phantasm Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Killer B's on DVD: Phantasm
Filed under: Horror », Independent », Killer B's on DVD », Cinematical Indie »
Don Coscarelli's Phantasm is one of those movies whose total value exceeds the sum of its parts. Some of the dialogue is pretty bad, and the wooden acting -- particularly from the performers in minor roles like the fortune teller's daughter -- clearly marks this as a b-movie. This was only Coscarelli's third feature, and his relative inexperience is pretty obvious. Things like the villainous Tall Man, the flying bloodthirsty spheres, and an extra-dimensional conspiracy, on the other hand, set the film apart and mark it as something unique. There are plenty of scares here, and a story with enough meat on it to warrant two pretty good sequels and one pretty bad one.
The story kicks off with the death of Tommy, a close friend to Jody (Bill Thornbury) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Everyone believes Tommy has committed suicide, but the audience knows better, having seen Tommy's tryst with a mysterious blonde woman which resulted in his murder. Jody's 13-year-old brother Michael (Michael Baldwin) doesn't attend Tommy's funeral because the death of his own parents is too fresh in his memory, but he watches the proceedings from a distance. Michael is suffering from an overwhelming anxiety that his brother will also leave him, so he rarely lets Jody out of his site. Once the mourners have departed, Michael is the only one present to see an odd site: the hulking and mysterious funeral director known only as The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), picks up Tommy's casket entirely by himself and loads it into the back of the hearse.
New Phantasm DVD Looks Like a (Spiked) Ball
Filed under: Classics », Horror », Home Entertainment »
For a while you couldn't find it on DVD at all. And then MGM released a pretty solid (albeit annoyingly non-anamorphic) Phantasm DVD that sold for about ten bucks -- and then that DVD went out of print. So for a while there the horror freaks couldn't find a copy of Don Coscarelli's trippy horror masterpiece at ALL! But as Jeff Anderson told us a few weeks ago, Anchor Bay is coming to the rescue!Arriving in DVD shoppes on April 10 is a full-bore (and, yes, anamorphic) "Anchor Bay Collection" Phantasm DVD, and while the extras sure do look pretty slick ... they also look like they were ported directly from the old MGM release! I could be mistaken, but it sure seems like if you already own the MGM version, the only upgrade this new platter offers is the new anamorphic transfer. Otherwise you already own the deleted scenes, the feature-length Phantasmagoria documentary, the promotional interviews and featurettes, the trailers and TV spots and the rather amusing audio commentary with Don Coscarelli, Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury and Angus "The Tall Man" Scrimm. But if you don't have that MGM disc, this one's an absolute keeper -- provided you enjoy movies with murderous spiky-balls, hulking morticians, undead fly-finger creatures, and pint-sized mutant slaves imprisoned in alternate dimensions. (Hmm, I might actually spin Phantasm again tonight...)
The Return of Elvis, JFK & Bubba Ho-tep?
Filed under: Comedy », Horror », Independent », Remakes and Sequels », Cinematical Indie »
At one of my very first film festivals I got to meet Don Coscarelli, the man who directed Survival Quest, The Beastmaster and all four of the freakishly weird Phantasm flicks. Since I grew up wonderfully mortified by the original Phantasm, it was obviously a big thrill to shake the guy's hand. And then we sat down for his latest creation, Bubba Ho-tep, and the night got even loopier.Well-admired by just about every genre freak who sees it, Bubba Ho-tep is about the ways in which Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) and JFK (Ossie Davis) go about ridding an old age home of a horrible soul-sucking mummy. Based on a story by Joe Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep is, at the very least, a fairly original tale. And yes, I said Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK.
So you can probably see where I'm headed with this: According to the BD.com horror loons (and to follow up on our previous story), Bruce Campbell had to cancel on an upcoming convention appearance because he'd be too busy shooting Bubba Ho-tep 2, aka Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires. Sounds good to me, especially considering the beloved Mr. Campbell's more recent cinematic output. Ahem.
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