Interpreting Death Through a Child’s Eyes in ‘Phantasm’
Don Coscarelli had made films before Phantasm. His two preceding features, Jim, the World’s Greatest and Kenny & Company were very similar in some respects. Both were comedies, both were laced with adventure despite their budget of basically pennies. More importantly, both centered on children. Neither of them were horror, but in both of those minuscule, ambition-driven movies one can absolutely see the DNA of what would become Phantasm. That starts with the cast. A. Michael Baldwin and Reggie Bannister both featured prominently in Kenny & Company, as Doug and Mr. Donovan, respectively. Before that, Angus Scrimm — under his real name Rory Guy — appeared in Coscarelli’s directorial debut, Jim, the World’s Greatest as the titular Jim’s father.
Phantasm, however, proved to be a much more ambitious and even a much more commercial project — which is surprising, given the surreal, bizarre nature of its story. It was a horror film at the tail end of the 1970s when horror was becoming more and more popular on a wide scale. It’s one of the last great horror movies of the ’70s, and while it wasn’t the massive independent success that Halloween became, it struck big, especially for its budget.
Both of Coscarelli’s previous movies introduced ideas and concepts that would be expanded on in Phantasm, despite their very different subject matter. Both features centered on kids. There’s an aspect of adolescence that is crucial to both Jim, the World’s Greatest and Kenny & Company. They’re both coming of age stories in their own way. And while the films are totally different from Phantasm, they lay that groundwork well.
These coming of age themes define Phantasm, but in a way that is completely befitting the change of genre. Like Jim and Kenny it features an adolescent lead, but as Coscarelli’s first horror film it’s not just about a coming of age. More than anything, it’s about a child coming to an understanding of death. The movie as a whole is surreal and dreamlike in nature, but all of those sequences inform that same underlying theme.
After all, as dreamlike as Phantasm is, we see almost all of it through the eyes of young Mike. This is a strange, utterly unique entry point. From a narrative standpoint it makes sense to have a young point of view, but it’s so much more than that as well. Mike’s our protagonist and our narrator and everything we’re seeing is filtered through him. When he starts to see these supernatural forces at work, he’s almost never completely surprised or baffled, at least the way an adult would be. And that makes sense, because those things — from seeing the Tall Man lift a coffin on his own to facing him down in the corridors of the funeral home — are unnerving, but still feel weirdly possible when you’re a kid. Every kid thinks they might see a ghost in the window when they pass their local haunted house. Phantasm perfectly embodies that feeling.
From a narrative standpoint, the Tall Man is an inter-dimensional being from another world, using the corpses of the recently deceased to transform them into dwarfish slaves and bring them back to whatever barren world he comes from. It’s totally bizarre, unusual and purely Coscarelli in concept. But for all intents and purposes, in terms of what the Tall Man actually represents for the film as a whole, he’s death. Right from that character’s design, it’s a perfect representation. He’s a tall, solemn old man in a dark suit. Throughout art history, Death had often been represented as a tall, thin figure and Angus Scrimm certainly fit the bill. There’s a professionalism to him, even if it’s not really addressed in his behavior, that doesn’t quite suggest that what he’s doing is simply business, but it does convey the idea that he’s completely impassioned about his work. And that’s very fitting with the Tall Man’s character, without a doubt.
The Tall Man is also completely invulnerable in a way that was not entirely popular at the time, certainly not in the way that it became after Halloween and Friday the 13th broke through to the mainstream. But as the franchise makes clear, the Tall Man puts all of those other horror villains to shame in his absolute indestructibility. And that’s perfectly representative of the theme. In fact, it’s in some ways what the entire Phantasm franchise is about. Death can’t be defeated. Death can’t be outsmarted or persuaded. Death always wins.
But death affects the film on every level. Not only does Phantasm open with a death, but the characters are introduced through a funeral. Interestingly enough, though, Mike isn’t present for it. He’s actually kept away from it. Mike is already grappling with death from the moment we’re introduced to him because his parents are gone. Death is something he’s been forced to confront as a young boy, which has to be a factor in why Mike is trying so hard to act like an adult. It’s an integral part of his character, and it’s something kids do, especially when they’ve already been through as much as he has. He wants to play at being an adult, being someone who’s unaffected by the things that have happened to him, things he’s still struggling to comprehend.
This struggle to accept loss completely informs Mike’s relationship with his older brother, Jody. It’s very bluntly stated that Jody is considering taking off and hopes that Mike will understand. After all, he’s very much the aloof personality that Mike is trying to emulate. Mike is terrified that Jody is going to abandon him, even if it’s unlikely that Jody is actually going to do it. There’s no way that this fear of abandonment isn’t informed by the loss of their parents. Jody doesn’t want to be burdened by this responsibility, he wants to be his own man, and Mike is just terrified of losing someone else. It’s a complicated relationship between the two brothers and as surreal and weird as Phantasm is, this relationship is truly the backbone of the movie.
For Mike, it’s not just about recognizing his fear of abandonment stemming from the loss of his parents. It’s about being a child and realizing that one day you’re going to die. No matter how cool you are, no matter how much you pretend not to care, it’s going to happen no matter what you do. And that’s something all kids have to come to terms with at one point. Because of that, it completely makes sense that the Tall Man’s minions are child-sized. They’re manifesting the fear of his own death. The dwarves are small corpses hell-bent — every time he encounters them, at least — on dragging him back to the dirt with them.
Beyond the dwarves and the Tall Man, there’s the place that they stem from. Morningside Funeral Home is just as important to Phantasm as any of those other elements. On both a figurative and literal level, the Funeral Home is a place that Mike cannot understand and is struggling to come to terms with. It obviously embodies his inability to accept mortality, but even on the narrative side it’s literally beyond understanding for anyone — let alone a child — considering that it’s actually a gateway to another world. It works on both levels, but the film combines those two together in a very exaggerated and stylized approach to the funeral home itself.
Mike’s struggle with death is perfectly embodied by the way he navigates the mortuary. It’s a labyrinth and the way Coscarelli shoots it is so impressive, especially considering the budget, because it feels infinite. There’s no beginning or end, it’s just a maze and Mike looks totally lost inside of it. But as maze-like and surreal as the funeral home is, it represents something incredible concrete. After all, death is still a tangible, literal thing that Mike has to deal with, which is made especially clear at the end of the film, with the blunt reveal that Jody has died.
With that context in mind, everything Mike is afraid of in his relationship with Jody becomes clear. Mike is driven by this fear that Jody is going to leave him, and then the tragic irony of that whole arc is that Jody does leave him. Even though it’s almost a casual aside to note that Jody died in a car accident, the bluntness of it does strongly convey the absolute randomness of losing someone to an accident like that. All of Mike’s actions are essentially precognitive. While he might not exactly see Jody’s oncoming death, he’s aware of it. He at least understands the possibility that the last person left to take care of him might abandon him too, and even though there’s nothing he can do to stop that, he does everything he can to try. That, if anything, is exactly Mike’s relationship with death and is probably the thing that best defines the series in general: he knows, on some level, that he cannot stop this. But he fights it anyway.
Because Phantasm is essentially a young boy’s journey toward understanding death, it’s important that even as Jody and Reggie are brought into learning the truth about Morningside and the Tall Man, Mike remains the protagonist and drives the plot all the way toward the end. He’s the one who goes to the funeral home to investigate. He’s the one who takes evidence knowing that he would need proof to convince Jody of any of this. He’s the one who ultimately faces down the Tall Man and forces him into the mine shaft. And even that apparent defeat of the Tall Man is even kind of a child’s idea of murder. It’s perfect for a boy facing down an abstract entity, because it’s a basic and exaggerated understanding of how death even works. It feels almost like it’s ripped from a Loony Tunes cartoon.
Mike’s place as the burgeoning hero is important. The further he investigates the mystery of the funeral home, the more confidence he gains and the more fearless he becomes, and all of these things help lead him toward a realization of his own mortality. Even mortality as a general concept. But that journey is never quite complete. Part of what makes Phantasm work so well is that, like a dream, it doesn’t really have a beginning or end. It’s almost a loop. At the beginning, Mike’s has already lost his parents and his brother’s best friend and he’s struggling to deal with these things. Even as far as he’s come and after everything he’s been through, Mike is still in the process of coming to terms with death after the totally unexpected loss of Jody by the end of the film. Reggie, a cool uncle figure and basically a big kid through most of the feature, is forced to become something of a surrogate father figure in the final few minutes.
Those anxieties and fears are still there, and even though Mike has faced his fears and literally attempted to bury them, they come back. The Tall Man is still there in the reflection of the mirror and Mike succumbs to fear all over again. On a surface level, it’s a great shock ending for a post-Carrie world. But it perfectly represents that not only does the film come to an abrupt end, just like an actual nightmare, but that it authentically feels like Mike’s attempts to grasp mortality are still a work in progress. The themes in Phantasm are heavy and they’re not things that anyone — especially a child — could ever hope to come to terms with overnight.
