Phantasm

--Reviewed by Lindy Loo

Plotline: A young boy who's sneaking around in the local graveyard sees the caretaker doing some damn weird things--lifting filled coffins all by himself, for example. Trying to figure out what's going on, he finds himself stumbling across robed midget-creatures, flying knife-blade metal balls, and an 8-foot cemetery caretaker with strange strengths and powers.

Scariness factor: The creepy caretaker guy is creepy. Other than that, pretty lowkey.

Gross-Out Factor: Some fingers get cut off and ooze yellow goop. A guy gets it in the head with the aforementioned metal ball and gushes blood. Etc. Moreso camp gross-out than anything really nasty.

Complaints: I just kinda couldn't engage with this movie--I mean, 3-foot robed creatures aren't really that scary, people. And trying to figure out *why* there's three-foot robed creatures is not that scary either. I mean, all horror movies require you to suspend your disbelief for a bit, but it's a lot harder to do so with 3-foot midgety creatures. I just kinda didn't *care* about why they existed or what they were being used for. And ultimately, the explanation really made little sense. As did a lot of the movie. Plus, WHAT THE HELL WAS UP WITH THE COMPLETE RIP-OFF OF THE HALLOWEEN SCORE?!?! I mean, SERIOUSLY, folks. There's no way that was just by accident.

High Points: The caretaker is most certainly creepy. It has high camp-factor which makes for entertainment. And there are actually a couple really nicely-shot scenes, mainly the one with the flipped-over ice cream truck in the dark. That was really good shit. The rest of it though was typical late-70's, early 80's horror movie campiness.



Overall: It was ok--I didn't fall asleep during it, and it was entertaining. It just wasn't all that, especially since this is one of those horror flicks that's sorta considered a "classic."

Grade: C