Phantasm Review

Phantasm
Teenager mike has just lost his parents, and doesn't want to loose his brother too. So, keeping a close watch on him, he follows him to the cemetery, only to discover a curious 'Tall Man' who lifts coffins by himself. Investigating further with his brother and Reggie, the ice cream man, it turns out that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

by Kim Newman |
Published on
Release Date:

01 Jan 1979

Running Time:

88 minutes

Certificate:

15

Original Title:

Phantasm

An incoherent but effective horror picture on the dreams-within-dreams theme as two teenagers discover that the local mausoleum is run by an extra-dimensional psychopath who has been killing people, shrinking their corpses into dwarf-sizes, stuffing them in yellow barrels, and shipping them back to his home world for revival as zombie labour.

It deliberately makes no sense, but it has more bizarro gimmicks to the minute than any other horror picture of 1979, including the flying silver balls that bore into your forehead and redistribute your blood all over the place through a sprinkler attachment. Angus Scrimm, cast as the Tall Man, is a monster worth his own glow-in-the-dark hobby kit.

Extremely gory. Horror fans should delight.
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