Phantasm Marty's rating: three lava lamps. Information about this film in the Internet Movie Database. Reviewed by Marty Busse "Getting hit by this ball will NOT get you awarded first base" We've all seen el-cheezo films at 3 a.m. on the local cable channels. You know what I'm talking about: the kind where they spend a few hundred on special effects, recruit actors from guys they toke up with on weekends-in short, the kind of films often reviewed here. But every great once in a while, someone throws together a movie like that and comes up with something genuinely scary. Phantasm is the best example of this I've seen in a movie. Phantasm is the story of two brothers, Mike and Jody, and their pal, Reggie the ice cream man. (Being the ice cream man is apparently far more lucrative than I thought, as Reggie has a lot of cool stuff.) When the movie starts, one of their pals has been murdered, and is being buried at the local funeral home. Jody has forbidden Mike to tag along to the funeral, because Mike was creeped out by their parent's death. Mike, being a teenage kid, sneaks out to watch the funeral anyway, and sees some scary stuff-like the local mortician being able to heft a coffin into a hearse by himself. This mortician is the Tall Man, who specializes in really creepy appearances, genderbending, sinister utterances, (You played a good game boy, but the game is over, and now you die!) and really cool killer props. "And I would of got away with it too if it weren't for you darn kids!" One of these props is the one thing that almost everyone remembers about the movie: the ball. This ball flies around and drills into the head of its victims in gory scenes that may remind viewers of the organ donation skit from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. But the ball is, actually, a very minor part of the film. The atmosphere and plot is far more important: rare indeed in a movie like this. This film can either be read as an allegory about a young boy's fears (Mike's parents have died, and his footloose brother Jody is thinking of hitting the road, so Mike is justifiably afraid of being left alone) or as what it appears to be: a horror movie about a mortician and the sinister uses he has for the corpses he gets. It might also be about something else entirely-the ending is really bizarre, and it leaves itself open to many interpetations. Phantasm does have some bad moments: there is a scene lifted straight from Dune, a good deal of cheesy 70s atmosphere, partial nudity within the first few minutes, and some glaring plot holes. (If he needs a lot of bodies, why not be a mortician in the city, where a lot more bodies will be coming his way than there will be in the hick town he's hiding out in?) But over all, it works, and works well. Phantasm is that rarity of rarities-a low-budget horror film that is scary. Unfortunately, they made a lot of sequels that were marred by heavy studio intereference and a lack of the atmosphere that made Phantasm so good. Avoid them the way you would avoid the ball. "This looked real cool when they did it in Deliverance." This review is © copyright 1999 by Marty Busse! Blah blah blah. Please don't claim that it's yours blah blah, but feel free to e-mail it to friends, or better yet, send them the URL. To reproduce this review in another form, please contact us at guys@stomptokyo.com. Blah blah blah blah.