Seventies! Seventies! Seventies! You think, as the credits roll, and flares coupled with bad hair choices abound across the screen. If you can get past this unwitting reminder of a bygone era, however, you'll find that this film really hasn't dated much - mostly because it's just too weird.

If you're looking for something that may have inspired the gorefest/torture porn horror of today, then this is not for you. There's only one instance of out and out gross (but admittedly it's pretty graphic, which is probably what gave it the 18 certificate).
If you're into more of the psychological horror of yesteryear, however, then you'll probably enjoy this cult gem. Or come out feeling just a bit odd.

No horror movie franchise is complete without its compelling villain, and like the Freddie Krueger run that succeeded it, Phantasm works because it has a frightening, supernatural figure at its centre; the aptly named The Tall Man. Appropriately gaunt with sunken eyes and dusty suit, whenever he shows up everything becomes steeped in a vague air of menace. He also comes complete with psychotic dwarf henchmen (less funny than it sounds) and a horrific, futuristic sphere weapon that likes to embed itself in your face and funnel your blood out in geyser-like sprays. Nice.

The film is populated with surreal dream sequences; in fact the whole thing very much feels like a dream, rounded up with a suggestion at the end that everything we've seen is the product of one very disturbed boy's mind. This is the film's strength and personally I feel might have been an unconscious influence on such strange and wonderful directors as David Lynch (or perhaps the other way around); it certainly has much of the same hazy, disturbing feel to it.

If there is a letdown, it's in the performance of the older brother, Jodie, for whom the term 'wooden' is a woeful understatement. Still, younger brother Mike does his best to compensate and mostly succeeds. The Tall Man doesn't have to do much but walk around and be menacing, and in this he succeeds admirably.

All in all, a highly interesting low budget affair, notable for the rather sophisticated touch of surrealism it brings to the horror genre as a whole.