Beware cemeteries staffed by hooded dwarves and a tall man with a penchant for marble and chrome. 1979's Phantasm is conspicuously low budget and ham-fisted at times but there's a kind of joyful creativity in it.
The protagonists are two brothers, pretty-faced young Mike (Michael Baldwin) and his swaggering, prototypical '70s hero elder brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury).
Was it really just normal for guys to leave their shirts unbuttoned to the bottom of their sternums?
A family friend, Reggie (Reggie Bannister), is an ice cream man who occasionally jams with Jody on folk songs while Jody inexplicably wears a costume bowler.
A friend of theirs recently passed away and it's his funeral that brings them to the cemetery. Unbeknownst to them, it was the undertaker himself, aka "The Tall Man" (Angus Scrimm), who killed their friend, while in the guise of a beautiful woman.
This was an awkward sex scene that opened the film. We see naked breasts in conspicuously isolated shots twice in the film, as though one breast double shot all the nude scenes singled-handedly (single-bosomedly?) in ten minutes.
I like the concept of the zombie dwarves and Angus Scrimm has an effectively creepy shape to him. I also liked how atypical the protagonists are and their little odd character bits. The mortuary looks like a cheap set but it also has kind of a nice, Kubrickian vibe to it.
Phantasm, remastered by J.J. Abrams, is available on Amazon Prime.
No comments:
Post a Comment