To this day, Phantasm is by far one of the scariest horror movie series out there. It has an incredibly creepy atmosphere, especially when inside the funeral parlor which is filled with droning ambient sounds. Speaking of sounds, Phantasm has a great theme song which ranks right up there with the Halloween theme if you ask me. And talk about a freaky bad guy, Angus Scrimm, simply known as "The Tall Man", is what nightmares are truly made of. He may only have a couple o' lines, but his crazy facial expressions and the infamous "BOYYYY!" catchphrase are things you'll never forget. What's even creepier, is that they made more sequels to the film some 20 years later and he doesn't look like he's aged a bit! Maybe he really is filled with that formaldehyde fluid after all!

Now all of these things that make the movie creepy are spectacular, but everybody will tell you, the one thing they look forward to in the Phantasm movies are the Sentinel Sphere death scenes. The Tall Man has these crazy robotic spheres that basically hone in on any living person and then they proceed to attack them without mercy. I still remember seeing the very first sphere attack scene...

The spheres are equipped with all sorts of evil goodies... blades, drills, blood draining vacuums, the works. This poor guy was the first to encounter one of the spheres and as you can see, it went straight for his head and quickly drilled itself in. Who would've thought a couple o' silver balls could be capable of creating such awesomely gory death scenes? Don Coscarelli, creator of "The Beastmaster" and "Bubba Ho-Tep", that's who.

I'm still waiting for them to put out that final, conclusive Phantasm movie... but I guess they're in no rush since Angus Scrimm will apparently live on forever. o.O! Oh yeah, on a related note, check out this lame animation I did when I was first learning Flash.

back to previous page