Tall men and midgets and balls, oh my...

[martinlivings]

So, I watched the entire series of Phantasm (known in Australia as "The Never Dead") movies last week. When Izz asked me what they were about, I told her they were about an alien from another dimension pretending to be an undertaker who was killing people and stealing corpses from graves in order to crush them down to half-size, put them in Jawa costumes and send them to their own dimension to work as slaves, by means of a gigantic tuning fork. Oh, and metal balls fly through the air and kill people too.

She thought I was kidding.

You have to admire a series of four films that, for twenty years, used the same actors, writer, director and, let's face it, plot. They're demented, illogical, random, silly, terribly acted, ineptly directed... and rather a lot of fun. Extra points for Reggie Bannister, an ugly, bald aging hippy, getting to make out with or at least share a bed with a different beautiful young woman in every single one of the sequels.

I give them three flying metal balls of death. :)

Comments

[ashamel.livejournal.com]

Well put! I don't think I've seen #4 though.

The directors commentary for the first one is fun. They mention being somewhat dismayed at the trailer for Star Wars, showing jawas, that appeared near the end of production.

[martinlivings.livejournal.com]

I was going to call shenanigans on that, since Phantasm was 1979 and Star Wars 1977, but I just noticed that Phantasm was shot in '77, so it fits. :)

[martinlivings.livejournal.com]

PS - the fourth one is... bizarre. A large chunk is made up of unused footage from the first one, so all the actors are their original ages again. A little disconcerting, but quite clever, in a very stupid way. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Don Coscarelli isn't actually an inept director in my opinion. But he's certainly had an odd filmic career -- the first (and maybe most successful) Phantasm was a cult hit (it looked great to me when I saw it back in the day, and was very scary), but then he got obsessed with the concept and kept making variant versions on a bigger budget. I notice that he's making a fifth.

And he got to be a Master of Horror. His episode "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" -- wasn't my favourite but it was pretty well done.

And Angus Scrimm was in it.

Rob
roberthood.net/blog

[martinlivings.livejournal.com]

I didn't say he was an inept director. I said it was ineptly directed. There's a subtle difference. :)

I actually find the lassaiz faire (sp???) direction incredibly charming. Like watching a kid act out his favourite scenes in a movie. There's a simple open-faced honesty to these films, they're just fun for the sake of fun. No airs or graces, just down and dirty, two-take film-making. Awesome. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I agree. Lots of fun. I'm not sure about watching all four Phantasm films in a row -- I've never tried that. But you make me want to watch them again. Actually I think I have Number 4 in there somewhere -- and haven't watched it yet.

By the way, did you know that they changed the name to "The Never Dead" in Australia because there was an Aussie sex comedy (by Richard Franklin of all people) around at the time it came out called "Fantasm"?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072969/

I think it had flying balls in it too.

Rob