‘Phantasm’ And Its Brilliant Look At The Nature Of Loss
The Phantasm franchise will always have a special place in my heart. My late husband Steve introduced me to it shortly after we met and I fell in love with the series’ surreal and dreamlike qualities.
Very shortly after Steve’s passing, I had the chance to interview Phantasm franchise creator Don Coscarelli (and several cast members) for a Fangoria feature (in support of RaVager). It afforded me the opportunity to chat with one of the masters of horror about why the series holds a special place in my heart and about life and loss. And that serves as a rather appropriate topic of discourse, seeing as grief is a central theme throughout the original Phantasm, and to an extent, the entire series.
With franchise creator Don Coscarelli’s birthday falling on February 17th, we thought this the perfect time to look back on Phantasm (1979) and unpack some of its most prominent themes.
Phantasm follows Mike (A. Michael Baldwin), a young man who lost his parents several years prior and now lives in the care of his older brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury). After a close friend of Jody’s dies, Mike begins to notice strange goings on in his sleepy hometown. A sinister undertaker has arrived on the scene and where he goes, death inevitably follows. Mike sets out to uncover the funeral director’s nefarious designs but in doing so, he puts his life and the lives of those he loves in jeopardy.
Themes of loss and fear of mortality are ever-present throughout Phantasm. Mike’s every move is driven by the grief of losing his parents prematurely. Accordingly, he follows his older brother Jody around like a lost puppy, a very natural reaction to grief. Losing a loved one is a reminder of the impermanence of life. It serves as a cruel reality check that our existence is fleeting. Every day that passes is a day we can’t get back. And though mortality is a notion we can sometimes successfully eschew from the forefront of our mind, nothing serves to force a person to face it like the untimely departure of a loved one.
I clung tightly to everyone I love after Steve’s passing and still do so more than six-years later. The grief has subsided to a great extent. And I am very lucky to have found love a second time. But the hyper-awareness of my own mortality and the mortality of those I hold dear remains top of mind far more frequently than I’d prefer. In that way, I really relate to Mike’s fears of abandonment by those closest to him.
On that basis, Phantasm has become an especially cathartic viewing experience. Not only is it a film that I am grateful to have shared a love for with a lost loved one. It also does a fine job showcasing the havoc grief wreaks on our sense of security.
Based on Mike’s state of mind, it makes a certain amount of sense that the events that unfold throughout the film are presented via a dreamlike filter. Sure, pieces of the narrative don’t always make complete sense. But the grieving brain is a chaotic place to exist. I know Coscarelli has said a lot of the surrealistic elements were happy accidents. But regardless of his reasoning, I think the hazy quality works quite well with the central themes.
In addition to serving as an insightful commentary on grief, Phantasm also stands as a harrowing viewing experience filled with dream logic and surreal exchanges that keep me coming back to this delightfully imaginative effort for periodic return visits. And when I say Phantasm is imaginative, that’s a very fair assessment. As anyone that has experienced it knows, the film is about a sadistic undertaker that miniaturizes the dead and reanimates them for use as slave labor in an alternate dimension. That’s outside-the-box thinking at its finest.
Though it may be a bit disjointed to some, I count Phantasm as a standout horror picture that serves as an astute commentary on the fleeting nature of our existence while being thoroughly entertaining and artistically rendered.
If you’ve somehow missed out on this excellent effort from master of horror Don Coscarelli, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s streaming for free on at least half a dozen ad-supported platforms as of the publication of this post!
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