Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.
Everyone had holes in his or her viewing history. The main reason I started this blog was to fill in a bunch of those holes and to do so in a way where I couldn’t weasel out of watching something. That’s the reason for the horror lists, too. I caught up on a few biggies going through the 1001 Movies list, but there are some genre classics that didn’t make that list. It’s always good when I can knock one of those bona fide classics off the list. In this case, that classic I’d never seen is Phantasm.
Oh, I’d heard all about it, of course. The most famous parts of the film are the presence of a character called The Tall Man (played by the awesomely named Angus Scrimm) and the flying silver ball that kills whatever it strikes. What I didn’t know was just how weird this film really is. It’s the sort of film that doesn’t really make sense no matter how one looks at it. It just gets crazier and crazier as it continues. I should have realized this when I discovered it was written and directed by Don Coscarelli, who is the man behind The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep, and John Dies at the End.
