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Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Phantasm is one of my favorite horror movies that holds up really well as the years pass by. Don Coscarelli 's masterpiece of horror is very original and a nightmare vision of existential weirdness. Angus Scrimm gives an intense and brooding performance as menacing horror icon The Tall Man. The Tall Man is mortician at the Morningside Funeral Home which our kid Michael as well as his brother Jody and pal Reggie discover some nefarious activities of The Tall Man where he reanimates the dead for his own evil purposes which do not always take place on our plane of existence. Phantasm is a very cerebral horror film, but also delivers on gore, atmosphere and cool characters. The series of films is essential viewing for horror fans and the films get weirder and more sci fi as they go. In my opinion, the first and second film are remarkable and by in large the best. The score is incredible and iconic and in my view Phantasm is untouchable as well as one of the finest horror movies of all time.

A film overwhelmed by its own amateurishness, "Phantasm" is widely regarded as a classic...which only proves that the word "classic" means different things to different people. Presumably, the same criteria that a film in any other genre must meet to be considered a classic are applicable to horror movies, too: things like plot, characterization and atmosphere. "Phantasm" has none of these. It's just a patchwork quilt of visuals, a ninety-minute-long exercise in throwing nutty, surreal images at the wall to see what sticks. This gimmicky onslaught is accompanied by poor acting, crummy dialogue and lots of screaming (because, you know, it's a horror movie). But why are all these strange things happening to the characters? Why have Angus Scrimm and his army of dwarf slaves singled out these young men? Why is a shiny metallic ball equipped with multi-pronged blades hurtling through the corridors of the mortuary? Well, just because. It's like a story that one twelve-year-old kid might tell another, making it up as he goes along: "So there were these guys, and one day some really scary stuff went down." That's the level of intellectual sophistication one finds in "Phantasm". It scores a couple of points for sheer novelty, but that doesn't make it a good or even tolerable film.

I am fairly well immersed in the horror community. I go to a dozen conventions a year. I talk about horror on social media frequently. I buy things from horror vendors (toys, t-shirts, etc). What I am trying to convey is that I think I am fairly in tune with the trends of the horror culture. This is one of those "forgotten out of mind" classics. What I mean by that is that I don't see the stars of this movie invited to conventions all that often. I don't see people talking about it all the time on social media. I don't see Phantasm toys, posters, t- shirts flooding the vendor stalls and websites. It's by no means a HALLOWEEN or Friday THE 13th. However, ask any horror fan if they like this movie and you will get a resounding yes. This fact was backed up last night (as I type this) as they re-released a remastered version to select theaters, most of which sold out, attesting to the love of this movie.As loved as it is, clearly what keeps it from being a certified classic is that it does have weaknesses, as well. It is certainly not a perfect film, but it is memorable and frightening. The movie occupies a strange place in its' classification. It's an American independent horror film, but feels far more in place with what European horror was doing at the time. This is no slasher, or mean- spirited grindhouse horror that was so popular with American horror audiences at the time. It is a surreal film, with a storyline that is all over the place, and a dreamlike tone that reminds me much more of the influence of the Italians. It is, also, not quite horror. There are clear sci-fi tones and influences here, which only begin to reveal towards the end of the film, but the big "reveal" of who the Tall Man is and why they are gathering bodies is certainly not your typical horror story. It has much more in common with sci-fi.The movie has several things in its' favor that have made it so loved by horror audiences, not the least of which is Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man, the movie's iconic villain. He has that old guy creepiness that works so well in a horror role, mixed with physical attributes that made him imposing. Let's not forget that voice, too, as he utters those classic lines...."Booooyyyy". He has an arsenal of weapons at his disposal, as well. We have the human familiar with almost traps our young hero in the crypt, another creepy old guy. There is the slut with the stiletto, who may or may not also be The Tall Man. A well-endowed young woman who lures men, siren-like, to their deaths in the graveyard. There are the evil Jawas, dwarf minions who always seem right around the corner. Then, of course, there is the ball of death, the orb that is so familiar as a part of this movie. It was originally given an X-rating because the orb scene was considered to be so gory and violent that they couldn't pass it with an R. Of course, now it look a little silly, but if you can let your imagination do a little work, it is still a frightening scene.The biggest thing going for this movie is that it has creativity in spades. I can't imagine sitting down to write this story. There are so many ideas here and plot strands going all over the place that someone's creativity was clearly running wild. That is, also, one of the weaknesses of the movie, though. The plot is all over the place. There is, at times, just far too much going on and some of it makes little to no sense. It feels like this could have been tightened into a masterpiece by eliminating one or two elements to bring more detail to the best ones, but part of its' charm is that "all over the place" feel.Know that this is low budget before you go in. The acting is very limited. The effects look like a high school AV club did them. One of our main heroes is a middle aged guy with a "skullet" who drives a 50s looking ice cream truck and wears silly bowties, all while playing a mean acoustic guitar. I don't, personally, hold any of that against this movie, but I know that there are plenty of millennials out there who will look at this and scoff, robbing themselves of the experience of seeing the type of movie that formulated your modern horror scene.The movie has spawned four sequels, to date, and the orb and Tall Man have become iconic. It may not be on anyone's Top Ten list of horror, but I think you would find that it's on a lot of Top 100 lists and that's nothing to scoff at, either.

Phantasm has a plot, and you can actually follow what the characters Mike and Jody, the brothers who go up against the "Tall Man" and his Jawa-esque minions, and their ice-cream buddy Reggie are going through. At the same time it's also an incredibly strange and surreal experience just due to what is not necessarily explained, objects like the metallic ball that flies through the air and can basically gush out blood from a man's head once attached between the eyes, or just what those little dwarfs are (we soon find out, but it's not made totally clear how the original versions of the dwarfs are made except... horror movie magic it would seem). And there's other elements involving how the Tall Man does things and finds his way to confront characters and so on. And lest not forget the revelations in the final act.But the joy of this movie is that this is made by someone who is just a real fan of horror: Don Coscarelli, who was quite young when he made this movie (not unlike Sam Raimi with Evil Dead, which this feels like a spiritual cousin with in its ultra low-budget, gotta-be-creative-and-go-for-f***ing-broke cinematic grammar). I don't know what all of his influences are exactly (from IMDb trivia the title comes from Poe), and it feels drenched in the flavor of someone who isn't out to do something sleazy and only for the bucks, which was easy to do in the immediate post-Halloween time, but from Gothic horror literature and the more surreal visions of experimental filmmakers.Some of this may not make sense, and some of it may be rough around the edges (any woman here is basically not a good actor, and I'm not sure if it's due to the ultra-low-budget or that Coscarelli was better with Baldwin who plays the determined younger brother Mike), and yet psychologically, in the way it feels, it flows and is always cohesive. And some of it is pretty violent (I didn't know that it got rated X multiple times due to the aforementioned metal-ball-head scene), but it's all in the dark-morbid fun of a horror movie that's out to scare you and at the same time make this world of this Funeral Home-Cum-Temple that is drenched in inter-dimensional possibilities. Also like Raimi's early films, Coscarelli gets a buzz from showing things like severed fingers that turn into other objects and bleed colors that aren't blood.So not only is it terrifying (in certain spots, where certain effects haven't quite dated, which are only a few), it's an extremely funny movie - both extreme and funny in equal measure. You don't expect the laughs to come like they do, and it's not always from laughing at the excessive gore but genuinely creative dialog - it's also just downright amusing to see Jody and Reggie on the front porch playing guitar together, seemingly random but makes these guys immediately much tighter and recognizable as friends who've done this for years - and there's some honest to goodness stakes set up due to... well, what the hell this Tall Man can do to any people in the immediate vicinity!Featuring a star-making turn by Scrimm, music theme that gets repetitive but isn't too tiring, action that has some real spark and verve (I loved the chase scene at night, it's not complex but you feel the danger with all of the shotgun play), and when the filmmaker gets into hinting at the whole other world behind a particular door, all of the possibilities make it a much richer experience. This isn't the cynical sequel baiting we get today, as it works on its own as its own movie (even with a little of the 'huh' bit near the end with Mike), this is more like 'Wow, that was a lot of fun... is there another one going to be made?'