Five films. Forty years. One very tall problem. A spherical journey through cinema’s most wonderfully confusing nightmare.
There are certain horror franchises that play by the rules, and then there’s Phantasm, a series that seems to have been dreamt up by a feverish raccoon on a three-day bender after watching too many late-night sci-fi B-movies. Since 1979, writer-director Don Coscarelli has treated us to five films about a towering mortician from another dimension, his army of mustard-bleeding dwarf minions, and flying chrome spheres that really, really want to redecorate your skull.
What makes Phantasm special isn’t consistency, good acting, or plots that make any lick of sense. It’s the dreamlike weirdness, the genuine heart beneath the gore, and the sight of an ice cream man wielding a quadruple-barrelled shotgun like it’s a perfectly normal career progression. So grab a cone, check your brain at the door, and join me as we rank these magnificent disasters from “meh” to “BOY!”
The Phantasm Franchise: A Spherical Journey Through Cinematic Insanity
Ranking the Films from Silver Balls to “BOY!”
5. Phantasm: Ravager (2016) – The Gran’s Final Pie Entry
Every franchise eventually reaches its “we shot this in a field with whatever change we found in the couch cushions” phase, and Phantasm: Ravager occupies that space with the stubborn pride of a cat who’s just knocked over your favourite vase. Released in 2016, this final chapter was originally conceived as webisodes before being stitched together into a feature film, and it shows as subtly as Reggie’s pickup lines at a funeral.
The budget here is so low you could trip over it. The CGI looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 2 that’s been left in the sun too long, and the story, such as it is, involves Reggie waking up in random locations, mumbling “Where am I?” with the exact confusion the audience feels. Is any of it real? Is it all a dream? Does anyone involved know the difference? These are philosophical questions the film poses with the grace of a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving.
And yet. AND YET.
There’s something oddly touching about this ramshackle farewell. It gives us one last chance to see Angus Scrimm as The Tall Man before his passing, and his final “BOY!” carries the weight of 40 years of cinematic weirdness. For long-time fans, it’s like your gran’s last homemade pie, a bit burnt, missing some ingredients, and you’re not entirely sure what’s in it, but it was made with love. The fans themselves defend it as “fan service” and “amazingly well done given the circumstances”. Bless their hearts. Bless all our hearts for watching it.
4. Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994) – The Home Alone with Shotguns Entry
By 1994, the Phantasm series had committed fully to just getting weird with it. Lord of the Dead is what happens when you let a teenager with a fog machine, a comic book collection, and a VHS camera direct The Road Warrior in a graveyard. The results are, against all odds, glorious nonsense.
Picking up immediately after the second film (helpful if you’re binging and have lost all sense of time and sanity), this entry sees Reggie rescuing Mike, again, while picking up the most bizarre companions this side of a fever dream. There’s a telekinetic child who’s essentially Kevin McCallister with a shotgun, and a nunchuck-wielding orphan named Rocky who looks like she wandered in from a completely different movie. The tone ping-pongs between body horror and slapstick comedy so violently you’ll need a neck brace.
One moment, you’re watching someone’s head get drilled by a silver sphere; the next, Reggie is caught in a booby trap straight out of Home Alone. It’s like the filmmakers couldn’t decide on a mood and just threw everything at the wall. Some of it sticks. Most of it slides down sadly.
But here’s the thing: it’s oddly charming. A. Michael Baldwin returns as Mike after being recast in the second film, bringing back some continuity. Jody returns from the dead, aged inexplicably, and becomes a silver sphere because… well, because. The series’ mythology expands in ways that make approximately zero sense, but Angus Scrimm gets plenty of ominous screen time, and the dwarves are angrier than ever. For fans, it’s a beloved cult entry that embraces the wild, adventurous side of Phantasm. For everyone else, it’s proof that budget constraints breed creativity, or at least, breed something.
3. Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998) – The Existential Crisis Entry
Just when you thought this series couldn’t get any weirder, Don Coscarelli decided to make Phantasm IV: Oblivion by raiding the cutting-room floor of the 1979 original and stitching old footage together with new material. The result is the franchise going full-on existential crisis, a moodier, more introspective entry that somehow still includes time travel, exploding dwarves, and what might be Abraham Lincoln’s cousin.
This is the Phantasm series doing its own director’s commentary. Mike wanders the desert, presumably trying to figure out what the hell is happening in this franchise, while Reggie trails behind with his quadruple-barreled shotgun and enough failed pickup lines to fill a cursed diary. We get backstory on The Tall Man, or at least, what passes for backstory in Phantasm terms. There’s mention of a Jebediah Morningside, which sounds like the name of a ghost train conductor from Alabama, and we dive deeper into dimensional travel and philosophical mumbo-jumbo about death and destiny.
The film has an eerie, dreamlike quality that fans adore. Many consider it the closest in tone to the original, with its slow pace and abstract storytelling. Watching the 1979 footage blend with the 1998 footage is surprisingly effective, like having a conversation with your younger self across time. Mike develops telekinesis, attempts suicide, travels through time—all things that are introduced, then largely ignored, because consistency is for lesser franchises .
It’s Waiting for Godot with face-drilling spheres. Not for casual viewers, but those already on the Phantasm train will find plenty to enjoy as we drift toward the finale. One fan puts it perfectly: “If you watch the first and fourth movie on their own back to back, they work so amazingly well together”. That’s not a compliment to the fourth film so much as proof that shared confusion is halved.
2. Phantasm II (1988) – The Bigger Budget, Less Hair Entry
After nearly a decade of flying silver spheres and night terrors, Phantasm II arrived in 1988 with more money, more explosions, and significantly less hair on Reggie’s head. This is where the franchise starts flexing its new muscles, by which we mean chainsaws, flamethrowers, and grenade launchers. It’s like the series traded its existential dread for a gym membership and steroids.
The film picks up after the first, then immediately recasts Mike with a new actor because continuity is for films that take themselves seriously. James LeGros steps in as the psychic, sphere-dodging teen while Reggie continues being the world’s most unlikely action hero. Our balding duo hit the road in a tricked-out hearse, cruising through ghost towns that The Tall Man has wiped off the map, raising important questions like “Where are the police in all this?” (Answer: probably squished into yellow-bleeding dwarves).
The studio budget shows in set design, locations, and special effects. The flying spheres have evolved, too. Now, they can drill your skull, inject acid, and deploy spinny saw bits, because why the hell not? The gore is ramped up, the action is faster, and the whole thing has the energy of a vintage 90s survival horror video game. One fan declares it “literally not only my favorite Horror film, but one of my favourite movies in general”. High praise for a film where an ice cream man is the primary protagonist.
The Tall Man is arguably at his most menacing here, and while he doesn’t get much screen time, his presence looms over everything like a really tall shadow. Reggie somehow bags a hitchhiker who finds his combover irresistible, which might be the most supernatural element in the entire franchise. It’s not as atmospheric as the first, but it’s way more fun than it has any right to be. Chainsaws, psychic links, ghost towns, killer balls, what more could you want? Well, maybe Mike’s original face, but we let that slide.
1. Phantasm (1979) – The “What Even Is This Film?” Entry
And now we arrive at the top of our list, the film that started it all, the dream that somehow escaped someone’s sleeping brain and landed in theatres: the original Phantasm. Words cannot adequately describe this movie, but I’m going to try anyway, because that’s what we do here.
Released in 1979, Don Coscarelli’s low-budget masterpiece introduced us to Mike, a curious teenage boy with a bad case of sibling FOMO who decides to follow his older brother around, including to graveyards and funeral homes. Standard bonding activities, really. Things take a turn when Mike witnesses a very tall undertaker, known, with stunning creativity, as The Tall Man, lift a full-size coffin like it’s a baguette and load it into a hearse . From there, it’s a descent into pure surrealist madness.
Flying silver spheres that drill heads open. Shrunken Jawas in brown robes who bleed French’s mustard. Portals to other dimensions in the back room. A grave-digger collecting souls like Pokémon cards. A living amputated finger that convinces people there’s evil afoot. It’s like someone threw every weird idea at the wall and discovered the wall was made of Velcro.
The film is slow, atmospheric, haunting, and confusing in the best possible way. It has one of horror’s great themes, that haunting, echoing melody that sounds like your subconscious trying to warn you about something. The Tall Man, played by the late, great Angus Scrimm, says very little but leaves a lasting impression, mostly by booming “BOY!” in the creepiest voice imaginable. Even critics who dismiss the sequels acknowledge the original’s power, calling it “some strange hybrid of horror, old-school science fiction, and afternoon special, wrapped up in a stoner’s dream”. That’s not an insult, by the way. That’s an accurate description.
Screen Rant includes it among the “trippiest horror movies of all time,” noting that its dreamlike world, where nothing is as it seems, makes it “tough to follow” in the best way. The ending famously makes most of the movie feel irrelevant, or does it? Does anything matter? Are we all just characters in someone else’s fever dream? These are questions the film poses, then refuses to answer, because that’s not what Phantasm is about.
What Phantasm is about is atmosphere. It’s about that feeling you get at 2 AM when you’re not quite sure if you’re awake or dreaming. It’s about a tall man who might be Death himself, or an alien, or just a really dedicated undertaker with boundary issues. It’s about an ice cream man who becomes an unlikely hero, a kid who sees too much, and silver balls that want to redecorate your face.
As the fans say: “Literally my favourite movie of all time”. “Nothing else like it”. “Unique, unsettling, and unforgettable”. They’re right. There really is nothing else like Phantasm—and honestly, thank goodness for that.
The Verdict: Should You Watch These?
Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you the Phantasm sequels are good in any traditional sense. They’re not. The acting ranges from adequate to “was this person paid in coffee creams?” The plots make approximately zero sense. The budgets visibly evaporate before your eyes. The fifth film looks like it was shot on someone’s antique hand cranked fiilm camera.
But here’s the thing: they’re worth watching. All of them. Even Ravager. ESPECIALLY Ravager, if only to complete the journey and say goodbye to characters who’ve been bouncing around dimensions since before some of us were born.
The Phantasm series is a testament to something rare in cinema: pure, unfiltered vision. Don Coscarelli had an idea, a weird, incoherent, mustard-bleeding, sphere-flying, dimension-hopping idea, and he spent nearly forty years bringing it to life. That kind of dedication deserves respect. That kind of weirdness deserves celebration.
So grab some friends, adjust your state of mind accordingly, and dive in. The silver spheres are waiting. The Tall Man is watching. And Reggie’s pickup lines are as terrible as ever.
BOY!
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