't. You don't have all these other details.
Speaker 1: In subsequent films, they have to make him more like
Speaker 1: tragic and you know, revenge focused and so forth. But
Speaker 1: this and this one, he's just a He's just a
Speaker 1: dude going about his life and then some stuff starts
Speaker 1: going down around him and he he gets involved. Is
Speaker 1: Reggie supposed to be twenty or fifty? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's unknown. It's as unknown as the as it
Speaker 1: would be to the youth who is looking up to him,
Speaker 1: I guess. But I don't think he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: too old, right, No, he's just generally adult. But like
Speaker 1: within the range of adults, that's it's it's up for grabs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the real Reggie Banister was was Slash is Vietnam,
Speaker 1: that turned actor who started out in these early Cossarelli films.
Speaker 1: I think he was in all of his films except
Speaker 1: for Beast Master and the Masters of Horror episode that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, like at least had some sort of
Speaker 1: small role. He branched out into some other works such
Speaker 1: as l a Law, Silent Night, Deadly Night for wish Master,
Speaker 1: and many other horror titles over the years. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it is like he he had this,
Speaker 1: he submitted his status as as an icon in the
Speaker 1: Phantasm films, and that, you know, that got him a
Speaker 1: lot of work. He's apparently, like you know, does a
Speaker 1: lot of conventions or has over the years. Uh. He
Speaker 1: also put out an album in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: titled Naked Truth by the Reggie Banister Band, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Reggie Rocks. There needs to be an official action figure
Speaker 1: of him because we have we have action figures of
Speaker 1: less noble characters. Oh well, I wouldn't. I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: say less noble about this, But I've got a great
Speaker 1: action figure of Tom Atkins from Night of the Creeps.
Speaker 1: If we've got that, we should get a good Reggie
Speaker 1: Banister action figure. Get Reggie on the horn. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can work out the licensing on this all right.
Speaker 1: Since we're talking about a Phantasm film, we're of course
Speaker 1: also talking about the Tall Man played by Anger Scrim
Speaker 1: who lived through I love the vibe of Anger Scrim
Speaker 1: as the Tall Man because it is once again not.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just totally go down smooth. It doesn't feel like, yes,
Speaker 1: this guy, you know, he's not Doug Bradley as pin
Speaker 1: Head or something, just feels like born to play this character.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of occasional awkwardness to him, an awkwardness
Speaker 1: in the way like his posture or the way he'll
Speaker 1: like reach out for a character and a you know,
Speaker 1: jump scare or something. But that awkwardness fits like it
Speaker 1: almost makes the movie better. Yeah, I think part of
Speaker 1: it to the awkwardness is that he the real Anger
Speaker 1: Scrim was six four, and they made him seem even taller,
Speaker 1: you know, by various very practical effects, but one of
Speaker 1: them was by putting him in a smaller suit. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so he looks a little awkward just in the way
Speaker 1: he's wearing his clothing, and it makes him feel like
Speaker 1: he's not six four but like seven four or something.
Speaker 1: So uh Anger Scrim him was it was his acting name,
Speaker 1: but his real name was Lawrence Rory guy Um. He
Speaker 1: adopted the Angus Scrim name for this film. He'd previously
Speaker 1: been in some other works, including Casarelli's Uh Jim the
Speaker 1: World's Greatest, and went on to star in all subsequent
Speaker 1: Phantasm films, as well as appearing and I think often
Speaker 1: smaller roles in films like The Lost Empire Chopping Mall.
Speaker 1: He has a very brief cameo in that. I think
Speaker 1: he's just present. I think he's like a new reporter
Speaker 1: at a news conference about the new mall robots. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that at all. It's it's even if you
Speaker 1: know it's coming, you can miss it. It's so such
Speaker 1: a small role. Um. He's also in Subspecies Mind Warp Munchie,
Speaker 1: I Sell the Dead and John dies at the end.
Speaker 1: He was He was also the opening narrator on Wes
Speaker 1: Craven's wish Master. So if you check out the first
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minutes of wish Master, which is all
Speaker 1: you need, um, you'll get a little do from him.
Speaker 1: He was also a five time Grammy nominated and one
Speaker 1: time Grammy winner uh for writing liner notes on classical
Speaker 1: albums Huh. Yeah. He began his career as a writer
Speaker 1: and a journalist, though his degree was apparently in drama. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently the stage name Angus scrim goes back to
Speaker 1: his college days when he was getting a drama degree.
Speaker 1: I read that he was doing plays off campus when
Speaker 1: he technically was not allowed to do that by the
Speaker 1: theater department that he was studying at. So he tried
Speaker 1: to keep his off campus uh theater theater work secret
Speaker 1: by using a different name, using a stage name, so
Speaker 1: in case he got mentioned in a review or something,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to trace it to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great it's a great moniker. I love it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean Angus Angus s Grim was ultimately
Speaker 1: like this dude was a horror icon. Like he's as
Speaker 1: much a part of these phantasm films as Flying silver
Speaker 1: Balls and Killer Dwarfs. So you mentioned he's in Munchy.
Speaker 1: Is that a Groblins movie? Yes, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: one I've seen, but there were at least a couple
Speaker 1: of Muncheet movie I think Munchie and then Munchie's or
Speaker 1: Munchies too. I don't take me to the bank on
Speaker 1: that one, but yeah, those are Groundlins movies. Okay. A
Speaker 1: couple of other humans involved in this. We have the
Speaker 1: Lady in Lavender, who is the tall Man's female form
Speaker 1: slash sex incarnation. Uh. She's played by Kathy Lester. Lester
Speaker 1: is an actor and a musician, but her main roles
Speaker 1: are this fantas the three Lord of the Dead, and
Speaker 1: I think she also came back in the sixteen phantas
Speaker 1: a movie ravager. Oh, and then Sally as a character
Speaker 1: that pops up in this play by Lynn Eastman Rossy.
Speaker 1: She was only active, but during that time she appeared
Speaker 1: in a number of notable or at least notable to
Speaker 1: US films. The Savage Sasquatch film Night of the Demon
Speaker 1: from Night of the Demon, I remember that. I think
Speaker 1: we watched that one for trailer Talk years ago. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: There are two time to Sasquatch movies, as we've discussed.
Speaker 1: There's the Noble Squatch and the Savage Squatch, and this
Speaker 1: is a Savage Squatsch film. This is where Bigfoot is
Speaker 1: killing people. I think I've been torn on whether Night
Speaker 1: of the Demon is worth covering on this show, because
Speaker 1: it's got some really funny fun stuff in it, but
Speaker 1: I think it's also got some really gross bummer stuff too,
Speaker 1: as a lot of Sasquatch movies do. Uh. Lynn Easman
Speaker 1: Rossy was also in Project X, this is the Matthew
Speaker 1: Broderick eight movie from and she was also in Unlawful
Speaker 1: Entry featuring Kurt Russell, Ray Liotta, and Sonny Carl Davis
Speaker 1: a k A. Rabbit. Oh it took me a minute
Speaker 1: to figure this. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Transfers. Yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: transfers to Rabbit. Uh notable performance alright, Um. Getting into
Speaker 1: the effects here, I mainly wanted to commun the effects
Speaker 1: are mostly really good in this and hold up with
Speaker 1: one notable exception, but all the stuff with like the
Speaker 1: flying silver balls and so forth, I think still look
Speaker 1: really good. But I want to all out the fact
Speaker 1: that Gene Corso, who Lived Through, has sound effects credit
Speaker 1: on this, shared with lore and Mitchell. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: sound effects and phantasm are really great and I think
Speaker 1: certainly helps sell that weird aura of the film, especially
Speaker 1: the weird are of the flying death spheres. As a
Speaker 1: sound editor of Corso worked on such films as Queen
Speaker 1: of Blood, Star Wars, The China Syndrome, Mutant, Predator, Deep
Speaker 1: Star six, and The Rift Um and then Loraine Mitchell,
Speaker 1: who also worked on this, worked on some of these
Speaker 1: films as well, along with Conan the Destroyer and Rambo three.
Speaker 1: I think in general audiences really underestimate how much difference
Speaker 1: a good audio element makes in a horror movie good
Speaker 1: good sound effects, atmospheric sound design, and good music. Would
Speaker 1: this movie be remembered anything like the way it is
Speaker 1: if it did not have the quality of sound effects
Speaker 1: and music that it does. Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: that's that's a great question. And I'm not sure it
Speaker 1: would have because, yeah, the sound effects are great, but
Speaker 1: you have music is wonderful as well iconic. Really. The
Speaker 1: music is credited to Fred Myro, who lived ninety nine
Speaker 1: through and Malcolm C. Gray, who lived through two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. Sea Gray's only film credits are for the
Speaker 1: Phantasm theme, but but Myro has more of a history
Speaker 1: as a well. First of all, a third generation musical professional,
Speaker 1: his father Joseph Myro wrote you make Me Feel So
Speaker 1: Young that song um. He and Myro also worked on
Speaker 1: Phantasm Too and Phantasm three, but his other scores include
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three Soilent Green and Scarecrow, You Got My
Speaker 1: You Got the Gears Turn in On. Some mild thematic
Speaker 1: connections between Phantasm and Soilent Green. Both involve a discovery
Speaker 1: of a secret science fiction manufacturing process where one of
Speaker 1: the ingredients is people. That's an interest. You know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting you can think of these various films. You think,
Speaker 1: a season of the Witch, Halloween, three films about at
Speaker 1: least slightly about uh, industrial malfeasance, some sort of um
Speaker 1: like evil industrial plot to mass produce something that is
Speaker 1: destructive to humanity. Yeah. But anyway, the Phantasm score absolutely great.
Speaker 1: I have no reservations about saying that the theme is
Speaker 1: catchy and creepy, perfectly matching the dreamlin quality of the film.
Speaker 1: And even outside of the main Phantasm theme song, there
Speaker 1: are all these wonderful hypnotic soundscapes as well. Uh so
Speaker 1: you have get synth and guitar, and there we also
Speaker 1: have just gongs and chimes and symbols and bells creating
Speaker 1: this this wonderful hallucinatory effect. I agree, love all that stuff.
Speaker 1: There is one thing I noticed. I didn't compare them
Speaker 1: side to side to see exactly how similar they are,
Speaker 1: but I did hear some strong overlap between. I think
Speaker 1: it was the main synth theme from Phantasm and one
Speaker 1: of the tunes that is used in John Carpenter's The Fog.
Speaker 1: Though of course I'm not alleging musical plagiarism or anything.
Speaker 1: You know, there are only so many notes, so you're
Speaker 1: gonna get some similar eerie tunes. But I I heard
Speaker 1: that kinship. Of course the fog didn't come out to night.
Speaker 1: Wait what my god? You're right, I had the order
Speaker 1: inverted in my head, so if there is any inspiration,
Speaker 1: it would have gone the other way. Yeah, but like
Speaker 1: I said, there's only so many notes you can play.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's jump into phantasm. Well mercifully
Speaker 1: breaking our streak of movies that begin by looking at
Speaker 1: the stars in space, this film does not begin in space. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's just phantasm in red letters on a black background,
Speaker 1: and then we cut to an establishing shot of a mansion.
Speaker 1: It's a oh, I did not look up architectural styles.
Speaker 1: Do you know what? Do you know what style of
Speaker 1: house this is? Is like a big white mansion with
Speaker 1: columns out front, three columns and sort of a wrap
Speaker 1: around veranda. I believe, yeah, old American. I think it's
Speaker 1: the architectural styling here. And then we're just straight on
Speaker 1: from this to an absolutely hilariously awkward sex scene in
Speaker 1: a cemetery featuring a dude who looks like Lemmy from
Speaker 1: motor Head and a lady with blonde hair and purple
Speaker 1: eye makeup, lady and lavender. We find out, yes, she's
Speaker 1: a recurring character. In fact, we find out she is
Speaker 1: just a sort of a glamour a mirage, and in
Speaker 1: fact she is Anger Scrim, but just in a different form.
Speaker 1: And we see that because okay, they're they're having sex
Speaker 1: in a cemetery. And then suddenly the lady pulls out
Speaker 1: a dagger and she stabs Lemmy. She stabs the dude,
Speaker 1: and then through the magic of film editing, she transforms
Speaker 1: into an old man and it is Angus Scrim. We
Speaker 1: will see him many more times in the film. The
Speaker 1: soundtrack in the scene is symbols and whooshing wind noises.
Speaker 1: Uh So, it's weird mix of like kind of cool atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But the staging of the sex scene is so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's absurd. I mean, obviously, depictions of human sex
Speaker 1: and film should always be considered with a grain of salt,
Speaker 1: but this one feels like it was constructed via youthful
Speaker 1: hearsay about what the grown up world of sexuality actually
Speaker 1: consists of. You know, it's one of these where it's
Speaker 1: like full clothing, um, strange positioning, if you were to
Speaker 1: try and figure out the details of human sexuality based
Speaker 1: on this scene, you would be left with just a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about how everything lines up. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get I'm not gonna get gross. I
Speaker 1: don't wanna get too specific about the mechanics of horror
Speaker 1: movie sex. But it is greatly confusing at what angles
Speaker 1: these two people's bodies are supposed to be positioned, And
Speaker 1: it just it makes you It feels like something like
Speaker 1: Ralph Wiggham would would explain, you know. And then the
Speaker 1: baby looked at me. Yeah, I have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's absurd, but it also again, I think it
Speaker 1: falls in line with a youthful energy of the film.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, like, what is sex? What is death? Uh?
Speaker 1: Mike doesn't know? Uh, And and part of this film
Speaker 1: is Mike's dream quest to to try and figure that out.
Speaker 1: But okay, lady and Lavender is actually anger scrim she
Speaker 1: kills Slimmy and then it's morning. Uh in the cemetery
Speaker 1: and we're back at the mansion, but it's daylight, and
Speaker 1: we here we meet two of our main characters. By
Speaker 1: the way, we see a sign says it's Morning Side
Speaker 1: Morning Side Cemetery, and we meet our main characters, Jody
Speaker 1: and Reggie. Jody is tall, handsome, big mane of messy hair.
Speaker 1: Reggie is, uh, he's shorter, he's wearing cool sunglasses. And
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, uh, so he's like bald in
Speaker 1: front with a horseshoe of hair and then a ponytail.
Speaker 1: So I was gonna say it's like business in front,
Speaker 1: party and back, but really it's more like closed for
Speaker 1: business in front, party and back and close to a
Speaker 1: business mostly on the top as well. It's a substantial
Speaker 1: bald bald pattern there. Um, but still eric very cool. Look,
Speaker 1: he's got some nice sideburns there that come to a
Speaker 1: nice little, you know, goring point. I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: denying Reggie's cool. Yeah. So they meet up and they say, hey,
Speaker 1: Tommy's gone hell of a way to Indo Trio. So Tommy,
Speaker 1: I think, meaning the guy from the opening scene who
Speaker 1: got stabbed was their friend. They believe he committed suicide.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, uh they think that, but that's
Speaker 1: what what they have been led to believe. Do you Rob,
Speaker 1: did you detect that they were supposed to all be
Speaker 1: in a band together. Yeah, I kind of got that vibe,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember if there was a specific line
Speaker 1: that that actually cemented that concept. I mean, clearly Jody
Speaker 1: looked like a dude that was in a band. It's
Speaker 1: just a question of was he in a band with
Speaker 1: these two. Jody looks like he would fit right in
Speaker 1: in a one piece disco jumpsuit doing a musical number
Speaker 1: in like a variety show. Yeah. Anyway, we go into
Speaker 1: a nice creepy atmospheric scene where Jody walks around alone
Speaker 1: in the halls of the funeral home, and the halls
Speaker 1: are lined with white marble covered in a weird pattern
Speaker 1: of blue veins. I love the atmosphere of the the
Speaker 1: inside of the funeral home. Yeah, I mean it's in
Speaker 1: many ways, it's an obvious set and and yet the uniformity,
Speaker 1: I think gives it a nice otherworldly vibe. And and
Speaker 1: you know this, it feels sterile and like a place
Speaker 1: between and at the same time it does feel authentically
Speaker 1: like a mausoleum, like a mini mausoleums also have that vibe,
Speaker 1: except I don't think it's quite as the ones I've
Speaker 1: been in anyway, it doesn't feel quite as monotonous. It's
Speaker 1: not quite as uniform. You do have some little details
Speaker 1: that are that differentiate one area from another. It might
Speaker 1: be flowers in front of these remains, etcetera. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this this whole vibe here. It feels just enough like
Speaker 1: a mausoleum that it doesn't feel like they're on a spaceship,
Speaker 1: but it also kind of feels like they're on a spaceship.
Speaker 1: I have questions about how this mausoleum is supposed to work,
Speaker 1: because I think we see later that, like many mausoleums,
Speaker 1: it has these vaults. They're built into the walls, they
Speaker 1: have like a name on them, and then what appears
Speaker 1: to be some kind of covering or door. But later
Speaker 1: we see that you can just open them up like
Speaker 1: a file cabinet, and there is a like a file
Speaker 1: cabinet drawer, and then there's a coffin inside which you
Speaker 1: could presumably just open up and see the body. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I I'm not sure I've never opened one up,
Speaker 1: but this, if you take this movie at face value,
Speaker 1: it it's telling you that, yeah, these are just like
Speaker 1: more drawers you can just roll on open and look
Speaker 1: at the body. I am not an expert in the
Speaker 1: funerary Arts and Sciences, but I think there would be
Speaker 1: problems with that design anyway. So Jody's walking around and
Speaker 1: here's these strange sounds that in the subtitles for the
Speaker 1: version of the movie I watched it called the sounds warbling.
Speaker 1: I would call it squawking or growling, maybe snarling. And
Speaker 1: of course in a bit, we'll find out what is
Speaker 1: making that sound, right, uh, and we see that. Let's
Speaker 1: see Jody visits the grave of his parents, we find
Speaker 1: out they've passed away, and then we meet Mike, Jody's
Speaker 1: little brother, who is just tearing through the grass of
Speaker 1: the cemetery on a dirt bike. It's like he's riding
Speaker 1: a chainsaw. Uh. Trivia fact I found is that the
Speaker 1: motorbike used here is called a Hodaka road toad. But
Speaker 1: he's literally just driving like between the grave markers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some kind of psychomania vibes to this, uh, this motorcycle
Speaker 1: right here. And he also hears the weird chittering and
Speaker 1: snarling sounds. And we see a few glimpses of what
Speaker 1: appeared to be little figures in dark cloaks dashing behind gravestones. Oh,
Speaker 1: the dwarves and I think we're supposed to understand that
Speaker 1: Mike is sort of a little engineer, like he has
Speaker 1: an affinity for machines. We see him later repairing Jody's
Speaker 1: muscle car at multiple points, uh and uh, Like there's
Speaker 1: a part where he's working on the engine while Jody
Speaker 1: is just standing there talking to a friend like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ditch this kid and get out of town.
Speaker 1: Um anyway, Jody inside the funeral home goes investigating the
Speaker 1: weird sounds, but he doesn't quite figure it out. Instead,
Speaker 1: there's a great jump scare where we first hear Angus
Speaker 1: scrim talk. He like comes up behind him and slaps
Speaker 1: down on his shoulders as the funeral it's about to begin. Yes,
Speaker 1: now I started noticing a pattern. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you picked up on the same thing, Rob, Like in
Speaker 1: the funeral scene, there's a very symmetrical shot where we
Speaker 1: see the church service filmed from straight down the back
Speaker 1: of the aisle where it's like a perfectly balanced frame.
Speaker 1: There are people sitting in the pews on both sides
Speaker 1: and the columns lining on both sides, so it's it's
Speaker 1: totally symmetrical. We already saw shots like that when Jody
Speaker 1: was walking through the mausoleum, you know, he'd be framed
Speaker 1: in doorway with all these decorations that are exactly symmetrical
Speaker 1: on both sides. The movie seems to be fond of
Speaker 1: shots like this where the subject is in the middle
Speaker 1: and then it's just mirror image is on both sides
Speaker 1: of the screen. Yeah. Yeah, And I think especially with
Speaker 1: with this scene, but also with the mausoleum scenes as well,
Speaker 1: there's this impression of narrowing, you know, as if narrowing
Speaker 1: towards the death point, which I think lines up nicely
Speaker 1: with the theme of the movie. And then the idea
Speaker 1: that you know, we're propelled through it, that Mike is
Speaker 1: propelled through this world, um, and you know it keeps
Speaker 1: the pacing contributes to that as well. Also, I want
Speaker 1: to point out, I don't know if you noticed this,
Speaker 1: but in this particular, I assume this is a like
Speaker 1: an actual church and actual location and they didn't build
Speaker 1: any of this or or decorated a lot. But there's
Speaker 1: a weird painting above the altar in this scene that
Speaker 1: again I assume it's just a legit in church painting,
Speaker 1: but it has kind of zombies Jesus vibes to it
Speaker 1: like Jesus has his arms up like Frankenstein. A bit
Speaker 1: oh interesting. I didn't notice that. Uh. I was just thinking,
Speaker 1: what church let phantasm shoot inside? I mean maybe they,
Speaker 1: I don't know how it went down. Maybe they didn't
Speaker 1: tell them what the film was about, or maybe they
Speaker 1: explained the theme and the church was like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: works for us, as long as you get to Jesus
Speaker 1: painting and there, we're very proud of this. Okay. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So Reggie and Jodie are there for the funeral of
Speaker 1: their their friend there I guess their bandmate maybe, and Mike,
Speaker 1: the younger guys trying to peep on the funeral with binoculars.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand this at all, Like, why isn't he
Speaker 1: just there instead he's like in the bushes with binoculars
Speaker 1: watching them carry the coffin. He Mike is a consonant voyeur.
Speaker 1: He is just he's just constantly spying on sex and death,
Speaker 1: as is the you know, the very definition of the
Speaker 1: of the voyeuristic impulse. Like his brother's meeting some lady, well,
Speaker 1: Mike's and the bushes, He's gonna see what's happening here,
Speaker 1: somebody's moving a casket around Mike's and the bushes. He's
Speaker 1: got the binoculars out. He wants to see how these
Speaker 1: worlds work, these worlds that he is not yet entered
Speaker 1: into but seems destined to be a part of. But
Speaker 1: because he's spying on the funeral, he's still watching. After
Speaker 1: all of the uh, the mourners leave and he gets
Speaker 1: to see something very odd happen the tall man and
Speaker 1: get scrim after everybody's gone. Instead of, you know, like
Speaker 1: letting the workers bury the casket, he picks up the casket,
Speaker 1: takes it back to the hearse and puts it inside.
Speaker 1: And he's carrying the entire thing by himself. Not only
Speaker 1: is he most probably evil, he's also cheap. He's not
Speaker 1: not hiring anybody else to carry these for him. He's
Speaker 1: just picking it up himself. We also get a sense
Speaker 1: of this when we see Jody's body in the casket.
Speaker 1: Jody looks a little googleish. It's like the tall Man
Speaker 1: is not doing a good job. And uh, I'm not sorry,
Speaker 1: not Jody. Uh what's his name? Tom friend? Tommy? Tommy
Speaker 1: looks googleish, does not look like he's been embalmed to
Speaker 1: like a to the degree that you would want your
Speaker 1: loved woman embombed, I would say, but he looks like
Speaker 1: a movie corpse. So mission accomplished, right, Okay, so we
Speaker 1: got the set up. Mike has seen something very weird
Speaker 1: at the Morningside Cemetery, and after that weird reveal, Mike
Speaker 1: walks around alone with excellent theme music playing some great
Speaker 1: seventies horror movie atmosphere. You know, a lot of great
Speaker 1: horror movies from from this time get so much mileage,
Speaker 1: like they stick in your mind, not just because of
Speaker 1: the scary scenes, but because of the eerie scenes where
Speaker 1: a character is merely sort of walking through the landscape
Speaker 1: and the music is playing. I think about the early
Speaker 1: scenes of going down the sidewalks in Halloween, or the
Speaker 1: way Mike is just walking around, maybe going to visit,
Speaker 1: uh the Reverend Mother guyas Helen Mohiam in this movie. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where we get to our wonderful Danagessor at
Speaker 1: scene straight Dune rip off, and I love it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Clearly Don was a fan of Dune. In fact, he
Speaker 1: it's explicit later when Jody goes to a bar, did
Speaker 1: you notice this in the bar is called Dunes? Bar Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was obviously a big out of the book. The
Speaker 1: Lynch adaptation wouldn't come out to eighty four, so yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely a written sci fi fan. In fact, we see
Speaker 1: there's another scene where we see a sci fi paperback
Speaker 1: on Mike's desk or bedside table. Uh, and I looked
Speaker 1: it up. I forget what it is off hand, but
Speaker 1: it is a particular sci fi novel that was included.
Speaker 1: I guess to let you know that Mike's into sci fi,
Speaker 1: that maybe he's a little more creative, uh than other
Speaker 1: people in the community around him. The book was I
Speaker 1: Am Legion by Rogers Alasnie, how is it? Oh good?
Speaker 1: My name is Legion? Maybe I don't know. I've never
Speaker 1: read it, okay, but that sounds right. Yeah. I looked
Speaker 1: it up and then forgot it. Promptly forgot it. But
Speaker 1: it has has very cool uh, a little late seventies
Speaker 1: paperback sci fi cover art. I love it so clearly
Speaker 1: this scene is just taken from from doing the book.
Speaker 1: But what would you say is literally supposed to be
Speaker 1: happening here? Is this lady is supposed to be a
Speaker 1: fortune teller. She's like dressed in all black wearing dark
Speaker 1: sunglasses inside and in a room full of candles, and
Speaker 1: she speaks through her granddaughter. Yeah yeah, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's already got a creepy vibe that you're probably if
Speaker 1: you've not seen the film, you're thinking, well, it's not
Speaker 1: like then they make him put his hand in a
Speaker 1: box and experience phantom pain. Um, and then tell him
Speaker 1: that fear is the mind killer. Um. Well, actually all
Speaker 1: of that happens. That's exactly what happens in the scene.
Speaker 1: They don't say mind killer. She says, fear is the killer. Yes,
Speaker 1: it doesn't quite have the same ring. No, And then
Speaker 1: I think the box vanishes, right like, straight up vanishes
Speaker 1: in front of our eyes, the viewer's eyes on the table, yes,
Speaker 1: suggesting that not only in the pain is the pain
Speaker 1: in the box and illusion created telepathically by the reverend
Speaker 1: mother here, but that the box itself is there wasn't
Speaker 1: even a box. Now what does all this mean within
Speaker 1: the context of the film. I don't know what unknown, Well,
Speaker 1: Mike is told not to fear, he said, The granddaughter says,
Speaker 1: fear is the killer. Don't fear. That's what grandmother wants
Speaker 1: you to learn. It was all in your mind. And
Speaker 1: then Mike says, oh, yeah, I guess it will come.
Speaker 1: We will come back around to this later. This film
Speaker 1: does do a pretty good job of if it establishes something,
Speaker 1: it will come back around to it. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: it's time to talk about sitting here at midnight. So
Speaker 1: at Jody and Mike's house, Jodi is sitting there on
Speaker 1: the front porch playing a playing a stratocaster plugged into
Speaker 1: a Fender amp and uh, and then Reggie pulls up.
Speaker 1: Reggie now is in his workoutfit. He is wearing an
Speaker 1: ice cream suit. I don't know. He's wearing like a
Speaker 1: white shirt and white pants with a black bow type
Speaker 1: and he's driving a truck that says Reggie's ice Cream.
Speaker 1: And it's got a guitar tucked into one of the
Speaker 1: I don't know, the cooler boxes, I guess. And so
Speaker 1: so Reggie gets out of the car, comes up and
Speaker 1: plays guitar alongside Jody. They play a song called Sitting
Speaker 1: Here at Midnight, where the lyrics are I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: here at midnight, and I'll be sitting here till noon.
Speaker 1: You see, my lady left me lonely. Yes she did.
Speaker 1: My baby left me blue. And then they both go
Speaker 1: oh and then play a riff. It's and I will
Speaker 1: give him credit. Both actors are actually playing guitars here,
Speaker 1: just like moving their hands while the soundtrack plays. I'll
Speaker 1: also say that a lesser movie would have only played
Speaker 1: part of the song or would have cut away to
Speaker 1: done some sort of a montage or something. But now
Speaker 1: we did get. We get the full short performance of
Speaker 1: this song right here on the porch, and I dig it. Also,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that the ice cream truck says Reggie's ice
Speaker 1: cream somehow that I missed out on that when i've
Speaker 1: every time I've watched it. That that's that's an interesting detail, Like,
Speaker 1: not only is Reggie the ice cream man, he's apparently
Speaker 1: a business owner his own business. He's really plugged in
Speaker 1: at the local chamber of commerce. Now we do get
Speaker 1: a nice weird moment there at the end of the
Speaker 1: performance with a tuning fork, though, yes, we do well.
Speaker 1: First of all, after they play I think Jody is
Speaker 1: not bad, and then Reggie says we're Hot is Love,
Speaker 1: you know, which makes me think Hot is Love was
Speaker 1: the name of their band. Oh man, that's good, that
Speaker 1: would have totally fit. But so Reggie pulls out a
Speaker 1: tuning fork. I guess to tune his guitar, but instead
Speaker 1: we just really zone in on the fork and we
Speaker 1: listen to it it humming out a tune until Reggie
Speaker 1: mutes it by putting his two fingers on the end
Speaker 1: of the of the fork. Times. We will come back
Speaker 1: to this detail as well. Now, some more stuff happens.
Speaker 1: We see random like a random blond lady walk into
Speaker 1: the funeral home and then open a door and light
Speaker 1: shines on her and she screams. And there are a
Speaker 1: few things in the movie that are just like random
Speaker 1: things happen and I can't really connect them to anything else.
Speaker 1: So you know, something like that happens. But hey, let's
Speaker 1: go to the bar with Jody. He's going to go
Speaker 1: to Dunes Cantina, have a beer and and try to
Speaker 1: try to make some friends. And Mike is here for this.
Speaker 1: Mike is watching the whole time. Yes, Mike, oh of
Speaker 1: course follows Jody everywhere, so he's outside peeping through the
Speaker 1: window of the bar. As as Jody's like chatting up
Speaker 1: a lady, chatting up a blond lady who they're hitting
Speaker 1: it off, and he doesn't know who she is, but
Speaker 1: we do because we saw that that horribly awkward opening scene.
Speaker 1: It's the lady who stabbed Tommy and turned into Anger Scrim.
Speaker 1: So Jody don't go home with Anger Scrim. But it
Speaker 1: looks like he's gonna. She leads him off to the cemetery.
Speaker 1: I guess the goal is to kill him. Mike is
Speaker 1: still following them, peeping on everything, and then suddenly everything
Speaker 1: is interrupted because snarling, warbling noises start up again, and
Speaker 1: some little creature that looks like a jahwa, like a
Speaker 1: short figuring brown robes, charges out at him from the darkness,
Speaker 1: and and Mike runs away, screaming. This interrupts everything. Everybody
Speaker 1: runs off, and Jody runs after Mike. There's some really
Speaker 1: goofy sex jokes in the scene, and I don't feel
Speaker 1: like describing, but anyway, so Jody ends up running off
Speaker 1: after after Mike. Yeah, it seems a little bit big
Speaker 1: cringe e in some respects, but yeah, this is our
Speaker 1: first glimpse of the dwarves actually scampering about and causing mischief,
Speaker 1: one of the key aspects of the Phantasm films. Now,
Speaker 1: is this a good place to talk about the connection
Speaker 1: between the Dwarves in this movie and the Jaws in
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Because we gotta admit in their in the
Speaker 1: brown robes with the pointy hoods, they look extremely similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a strong comparison to be made, very very
Speaker 1: similar vibes. It of course different, ultimately different energies involved,
Speaker 1: like Jawas and Star Wars. They are just technological scavengers
Speaker 1: looking to pick up the pieces and and make a
Speaker 1: few deals here and there. They're not evil. They're very
Speaker 1: neutral creatures and and as we've seen in later installments
Speaker 1: of Star Wars, and you can have quite good relations
Speaker 1: with the job was. They're they're they're not indecent folk. Uh,
Speaker 1: these creature here's the dwarves of phantasm. These are little monsters.
Speaker 1: Uh that snarling little zombies. Yeah, they are up to
Speaker 1: no good. They will attack you, they will do god
Speaker 1: knows what. Now. I think a lot of people have
Speaker 1: assumed that these creatures were inspired by the design of
Speaker 1: the Jawas. But in uh Don costa Ali's defense, they
Speaker 1: had apparently they had this idea and started shooting the
Speaker 1: movie before Star Wars came out, So I think it
Speaker 1: looks like this is just a coincidence. Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: and we do. Unlike the Jawas which in which we
Speaker 1: we never see the Jawas face, we will get to
Speaker 1: see the face of one of these dwarves later on.
Speaker 1: And I should also point out that by the time
Speaker 1: they make Phantasm Too, uh, in which they had a
Speaker 1: much bigger budget. By the way, one of the things
Speaker 1: they use that budget on is always showing the dwarves faces.
Speaker 1: So the dwarves look extra evil and nasty in that
Speaker 1: film because their faces are never really they may be there.
Speaker 1: They is maybe obscured in some scenes, but there a
Speaker 1: whole lot of scenes where you get to see their
Speaker 1: little snarling faces. So anyway, coming back to the plot,
Speaker 1: here's what some weird stuff happened. So Jody runs off
Speaker 1: after Mike because Mike was scared and screaming, uh, chased
Speaker 1: by a necro dwarf and uh. Mike tries to explain
Speaker 1: to Jodie what happened, and Jody says it was probably
Speaker 1: just a gopher in heat, okay, uh. And then and
Speaker 1: then Jody sends Mike home with his car, and then
Speaker 1: Mike wakes and then Mike like wakes up and he's
Speaker 1: in his bed with the groovy blanket with the brown,
Speaker 1: white and gold stripes. But the tall man is standing
Speaker 1: over his bed and his bed is in the middle
Speaker 1: of a cemetery, and then zombies like scream and grab him.
Speaker 1: So I guess this is a dream and then he
Speaker 1: wakes up. But like, if this was a dream, how
Speaker 1: far back does that go? Like how how much of
Speaker 1: it was a dream? We don't know when the dream
Speaker 1: sequence started? Yeah, more, when does it end? Is it
Speaker 1: still going? Is the tall man about to do a jump?
Speaker 1: Scare right behind you right now, Joe? It might have.
Speaker 1: But those questions aside, this is a fabulous scene. This
Speaker 1: is one that I think is used in the trailer
Speaker 1: as well, just the symmetrical shut shooting of it, the
Speaker 1: way it's all framed up, the darkness, and it also
Speaker 1: just like it sums up a lot of the attitude
Speaker 1: of phantasm. Like here is Mike, the youth in bed,
Speaker 1: clearly troubled, and like Death, the personification of Death is
Speaker 1: like literally at the head of his bed, leering over him,
Speaker 1: and then these things jump out and start, you know,
Speaker 1: presumably about to just tear him in half. Then one
Speaker 1: of the funniest things is it goes from he's waking
Speaker 1: up from a dream sequence, and then it goes straight
Speaker 1: to another scene that feels so dream like. He's it's
Speaker 1: it looks kind of gauzy, and Mike is wandering down
Speaker 1: the sidewalk like sucking on a lollypop and check king
Speaker 1: the change tray and pay phones for change, and then
Speaker 1: he looks across the street and there's the Tall Man
Speaker 1: just walking past like a clothing store. And then there's
Speaker 1: Reggie's ice cream truck in the foreground, and Reggie is
Speaker 1: opening up the freezer and pulling ice cream out, and
Speaker 1: there is fog emanating from the freezer. And then the
Speaker 1: tall Man stops right behind Reggie and stands in the
Speaker 1: freezer fog and turns and looks at Mike and does
Speaker 1: this monstrous sniff. He's like, you know, breathing in uh,
Speaker 1: looking in something some kind of weird agony or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: And what what the heck is going on here? Did
Speaker 1: this really happen? Is this a dream? What is the
Speaker 1: tall Man doing when he's sniffing the freezer fog? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, it's definitely another great scene that has
Speaker 1: dreamline qualities, and I think has that strong youth I
Speaker 1: have of like here here the youth is seeing the
Speaker 1: true creepy nature of reality. It's lost to all the
Speaker 1: other adults. Like here's Reggie Reggieta. Notice that's going on
Speaker 1: at all. Reggie's just doing his thing, doing his job. Um.
Speaker 1: I also love how this scene it seems to imply
Speaker 1: or it's always struck me this way, this being a
Speaker 1: moment where the tall man is looking right at us
Speaker 1: the viewer. He's looking right back at Mike. So it's
Speaker 1: like the abyss staring back. It's game recognizing game here,
Speaker 1: it's like Mike and the tall Man have a connection.
Speaker 1: And we'll see another version of this later on in
Speaker 1: the picture, Yes we will. But I just want to
Speaker 1: flag again that I have completely lost track of what's
Speaker 1: the dream and what's reality by this point in the movie.
Speaker 1: This is This is probably a good point to mention
Speaker 1: in Phantasm to again. Universal comes in gives him a
Speaker 1: bunch of funding to finally make a sequel to Phantasm,
Speaker 1: and apparently they made some demands, as you might expect
Speaker 1: when a big studio comes in and gives you a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of money. Uh, they said, well, we need
Speaker 1: some romantic uh interests for our characters, especially for Mike. Um,
Speaker 1: you can't bring back Baldwin and Reggie Banister. You get
Speaker 1: to bring back one and the other one you have
Speaker 1: to recast. So in Phantasm too, they recast Mike, which,
Speaker 1: given the choice, was the correct choice to make. Like,
Speaker 1: you don't recast Reggie, you gotta you can't recast Reggie,
Speaker 1: must have Reggie Banister. Yeah. Yeah. But one of the
Speaker 1: other apparently, apparently one of the other studio demands was
Speaker 1: no dream sequences. Nobody's dreaming in this film. It's I
Speaker 1: guess what they thought. It was too confusing, and they're like,
Speaker 1: everything needs to be linear. Nobody has any dreams, which
Speaker 1: is a weird demand to make on a sequel to
Speaker 1: this film, a film that, like you said, on one hand,
Speaker 1: like that's the whole quality of it. It's like we
Speaker 1: don't know when it's a dream and when it's not.
Speaker 1: Even the title of the film is Phantasm. It is
Speaker 1: supposed to be like an illusion, uh, something you're not
Speaker 1: sure about. But you also understand where the studio is like, look,
Speaker 1: this is too much needed to be nice and linear.
Speaker 1: No dreams, that's a tragedy. I'm gonna have to I
Speaker 1: wonder if I'll get mad when I watch P two. Oh.
Speaker 1: PP two is still a lot of fun. It's very
Speaker 1: much an action film. It's kind of like the Aliens
Speaker 1: to this film's Alien, but without the consistency of quality.
Speaker 1: Like Phantasm Too is a dumber film, but also a
Speaker 1: film that clearly had more money to throw at killer
Speaker 1: ball effects and dwarf effects. And also, yeah, Reggie is
Speaker 1: transformed into a pure action hero. And so it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of fun as well, but it's
Speaker 1: it's very different and definitely, uh, there's something to be
Speaker 1: said for it's um, it's moving away from the dream
Speaker 1: imagery for the most part. So the next thing is
Speaker 1: we're going to spend some time with Mike and Jody
Speaker 1: in their house. I love their house. There's a part
Speaker 1: where Mike is like underneath Jody's muscle car doing repairs
Speaker 1: on it again because apparently, you know, he's he's got
Speaker 1: full mechanic training even though he is only twelve or nineteen,
Speaker 1: and he is, and he is attacked by the necro
Speaker 1: Dwarves while he is under the car, but then in
Speaker 1: trying to defend himself, he ends up bonking Jody on
Speaker 1: the toe with a hammer. But anyway, this is when
Speaker 1: we finally get a really good look at their house
Speaker 1: and all of the the length of the carpet fibers
Speaker 1: will amaze you. Yeah, there's the secret the scene where
Speaker 1: I think this is later on, but there's a scene
Speaker 1: with the stairs in the house where these like floating
Speaker 1: stairs and they're all carpeted in and you just want
Speaker 1: to you just want to take your shoes off and
Speaker 1: and walk on those things. Except they also look like
Speaker 1: they would have protruding hidden nails. Well, it is the venties,
Speaker 1: so it's like everything's everything in the house looks comfy
Speaker 1: and yet possibly dangerous. Anyway, Mike chills out for a
Speaker 1: bit in his glorious bedroom with the shot of the
Speaker 1: moon on the wall and like a John Lennon poster,
Speaker 1: I think, one of those maps of the world that
Speaker 1: cuts Asia in half instead of dividing in the pick
Speaker 1: ocean um. And we see him tuck a gigantic bowie
Speaker 1: knife into a sheet strap to his calf and the
Speaker 1: knife is as thick as his leg, so when he
Speaker 1: put pulls his pants leg down over it, it looks
Speaker 1: really funny. Uh. He also packs a crucifix, but this
Speaker 1: is your classic suiting up scene. It's like when Van
Speaker 1: Helsing is packing his steaks in his holy water into
Speaker 1: the kid. But it's time to head off to the
Speaker 1: Morningside Cemetery at night for some reason, I guess to
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on with the tall man and
Speaker 1: uh and the jaw was so mike Head's over. He
Speaker 1: breaks through a window to sneak in. He's walking around
Speaker 1: in the dark with a lighter. He ends up hiding
Speaker 1: in a coffin in a classic horror movie trope, somebody
Speaker 1: gotta hide in a coffin because somebody's looking for them
Speaker 1: while a very blank faced man in a white hat
Speaker 1: creeps around looking for him. Rob, did you understand that
Speaker 1: this man in the white hat is supposed to be
Speaker 1: of the same species as Anger scrim Um? I think
Speaker 1: he's more well, you know, it's it's hard this one.
Speaker 1: This is a point where it's difficult to sort of
Speaker 1: think about this film completely on its own terms, because
Speaker 1: knowing what we know about later installments, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's clear that this guy is just an underling. But
Speaker 1: if I were just watching this film for the first time, yeah,
Speaker 1: I might think this must be this being must be
Speaker 1: of the same species or origin as the Tall Man,
Speaker 1: because they're both the they're like they I don't think
Speaker 1: they exchange any words. They have this kind of like
Speaker 1: wordless correspondence energy. But the scene here is really cool though,
Speaker 1: you know, with him hiding in the casket, I feel
Speaker 1: like it has genuine tension to it. And this is
Speaker 1: cool bit where he's he's used the lighter that he
Speaker 1: was showing off earlier to keep the casket from closing
Speaker 1: completely because I don't know, maybe it would self lock
Speaker 1: and then he would be stuck in there and buried
Speaker 1: or found later. I wonder if there's there are unused
Speaker 1: scenes that describe who the man in the white hat is,
Speaker 1: like maybe he's a human rin Field to the Tall Man,
Speaker 1: because is Did you read the same thing I did
Speaker 1: Rob about how the original cut of Phantasm was over
Speaker 1: three hours long? Oh wow, Well, I guess. I mean
Speaker 1: that's not out of character with a lot of films
Speaker 1: where the initial cut is just really bloated. But if
Speaker 1: that's the case with this film, I mean, good job
Speaker 1: on them cutting it down and it being this consistently entertaining.
Speaker 1: There's not a dull moment in the film. It's like
Speaker 1: an hour and twentysomething. So if that's true, that would
Speaker 1: have mean that would have meant we lost half the movie.
Speaker 1: I think they pull some stuff out later in uh
Speaker 1: some of the sequels, like even like pretty you know,
Speaker 1: like decades later in some of the sequels, they like,
Speaker 1: We're able to pull out whole sequences that they didn't
Speaker 1: use well. Anyway, Mike is attacked by the man in
Speaker 1: the white hat, but at the same time he is
Speaker 1: being pursued by the ball. This is when we first
Speaker 1: really meet the ball. There is a shiny metal sphere
Speaker 1: that flies through the air at Mike and it's coming
Speaker 1: at him to uh to to drive into his face
Speaker 1: while the man in the white hat is holding him.
Speaker 1: But Mike bites the guy on the arm and then
Speaker 1: ducks down. And then the ball hits the guy in
Speaker 1: the white hat instead, and it I remember when I
Speaker 1: first saw this, the entire room was just in shock
Speaker 1: watching what the ball did. It's it's a roll that
Speaker 1: beautiful ball footage moment where the drill goes in between
Speaker 1: the eyes and then it just squirts out a jet
Speaker 1: of blood from the back of the ball. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's not trying to keep the blood it's just take
Speaker 1: the blood out of the thing that it is embedded in.
Speaker 1: It's just absolutely glorious sequence. Uh, one of the coolest,
Speaker 1: weirdest horror movie deaths you'll ever find an a harm movie.
Speaker 1: To take it out of the context of horror movie violence,
Speaker 1: this device, if it existed would be a wonderful fruit juicer.
Speaker 1: It looks, you know, flying to the side of a
Speaker 1: watermelon and then just drain all the watermelon juice straight out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you have to stand behind it and I
Speaker 1: guess catch it all in your mouth. There's something you
Speaker 1: need a receptacle. Yeah, But that's again that's another quality
Speaker 1: of the sphere that I like because it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like it was designed to function in this world or
Speaker 1: in these circumstances. You know, just attaching to things and
Speaker 1: sucking all the liquid out of them and just blasting
Speaker 1: the liquid over whatever is behind it. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's so weird. But there are a lot of effects
Speaker 1: in this movie that are great low tech, low cost effects,
Speaker 1: and the ball effects. I think this is a great
Speaker 1: example because there are scenes where the this metal sphere
Speaker 1: is actually flying through the air towards the camera and
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily see any wires or anything. So how
Speaker 1: did they do this? I think what they did is
Speaker 1: they just had somebody stand behind the camera and pitch
Speaker 1: the ball, or they might have used a pitching machine.
Speaker 1: In any case, the ball was being a throne or
Speaker 1: ejected down the hall past the camera, and then they
Speaker 1: just used the shot in reverse. So the ball is
Speaker 1: just flying towards the camera from out of nowhere. It
Speaker 1: looks good. It looks good. How where they did it? Like?
Speaker 1: These are sequences? Um that that that hold up? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Uh you know that these He's he's totally by this
Speaker 1: flying silver sphere from another world. Anyway, there's a big
Speaker 1: chase scene the tall Man chases Mike. At one point
Speaker 1: Mike manages to before the chase. Before the chase, Joe,
Speaker 1: you have one of my favorite moments. This is the
Speaker 1: showdown between Mike and the tall Man. This is the
Speaker 1: moment is another game recognized game moment where they both
Speaker 1: they freeze. They kind of Mike kind of like cautiously
Speaker 1: walks up the tall Man's cautiously walking up and then
Speaker 1: and they're kind of mirror images of each other. Um
Speaker 1: but but kind of like one to one side, one
Speaker 1: to the other and then boom, Mike runs for it
Speaker 1: and the tall Man chases after him. And the tall
Speaker 1: Man he's got a lot of he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of go, he's got some energy. He may look like
Speaker 1: he's somewhere between the ages of fifty and eighty. Again,
Speaker 1: his age is also suitably vague. Um, And of course
Speaker 1: he's probably he's not of this world anyway, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. But yeah, he can move. This leads to
Speaker 1: the finger sequence, which is a whole like series of
Speaker 1: scenes which are so so. Mike manages to escape from
Speaker 1: the tall Man and cut off some of his fingers.
Speaker 1: It squirts out yellow blood, and his fingers are like
Speaker 1: still moving around on the floor. Mike takes one of
Speaker 1: the fingers, takes it home, keeps it in a box,
Speaker 1: falls asleep on the floating shag carpet stairs with a
Speaker 1: shotgun in his hand. That's not safe. Um. Then Jody
Speaker 1: finds him asleep on the stairs. Uh. Mike explains it
Speaker 1: to Jody. He's like, here's what happened. I'm going to
Speaker 1: show you a finger in a box. And then he
Speaker 1: shows him the finger and then Jody's like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: convinced I appreciated that that he didn't persist in denying
Speaker 1: it once he saw the finger in the yellow blood
Speaker 1: in the box. And then the finger turns into a
Speaker 1: beatle demon which attacks Jody and Mike, and then they
Speaker 1: try to kill it in the garbage disposal in the sink,
Speaker 1: and then Reggie arrives to witness this, and now Reggie's
Speaker 1: in on the whole demon conspiracy. Uh. And then and
Speaker 1: then after this, Jody starts giving Mike a gun safety lesson,
Speaker 1: and then Jody heads off to the funeral home to
Speaker 1: investigate things for himself. Yeah, and I love the love
Speaker 1: how we go from this scene where Jody is giving
Speaker 1: Mike the gun safety lesson, and then Jody brave goes
Speaker 1: into the basement of of the mausoleum at night is
Speaker 1: immediately attacked by dwarves. And there's a scene where a
Speaker 1: dwarf is on Jody's back and Jody is trying to
Speaker 1: shoot the dwarf off of his back with a handgun
Speaker 1: by essentially aiming the gun at his own head. Like
Speaker 1: it's just so dangerous. It's like, really, you're just giving
Speaker 1: pointers on gun safety and now you're doing this. That
Speaker 1: scene is so funny. But anyway, Jody yes, so he
Speaker 1: Jody and has this fight with one of the necro
Speaker 1: dwarves in the funeral home and then he flees. And
Speaker 1: then this leads into a car chase where Jody and
Speaker 1: Mike are driving around shooting at a hearse I think
Speaker 1: that's being driven by one of the creatures, and then
Speaker 1: they crash. They get the other car to crash, and
Speaker 1: they go up to the creature and they pull back
Speaker 1: its hood and you're wondering, what's its face going to
Speaker 1: be like? And they realize, oh, no, this was our friend.
Speaker 1: Tommy's the limmy guy, but he's covered in yellow slime. Oh,
Speaker 1: and this is great the reveal that the dwarves are
Speaker 1: the bodies of the dead that have been like compressed
Speaker 1: down into um, into little necro dwarves like this. I
Speaker 1: remember when I when I when I watched one of
Speaker 1: these films for the first time and realized this, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, my goodness, that's that's genius. That's
Speaker 1: so beautiful. So they summoned Reggie's ice cream truck, which
Speaker 1: is now doubling as a body removal truck. So they're
Speaker 1: putting it in the in the freezer and Reggie by
Speaker 1: this scene. I think he was dressed like this earlier.
Speaker 1: But he looks so funny because he's wearing a black
Speaker 1: vest over his ice cream outfit, so he looks like
Speaker 1: a combination of a milkman and a riverboat casino dealer.
Speaker 1: So Reggie, Jodi, and Mike go back to their house
Speaker 1: and they have a strategy session. Jody's going, why why,
Speaker 1: why why are they taking people's bodies and crushing them
Speaker 1: down to half size. And then Reggie suggests, well, we
Speaker 1: got to catch the tall man and drive a steak
Speaker 1: through his heart. I don't know why they think that
Speaker 1: would work. Uh. And then Mike, Um, Mike is incredulous.
Speaker 1: He's like, how do you think we could drive a
Speaker 1: steak through his heart? That mother is strong, and many
Speaker 1: times in this movie people use the word mother as
Speaker 1: a general now to refer to a person or a thing.
Speaker 1: It will gives so nicely with Mike here though, because
Speaker 1: because it's like Mike's talking tough. He's talking like like
Speaker 1: like he thinks an adult should be talking in the situation.
Speaker 1: I love it. Okay, Well, we're heading into the final
Speaker 1: sequence here, so I think Reggie and Jody are going
Speaker 1: to go investigate the funeral home again, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: make Mike stay at uh Sally's an antique store. I
Speaker 1: think these are characters who we should have met before,
Speaker 1: but we haven't. Actually, maybe that got cut. The antique
Speaker 1: store is a nice sequence though, because it's just Mike
Speaker 1: wandering around looking at strange things in an antique store,
Speaker 1: and we get some fabulous percussion, like all the gongs
Speaker 1: and bells. Uh. It's a scene that I yeah, without
Speaker 1: the music, I guess it might be a little boring,
Speaker 1: but with the music, it's it's really cool and creepy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he just wanders around looking at things until he
Speaker 1: finds an old photograph of the Tall Man in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century driving a horse drawn carriage. And then from
Speaker 1: here he's like, you must take me home immediately. I
Speaker 1: don't know what this changes. Why does that mean he
Speaker 1: must leave? You're like, yeah, that didn't they already know
Speaker 1: that the tall Man was the other world? Like why
Speaker 1: would he be that surprised? I don't know. So they're
Speaker 1: driving around and the car gets attacked by the creatures again. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then let's see Mike goes back home and then
Speaker 1: Jody locks Mike in his bedroom where he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go go to the funeral home. You have
Speaker 1: to stay here, And then we get one of the
Speaker 1: moments that actually stuck in my mind the most from
Speaker 1: when I first saw this movie. It is when Mike
Speaker 1: comes up with a system to escape being locked in
Speaker 1: his room, and it is an improvised explosive device that
Speaker 1: he makes out of a shotgun shell, a hammer, attack,
Speaker 1: and some tape. Yeah, absolutely do not do this at yeah,
Speaker 1: So he like, yeah, he puts attack in the back
Speaker 1: of a shotgun shell and then tapes it to the
Speaker 1: end of a hammer, and then like and then swings
Speaker 1: it at the door, and this makes the shell explode
Speaker 1: and it shoots sits shot through the door, and then
Speaker 1: he's able to reach through and and open up the
Speaker 1: knob or dislodge a screwdriver. I think that Jody jammed
Speaker 1: in there to prevent the door from opening. I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what this technique actually work. I
Speaker 1: have no idea. All I could find was people doing
Speaker 1: forum posts on it, so I can't vouch for this
Speaker 1: at all, but people on the forum posts, so some
Speaker 1: people were saying, yeah, it seems like this would work,
Speaker 1: except the shot would not explode, you know, going straight
Speaker 1: forward like it would if it were coming out the
Speaker 1: barrel of a shotgun. It would explode in all directions
Speaker 1: because of the lack of a barrel. Please do not
Speaker 1: try this out. We are not asking anybody to experiment
Speaker 1: and and create and generate an answer on this. Do
Speaker 1: not attempt. But it was all for nothing, really, because
Speaker 1: Mike gets out and then immediately runs into Anger scrim
Speaker 1: Ambush at the door. Anger scrims like, I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for you. So he takes him. Uh. Tallman takes him
Speaker 1: to the funeral home, where he escapes a hearse by
Speaker 1: shooting out a window. Meanwhile, Jody's already there. We get
Speaker 1: a bunch of action. There's like the ball attacks again
Speaker 1: and we get ball cam. Jodie comes to the rescue
Speaker 1: with a shotgun and blows up the ball and uh.
Speaker 1: And now they got to check out the scary door.
Speaker 1: So they're they're creeping over to the scary door that
Speaker 1: we saw the blonde girl open earlier. She sees the
Speaker 1: light and then she screams, yeah. And this this is
Speaker 1: the point in the film where if you've never seen
Speaker 1: it before, you might wonder like how do they how
Speaker 1: do they keep it going? How do they out the
Speaker 1: auntie here? But they do, Like the weirdness intensifies in
Speaker 1: this scene. Well, first of all, we get jump scare Reggie.
Speaker 1: Reggie just comes out. Yeah, he's like hey, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we thought you were dead, but no, he's good. And
Speaker 1: he reveals that he found Sally and Susie and some
Speaker 1: other people in there and they're not dead. They're all okay,
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, I snuck him out of windows.
Speaker 1: Just a whole other story was happening while we were watching.
Speaker 1: The characters we barely knew are also now safe. So
Speaker 1: don't they're they're fine. Yeah, So okay, they want to
Speaker 1: go in the room. They open up the door and
Speaker 1: inside the room is full of these black barrels with
Speaker 1: little glass windows on them. Huh, what's going on there?
Speaker 1: We get a loud hum And then also in the
Speaker 1: room with the black barrels, there is some weird furniture.
Speaker 1: There's there are just these two metal prongs coming up
Speaker 1: from the floor and they look inside the barrels and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's those necro dwarves there they are,
Speaker 1: And so they're being created in these barrels, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then or at least created and then like pickled
Speaker 1: in the barrel, finished in the barrel, or stored in
Speaker 1: the barrel for transit, I don't know. And then Mike
Speaker 1: realizes that the two metal prongs coming up from the
Speaker 1: floor are actually a transdimensional portal, and he reaches his
Speaker 1: hand through and then he falls entirely through and sees
Speaker 1: what's on the other side, and it is a desert
Speaker 1: planet made of just like stones and gravel with a
Speaker 1: red sky, where all of the necro dwarves are are
Speaker 1: lined up in a row going all the way to
Speaker 1: the horizon as if they're like carrying stuff off. And
Speaker 1: then Jody and Reggie save Mike. They pull him out
Speaker 1: from from the portal, and they put everything together. They
Speaker 1: figure out ah, the Tall Man is using the human
Speaker 1: corpses as alien slave labor on another planet, but because
Speaker 1: of that planet's gravity and uh I guess atmospheric pressure
Speaker 1: or heat, they have to be crushed down to a
Speaker 1: smaller size so they can work there as zombies. I
Speaker 1: absolutely love this. This is a marvelous reveal, like there's
Speaker 1: another world out there, some sort of giant, high gravity world.
Speaker 1: Where crushed down necro dwarves or are being sent to
Speaker 1: serve as labor. And also they never I don't know
Speaker 1: if they ever really draw this line or not, but
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's also why the tall man is
Speaker 1: so tall, because he comes from one of these worlds
Speaker 1: with with higher gravity comes to a lower gravity world
Speaker 1: and it like makes him taller somehow, I don't know. Okay, Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of fighting after this lights go out,
Speaker 1: and then Jody and Mike end up chasing around with
Speaker 1: some of the with some of the creatures. Reggie is
Speaker 1: left behind in the room, and there's a great moment
Speaker 1: where where Reggie thinks back to the tuning fork because
Speaker 1: he is looking at the two metal prongs coming up
Speaker 1: from the floor and he figures out how to do
Speaker 1: something to them. Uh he he like, he puts his
Speaker 1: hands on the on the prongs like he did with
Speaker 1: his fingers on the tuning fork earlier, and that does something.
Speaker 1: It like opens a portal and then all the wind
Speaker 1: starts rushing and he almost gets sucked in. It's a
Speaker 1: great sequence and I like how it can you know,
Speaker 1: connects to that moment with the tuning fork earlier in
Speaker 1: the film, He's like, this is it. I know what
Speaker 1: this is. I mean, I don't really know what this is,
Speaker 1: but I know the basic relationship here. I bet if
Speaker 1: I reach out with both hands and I stopped the vibrations,
Speaker 1: I'm going to close this portal. Another trivia thing I
Speaker 1: saw alleged on the internet is that the idea to
Speaker 1: connect that to the tuning fork and everything was was
Speaker 1: an idea that came from Susan, who was Reggie Banister's wife. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a great idea. So Reggie makes it outside.
Speaker 1: He sees the lady and laugh under. I think he
Speaker 1: does not know, like the audience does, that she is
Speaker 1: actually younger scrim So he goes and tries to help her,
Speaker 1: but he gets stabbed, and there's general wynd and chaos.
Speaker 1: There's you know, the tall man standing over Reggie with
Speaker 1: a knife and a Reggie apparently dies, and then we
Speaker 1: get the final showdown where uh, Jody and Mike escape
Speaker 1: and Jody's like this is so out of nowhere, like
Speaker 1: not earned at all. Jody's like, there's an old mine
Speaker 1: shaft up by Singer's Creek thousands of feet down. We
Speaker 1: just gotta find a way to get him up there,
Speaker 1: and so he sends Mike into into the house to
Speaker 1: get Ammo, and Jody says he's going to go remove
Speaker 1: warning signs from around the mine shaft. Um but I
Speaker 1: don't know why they's in Mike into the house because
Speaker 1: don't they already know that the tall Man knows that's
Speaker 1: where they live. I don't know. Tallman shows up and
Speaker 1: attacks Mike in the house. He you know, he says, boy,
Speaker 1: you play a good game, boy, But now the time
Speaker 1: is finished. And so they run around chasing and Mike's
Speaker 1: were repeating the litany against fear, except not really. Instead
Speaker 1: he's just saying, don't fear. And they they succeed. They
Speaker 1: you know, they lure the tall Man into the mine shaft,
Speaker 1: which does not look like a mind shaft at all.
Speaker 1: It looks like a square somebody dug a square shaped
Speaker 1: hole in the dirt. Yeah. This is the one moment
Speaker 1: in the film where I feel like the effects feel
Speaker 1: a little bit shoddy, especially when the boulders roll in
Speaker 1: to fill up the pit after they dropped the tall
Speaker 1: Man down. There is not a deal breaker for the
Speaker 1: movie or anything, but um but yeah, everything else feels
Speaker 1: fresh and believable. And this is a little like you
Speaker 1: can see the scenes. You can see the tarp uh
Speaker 1: there in that sequence, and I was like, are they
Speaker 1: gonna wake up? And it's all a dream, and you
Speaker 1: know what happens the next thing, Mike wakes up as
Speaker 1: if from a dream. And then Mike and Reggie are
Speaker 1: hanging out next to a roaring fire and they're talking
Speaker 1: about how, uh Jodi died. Huh. It's like there were
Speaker 1: like so instead of Reggie dying, they're saying Jody died
Speaker 1: and uh. Then they show Mike visiting Jody's grave and
Speaker 1: then Reggie's like, I'm going to take care of you, Mike,
Speaker 1: and then Reggie starts playing. He's like, let's go on
Speaker 1: a road trip. You know, we'll leave when the sun
Speaker 1: comes up. You go pack your bags. And Reggie sits
Speaker 1: there by the fire and starts to play that song
Speaker 1: sitting here at midnight again and it is violently dissonant
Speaker 1: with the non diagetic soundtrack that's playing at the same time.
Speaker 1: Sounds horrible. And then up in Mike's room, the tall
Speaker 1: man appears in a mirror and he's like boy, and
Speaker 1: then there's a jump scare and pulls him into the mirror,
Speaker 1: and that's the end of the movie. I have no
Speaker 1: idea how to make sense of any of that. It
Speaker 1: does does not connect at all. Yeah, I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: dreams within dreams or dreams and images caused by by
Speaker 1: traumas and losses. Because it's like there we start off
Speaker 1: with the with the growing understanding that that Mike has
Speaker 1: law both his parents, and then here at the end
Speaker 1: we get this revelation that he's lost his brother and
Speaker 1: that the only like parental figure left in his life
Speaker 1: is Reggie, and um, yeah, it's I don't know, it's it.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to connect all these things together, and
Speaker 1: yet everything shapes up in a way where you can
Speaker 1: you kind of buy it. You're like, there's a pattern here.
Speaker 1: I just can't quite piece it together. But if I
Speaker 1: watch it enough times, maybe it'll begin to sink in.
Speaker 1: I have a question about the theory of this movie.
Speaker 1: Why is the Tall Man doing murders at all? Because
Speaker 1: we discover in the end that his goal is to
Speaker 1: create uh Jawa zombies uh to work for him on
Speaker 1: this this other planet, and he does that just with
Speaker 1: human corpses. So he just needs corpses, but he already
Speaker 1: operates a funeral parlor, So why is he going out
Speaker 1: of his way to to do murders? Like I guess
Speaker 1: it would suggest that like at the normal rate of
Speaker 1: natural death, he is not getting enough bodies to do
Speaker 1: what he needs to do. I guess. So. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: in in the second movie, they add this nice detail
Speaker 1: where the tall Man moves around from town to town
Speaker 1: and he leaves just decimated funeral homes and decimated graveyards
Speaker 1: in his wake, like all the bodies get claimed and
Speaker 1: turned into dwarves and send into this other world. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he just like juices the numbers a little bit more,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, today I could get just thirty
Speaker 1: dwarves from raiding the cemeteries and you know, getting some
Speaker 1: some natural deaths rolling in, but I could also juice
Speaker 1: it a little bit and maybe kill a couple of
Speaker 1: people on the side. That's just more profits for me.
Speaker 1: He's trying to hit those Q four numbers. Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 1: Also it's like people who in some cases is there's
Speaker 1: a sense of like people who interfere with the the
Speaker 1: process here, with the with the scheme, they get killed
Speaker 1: and turned into zombies, because why why haste a good
Speaker 1: body when you could turn that into a dwarf as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, other times, like he's turning into this uh,
Speaker 1: this woman to go out and clearly lure people to
Speaker 1: the cemetery for for for death. But I guess that's
Speaker 1: just that's ultimately more about this connection between sex and
Speaker 1: death in in Mike's mind. But what if he goes
Speaker 1: to the trouble of doing that and then the person's
Speaker 1: family decides that they want that that person buried somewhere else. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think the Tall Man would stand for that.
Speaker 1: He's got to use mafia tactics on grieving families to
Speaker 1: make sure he gets all of the bodies. I guess so.
Speaker 1: But it's like a small town like how many how
Speaker 1: many rival I mean, he's probably put the rival groups
Speaker 1: out of business, like you're not going to operate a
Speaker 1: funeral home in competition with the Tall Man. I guess so, Rob,
Speaker 1: this has got to be one of our longest episodes ever.
Speaker 1: We must cap it here. Yeah, we'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: cap it off here. But yeah, phantasm, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. It's it's widely available in all formats,
Speaker 1: but the fan tasm remastered, Blu Ray or digital releases
Speaker 1: certainly where you want to go for this one. I
Speaker 1: think I streamed the remastered version of via Prime. But
Speaker 1: you can again find this film just about anywhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's a load of fun. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a great Halloween viewing choice. All right, We'll be back
Speaker 1: next Friday with more Weird House Cinema calibrated for your
Speaker 1: seasonal Halloween needs. UH. In the meantime, will remind you
Speaker 1: that we are primarily a science podcast, with our core
Speaker 1: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday's we do listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact.
Speaker 1: On Fridays we do Weird How Cinema. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in seeing what movies we've covered in the past, there
Speaker 1: are two places you can go. You can go to
Speaker 1: some mut music dot com. That's my blog where I
Speaker 1: just do some very casual blog posts about these movies
Speaker 1: that we watch. But also if you use letterbox that's
Speaker 1: L E T T E R B O x D
Speaker 1: dot com. We are on there as Weird House. You
Speaker 1: will find our profile there and you'll find a list
Speaker 1: of all the movies we've covered on the show, and
Speaker 1: sometimes there'll be a little hint or a little spoiler
Speaker 1: of what the next film will be. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
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