Day 12 PHANTASM!!! Both barrels of it!!

Look at those balls!!!

So deadly, so shinny.

So Phantasm, yeah. Phantasm.

Ooooooh boy. Where to begin with this one.

Phantasm is a trip of the mind, and honestly, Joe Bob Briggs was right when he chose to watch these films for a Christmas Marathon on Shudder, and recommend people watch it while drinking and getting stoned. It's the only way the films make sense!

Don't believe me? Well try making sense of this. quick rundown.

A man is killed while having sex in a graveyard by a big boob woman who's actually a creepy old man, young kid regularly gets his fortune read by a nice girl and her mother, who suddenly quote DUNE to him as they put his hand in a pain box from DUNE, and laugh at him after, the young boy lost a good friend to the trannie old man, who he sees moving a coffin with a body all on his own. He also gets chased by a silver flying ball with blades and a brain drill. The creepy man has jawas working for him from another dimension. Meanwhile an ice cream man helps him and his brother out with fighting a fly that spawned from a severed finger and take on this tall weird creepy guy who transports from one dimension to another. Ice cream man gets stabbed by big boob lady, who is shown to be old creepy man, young boy wakes up to be told his brother died and he has had trouble dealing with it and none of this happened, only in the end of the film it did happen and he's whisked away to another dimension.

You make sense of that shit without a controlled substance!

Phantasm is an amazing film, it's the kind of surreal bullcrap I can get behind and 100% support.

The movie goes off in so many weird directions, and has so many oddities it's hard to decipher where the hell it even came from in the first place. Trust me when I say the sequels. Do. Not. Help. In any way! They just run with it and keep it going, which I support! Somehow. Its a madness the movie inflicts on you and trust me, it inflicts.

I almost feel tempted to include all 5 of the films here but I'm focusing solely on the first two. Because not everyone of them can be that good. But Phantasm comes pretty damn close. Even bad phantasm somehow ends up being good. Again, hard to explain. But let's begin at the beginning.

So as I said, the first one begins with an unfortunate man getting lucky in a grave yard, which honestly is never usually a good idea. As he soon learns when he gets stabbed with a dagger and. We see this beautiful blonde lady, turn into a creepy bald man. A Tall man you might say. Which we should because that's his name in the series.

There's a good deal of dying going on in this town, most of it unexplained. Some of it, easily so. But behind it is the Tall man. The three central characters to this movie, hell the series are Reggie the ice cream man, best friend of Jodie, the older and protective brother of Mike. Mike is glued to his brothers side since the passing of his parents, This leads him to following his brother to a cemetery for the funeral of Jody's friend. Where Mike meets the Tall man and, discovers mortuaries are creepy. So are little jawa like monsters in hooded cloaks and ESPECIALLY silver balls that fly around and stick themselves in your body to drill out your blood!

So Mike tries explaining this to his brother, which is a hard sell for some reason. Well Mike tries using the power of evidence! A severed finger

A severed finger which we learn from it's being severed, leaks yellow fluid. I can't even call it blood because it simply...isn't.

It's almost like the body was embalmed. But animated.

So upon presenting his brother with this finger, we see the finger is no longer a finger but...a super sized fly. Which is hysterical. Seriously. Two men fighting a string puppet fly as if it has the power of a full grown man. It's great stuff.

I am skipping ahead some because, well you need to see the film. I wasn't lying about the DUNE reference. Mike DOES go visit a fortune teller and her daughter, she DOES put his hand into a pain box. Which if you know DUNE, the box delivers to your mind unbelievable pain, melting away, burning your flesh. That's what he feels. He's even given the "Fear is the mind killer, you must let it pass through you, until only you remain" speech. It sort of helps him later, much MUCH later, but only in the oddest sense of it. Like I said, this movie is weird, but in a good way, and somehow works.

So after battling the fly finger beast, also with the help of Reggie. The trio set out to fight the Tall man. But ooooh boy is it far from simple.

Upon exploring the mortuary in search of their target. The group discovers stacks upon stacks of plastic containers. Which hold the bodies of the towns dead. Also in this room, to make things even funner. Are two large metal poles sticking out of the ground. Which we learn is a doorway, via sticking a hand through and taking it out, playing the hokey pokey with an dimensional gateway. It isn't until one of them puts their hands on the post and is teleported that we are introduced to Tatooine!

Well not really

It's never clearly described or said. Hell it could be Mars. Or hell for that matter.

But it's full of jawa demons, moving these barrels around. Which leads us to the discovery, or thought. That those things are the dead people of the town, and many towns. That the Tall man has been going town to town emptying graves and creating slaves to do his work. But what work? Running a mortuary aint easy kids!

After some truly odd and often wtf prep for their battle, and a few troubling encounters. We reach the final battle. The tall man is almost unstoppable. But more so, for some reason he is obsessed with Mike. Taunting him is what the entire fight and mind games seems to revolve around. Taunting him and his sanity. Throughout the movie the tall man is constantly saying me and my sisters still favorite line and title "BOOOOOOOOYY" and complimenting him with "You play a good game boy, but it's time for the game to end."

Fun creepy stuff.

Sadly as I mentioned for Reggie, he discovers the beautiful blonde trickster of the Tall man and gets himself stabbed. They end up destroying the mortuary and the Tallman with it. Or did they?

Soon after this, Mike wakes from what looked to be a nightmare possibly. He wakes to Reggie, alive and well! More so Reggie telling him what 'really' happened. It seems that his brother Jodie had died, and that all of this, the Tallman, the visions of jawa hell and body stealing, It's all in his head. His way of dealing with Mikes sudden passing. Coming up with a story about an evil terrestrial being, taking bodies and killing his brother. We begin seeing glimpses and flashes supporting this!

So Reggie pleads with Mike to go to his room, begin getting ready and they'll talk more later. As Mike goes to his room, conflicted with everything that just happened being a dream. The Tallman appears in his room, calls him BOOOOOOYYYY, and Jawas crash through his room mirror and grab for him. ROLL CREDITS!!!

That's just the stuff you can make some sense of!

Not even close to all of it.

Though I should mention the biggest thing to love about this movie. The music. The music is just heads to tails amazing. Even the disco track they made for a bar room scene, It's just the theme done..well. Disco. It's great trust me.

Sooo the sequel. How does that one go, where does it take us?

Well, that is a very, very, very good question. Let me just uh...get ready to explain that one. Yeah. Excuse me a moment.

The sequel picks up directly where the last one left us. Reggie hearing Mike being attacked in his room by the Tall mans jawa squad.Which he helps save him from.....well back up. Back up a lot.

Get ready for this.

Mike was institutionalized for 7 years after what happened. He faked his own health to escape, believing people were still in danger. Leading to Reggie finding him at the cemetery from part one digging up graves. Reggie informing him AGAIN this was all in his head and how he needs to come with him.

From here Reggie....thanks to Mike having a....vision...dream...thing. Well Reggie's house blows up killing his whole family. Which works out because Reggie gets a hot girlfriend in this movie. He also gets the coolest weapon ever, that I hardly believe would function anywhere near the term safely.

Once we get past the concerns for your sanity known as the beginning, we get the base story. Mike and Reggie on the road in a Hemi Cuda, chasing after the Tall man, trying to stop him. Putting right what once went wrong, Sort of.

The movie...

I'll need another moment here, be right back.

.....Oh that helped, I think. I don't know. What's going on? Oh Phantasm 2, right.

So during this, road trip. A few things come into play from the first movie. Reggie and his pony tail, and amazing attire. As well as Mikes psychic friend. She now plays an important part. Sort of. She is connected to mike and the two share visions. Things to come, things that may yet happen.

Which is trippy itself. But not nearly the tip of this crazy iceberg dildo. We get many more silver balls, that don't just get stuck in the forehead and have a tiny drill push out your vital fluids. We get silver balls that burrow into your body now too!

That's not that weird you say. Well I agree, so here's a bigger taste of weird.

How about a girl going into spasms until she crumples up on the floor like she just got hit with the worst first day of cramps ever. Only she has a slit down her spine which the tall man, in spinal...form, pops out of, complete with a baby tall man face and taunts the duo. Yeah...take that. Have a drink, you'll need it.

Remember the firearm I mentioned earlier? Well, the boys decide they need to arm themselves for this epic battle to save mankind. So Reggie. The regenator. Takes two double barrel shotguns, and straps them together. He then saws the barrels off, at a V angle. After showing us he's a fan of the Red Green show with his skills of taping, strapping and clamping two double barrel shotguns together with a single activated trigger. We now have, the quadbarrel shotgun.

Oh, you want more wtfness? Remember the girlfriend Reggie gets? I mentioned her.

Well she's going to help Reggie forget all about his worries and now dead family, with some rolly polly jump and swolly sex. Or so it seems.

Yes, sadly this girl turns out to be a trickster, a tease of the Tall man. It's not pretty. Believe me.

Back to more weirdness you say? Okay why not!

Mike and his psychic gal pal fight the Tall man one on one! Balls flying, bodies dropping and during the fight with the tallman....he grows a spinning blade body hose dog dick looking appendage from the side of his forehead....which then gets ripped out by Mike as the girl stabs him with an embalming rod in the back.

I am purposely leaving out bits again, in the hopes you genuinely will check it out. if it makes sense to you sober. I applaud you and encourage you to watch the whole series, then come back and have a discussion with me.

So we've established the movies are balls out pants crappingly insane. They are weird. But so so SO enjoyably so. The sequel holds up amazingly beginning to end in adding to the story AND giving more to it. Much more. In fact so much you want to give back because it loves knowing you finally think you get it, only to discover you DON'T get it and throwing weird shit at you. Then when you finally settle in and think it's okay. NO IT ISN'T OKAY! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!

But that is the charm, the love and appeal of these films. Do the sequels get weirder? Absolutely. Do they make sense? Wouldn't be Phantasm if they did. Do they ever simplify the story? Wouldn't happen in a million years. 5 films! 5 films, with the same actors from all of them. It's like the Fast and Furious films. Once you appear in one movie, your in them for life. People die and come back. People who survived suddenly die and ascend to higher beings. Then come back. Realities blend and life itself becomes a dream.

Check these out, check all of them out, and let your mind melt away.