Trailer
Plot summary
Mike has just lost his parents, and he dreads that his older brother Jody, who plans to travel, will leave him too. Tommy, a friend of Jody's, is stabbed to death by a woman in Morningside Cemetery, and at the funeral Jody and his friend Reggie say they believe Tommy killed himself. Mike secretly observes the service and sees the mortician, called the Tall Man, lift Tommy's coffin back into the hearse on his own rather than finish the burial. He tells a local fortune teller what he saw; she has him put his hand into a box, and after she tells him not to be afraid, he removes it unharmed.
Cast
- Terrie Kalbusas Fortuneteller's Granddaughter
- Susan Harperas Girlfriend
- David Arntzenas Toby
- Ralph Richmondas Bartender
- Bill Coneas Tommy
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Phantasm (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Don Coscarelli built Phantasm's ideas out of a real recurring nightmare from his teens, in which a flying chrome sphere chased him down a long corridor and he feared it would drill into his brain.
- Coscarelli cast Angus Scrimm as the villainous Tall Man after Scrimm had intimidated him on the set of an earlier film, Jim the World's Greatest, convincing Coscarelli he had the presence for a great screen villain.
- The amateur cast and crew were so inexperienced with prop guns that they didn't realize firing blanks could be dangerous, and Coscarelli's own jacket caught fire from a shotgun blank during a scene.
- Will Greene, the elderly metalworker who built the film's iconic killer spheres, died before Phantasm was released and never got to see the finished movie.
- Coscarelli's mother designed several of the film's special effects, costumes and make-up but was credited under a string of fake pseudonyms so the credits wouldn't be dominated by the Coscarelli family name.
- Rue Morgue editor Jovanka Vuckovic has said Phantasm influenced later horror works including Supernatural, A Nightmare on Elm Street and One Dark Night, and the Tall Man himself has been cited as an inspiration for the internet horror character Slender Man.
