Nightmare-Inducing ‘Phantasm’ Tattoos

These tattoos are absolutely phantas-tic!

I imagine there’s a silver sphere coming for me after that pitiful bit of wordplay. Although, in my defence, there does exist a blog post on phantasm.com which refers to fans of Phantasm as “phans” – love it or leave it.

Phantasm was released in 1979 and has since become a cult classic in the horror movie community. In the past four decades, Phantasm has been followed by a further four films, with the most recent addition to the franchise, Phantasm: Ravager released in 2016.

There are strange occurrences and so many twists and turns in Phantasm but the main gist is that the undertaker at Morningside Cemetery has gone rogue, and anyone who crosses his path is in grave danger. The undertaker, referred to as the Tall Man, is a supernatural being with superhuman strength and telekinetic abilities.

According to this article, Phantasm was re-titled The Never Dead in Australia to avoid confusion with another film franchise of the same name, but with different spelling. Over the years – when video stores were still a thing – I feel as though I made my way through almost the entirety of the horror movie section and yet can’t ever recall seeing copies of either The Never Dead nor Phantasm.

There are plenty of Phantasm fans making their presence known on social media, with thousands of images and video clips from the series being posted, along with photos of their horror movie and figurine collections. When it comes to Phantasm themed tattoos, however, you’re not going to find much on Instagram. There’s tens of thousands of tattoos of more mainstream horror icons, but the Tall Man is a forgotten figure with many horror tattoo collectors.

If it’s been a while, or if you’ve never seen the Phantasm films, I suggest you purchase the box set and have yourself a movie marathon this Halloween season. This franchise is an essential addition to any horror movie collection.

With many horror franchises seeing remakes, sequels and prequels produced, and with it being 45 years since the original movie and 8 years since the last addition, when will we see a new Phantasm movie made?