Halloween is almost here, so just a few more days to squeeze in some seasonal posts.
PHANTASM – Don Coscarelli wrote and directed four of the five films in the Phantasm franchise but let David Hartman write and direct the last one in 2016.
The first Phantasm movie back in 1979 was rated X for violence, which makes me and my fellow fans of the Terrifier features and short films laugh our asses off.
With this movie franchise Don Coscarelli forever changed the way we look at funeral homes. And funeral home directors. Actor Angus Scrimm (1926-2016) owned the role of the sinister mortician the Tall Man as surely as Robert Englund owns the role of Freddy Krueger.
For newbies to the Phantasm films, let me point out that the Tall Man ran the Morningside Cemetery and Funeral Home business. Some of the loved ones of dearly departed people who became mutated slaves for the Tall Man began to notice strange things about the mortician. Things like carrying a full coffin by himself when he thought nobody was watching. Continue reading
From 1979 to this calendar year the movies in this under-appreciated horror franchise forever changed the way we look at funeral homes. And funeral home directors. And Roman Numerals for that matter. For better or worse writer/director Don Coscarelli never sold out, never let the sinister Tall Man become an outer-space joke like Jason Voorhees or a Borscht-Belt Charles Manson like Freddy Krueger. (And it’s hard to believe the first Phantasm was rated X for violence in 1979.) 
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