Gadgets of Phantasm
In all the movies of Phantasm, there are many pieces of equipment that are used. These most notable of these are the spheres and weapons. Some are used to exacerbate the horror of the films while others are used purely for entertainment and sometimes, comedic purposes. One cannot speak about the films without mentioning these machines as they sometimes play just as important roles as those of the cast.
The first tools that deserve mentioning are the spheres. The spheres go hand in hand with the films and they are mainly used as weapons. Appearing first in the original Phantasm, these spheres are bedecked with sharp blades that spike out from the sphere, which The Tall Man uses on his victims. As the films evolve, so do the spheres. They are portrayed in the original film as being just what they are; inanimate objects that are completely under the power of those that control them. However, in Phantasm III the spheres take on a personality of their own. They display emotions such as rage when they are about to attack or a sort of anxiety when they are trying to escape from something or someone. In Phantasm III, one of the spheres even speaks!
The powers of the spheres also greatly changes throughout the series of films. In the original Phantasm, the spheres are used solely for drilling into people’s heads. But they take on other powers, such as an eye that The Tall Man uses to track his victims and one even has a pulsing brain! The Golden Sphere is the worst of them all as not only does it have the spiked blades but the blades rotate, making it even more terrifying not only for those that it’s about to attack but for the audience as well.
In the first Phantasm, Mike falls asleep with a shotgun and his brother Jody later uses a shotgun when trying to escape The Tall Man. However with Phantasm II we saw a whole different kind of gun being used. This gun, called the Regman Quad-Barrel Dwarfcutter, was a creation of the character Reggie. He created it by welding together two double barrel shotguns. In Phantasm II this lethal weapon could destroy the dwarves by splitting them right in two. In Phantasm III, this weapon also evolved and could take the dwarves heads off with a single shot. This weapon increased Reggie’s confidence ten-fold and was very important to his character.
Although both weapons and spheres were used right from the very beginning of the films, they all matured and evolved just as the characters did throughout the series. They are an important part of the films and though weapons are used in almost any horror film, the ones used in the Phantasm series are completely different from anything else.