Imagine for a moment that you are a film director. But no, not that film director. You do not work with Leonardo DiCaprio or Meryl Streep, and when you want a sandwich on set you have to get out of your chair — which, by the way, you brought with you from home — and walk down to the deli yourself. They are always out of the mustard you like.
Then one day your phone rings. You flip it open even though you don’t recognize the number, and on the other end of the line is the guy who just directed the new Star Wars movie. It turns out that he’s a big fan of a horror movie you made a long time ago (1979, to be exact) and is dismayed, in the way that only incredibly rich film people can be dismayed, that the prints available for distribution today are all messed up: scratchy, badly cut and spliced, the works. Come to my studio, he says, and rework your masterpiece.
It was something like that, I’d guess, for filmmaker Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep), whose directing career has stalled a bit of late (one TV episode and one very off-the-radar film in the last 14 years). But his early horror piece Phantasm struck a chord with J.J. Abrams, who was eager to screen the movie for the crew at his producing company but ran up against the print problems mentioned above. Luckily for Coscarelli, Abrams had the pull and the purse to change all that. Now, that 1979 film — about a funeral director who is secretly reanimating the dead with terrible results, and the youngster who catches on to his secrets — has undergone a 4K digital remastering and gotten a pristine new audio mix, all in time to screen this Saturday at Amherst Cinema as part of Art House Theater Day, a newly-created celebration of local cinema scenes the world over.
The screening, which begins at 9:30 p.m. under the name Phantasm: Remastered, will be followed by a live-streamed Q&A session with Coscarelli.
Also at Amherst this week is the modern (and controversial) classic Battle Royale. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, this Japanese film is the spiritual predecessor to the Hunger Games series — it came out in 2000; the Hunger Games films debuted in 2012 — but unlike that hit American franchise, the Battle Royale films have always seemed unafraid to take a less genteel view of youth, and what horrors might be lurking there in response to our own adult actions. In Fukasaku’s world, a different high school class is sent to a remote island every year and locked into explosive neck collars, then left with instructions to be the last survivor of a murder spree. A note: if you have a child who has fallen in love with the Hunger Games series, and you think they may like this film, consider watching it yourself first.
Also this week: at the Academy of Music in Northampton, director Wes Anderson gets some special treatment when the Northampton Arts Council devotes a full weekend to his very particular work. Starting on Friday at 5 p.m. and running through Sunday, the event offers filmgoers a chance to take in some of the director’s most notable films, including Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. With Anderson’s oeuvre containing so many other wonderful entertainments — Fantastic Mr. Fox, Rushmore, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and more — it’s a bit of a letdown that all three days of the Academy’s fest feature the same three films. But for lovers of those works and for those who haven’t yet been exposed to the Anderson style, these are a wonderful way to get hooked, and to remind us of why we continue to stay hooked.
Contact Jack Brown at cinemadope@gmail.com.
