Metacritic reviews

What makes Phantasm special is the way it captures a boy's life in 1978. [Remastered]

Over the course of three wild sequels, Coscarelli expanded his bizarre universe in a variety of imaginative and deliriously entertaining ways – but the original set the standard. [Remastered]

It deliberately makes no sense, but it has more bizarro gimmicks to the minute than any other horror picture of 1979.

Lurid, illogical and utterly off-the-wall, this funny-scary exercise in low-budget schlock is a marvelous orgy of cheap thrills, including a supernaturally sinister mortuary, a hideously wriggling severed finger, one furry flying creature, dwarfs from the Undead, and the goriest - indeed the only - blood-sucking flying steel ball in movie history. [16 April 1979, p.86]

A wonderfully creative, bizarre, delightfully terrifying horror film that never fails to surprise.

It's thoroughly silly and endearing.

Strong point of the feature is that it’s played for both horror and laughs.

Phantasm will not be remembered as a masterpiece of the horror genre, but it sustains a gauche, hokey, desperately improvisational charm.... It entertains through a half-facetious juvenile gusto.

There is one thing you can say for the new horror film Phantasm (at the York): it certainly has its moment. [5 May 1979]

Phantasm remains a pretty effective fright fest.