Phantasm: The disorder of a delusional mind.
1. A figment of the imagination; an illusion or apparition.
2. A Phantom.
With the upcoming return of director Don Coscarelli and his adaptation of David Wong's award winning novel "John Dies at the End," I thought now would be a good time to talk about his most famous films... the "Phantasm" series.
The first film, "Phantasm" debuted in 1979, and was about a young boy and his older brother and their friend Reggie-- an ice cream vendor, who begin to be stalked by a strange man, a tall man who works by day as a mortician and spends his nights doing something out of this world. It was a science fiction film cleverly marketed as a horror film and it's been a major influence on movies like "Hellraiser."
The second film came out in 1988 and continued the story of the Tall Man and how he's ravaging the state of Oregon, doing unspeakable things laying entire towns to waste. The third film in 1994 in the series shows us a little bit more about our tall friend and in 1998 the fourth and presumably (but hopefully not) final film came out direct to video. All of them star Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man, a menacing, seven foot undertaker who can warp time and space at will and enslaves the bodies of the dead for his own personal army. It was an interesting take on the zombie genre, without being a zombie film itself.
It's lead to many inspired pieces of media, most notably the "Slender Man" mythos, which is about a similar tall man with similar abilities. Has anyone seen any of these movies? They're actually pretty fantastic!
