My All-Time Favorite Movie

In Movies by Don Adams10 Comments

Don here: From the moment I first saw it, my favorite movie ever has been Don Coscarelli’s whimsically surreal nightmare, PHANTASM.

In 1981, my brother Rock ‘n Roll Tim purchased a monstrous VCR that I later came to know was a 3/4″ Umatic consumer deck.  It was a top loader, opened by a large sliding knob, and when that top popped it was like a catapult being fired.  Sometimes tapes even came flying out and you’d have to catch them, like a movie pitching machine.  Tim recorded PHANTASM off the CBS Late Movie one Friday night and I sat down to watch it the next day.  Once it was over, I got up, hit STOP, REWIND, and then PLAY, sat down, and watched it again.

The movie young Coscarelli wrote, directed, shot, and edited is a hypnotic, humorous, and horrifying mix of blood, boobs, guns, dirt bikes, dwarfs, Dos Equis, brotherly love, shadowy graveyards and brilliant white rooms, jump cuts, alien worlds, swearing, doorstep jam sessions, trans-dimensional trampoline jumps, and the glory that is the ’71 ‘Cuda — all topped by that crazy, DUNE-inspired flying metal ball.  Add in the most rocking of horror soundtracks, and you’ve got one wild, hallucinogenic trip — one that I’ve taken over one hundred times since. I’ve also made several visits to Dunsmuir House in Oakland, the real location of Morningside (and BURNT OFFERINGS)…


Some might say the movie doesn’t make any sense, but it has the logic of a nightmare…
BOY is it good.

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