This Movie Got Me Into Horror

Growing up in a strict, conservative, and religious household isn’t uncommon when you ask the average horror hound how they fell in love with the genre. We all got our first taste of blood soaked freedom in various ways and mine couldn’t have been made possible without my grandma (thanks Gram). Coming from a Blockbuster Video in Alvin Texas was a VHS copy of a movie I can best describe as if Westworld was written by R.L. Stine…

Changed over time to ‘Spooky Town’ due to a weird licensing issue, Phantom Town was one of a series of films to come from Full Moon under their young adult label Pulsepounders. I’d come to learn later on from filmmaker and friend Jay Woelfel that Pulsepounders was in fact their effort to have a production label catered for a business deal with Disney that never went through. When I visit this movie again with this knowledge, the amount of times they specifically reference Disneyland and theme parks is comical. 

When I first saw the movie I was primarily captivated with the mix of nice practical effects and hilarious cgi attempts but have since then grown more and more things to love about it each time I revisit. The incorporation of the native american trope somehow being better than when you see a movie like Antlers do it (wow). The dynamic between the 3 child actors being the kind of camp people love to seek out now. This fuckin shot right here is reaction folder worthy… 

It isn’t that Phantom Town is a perfect movie because horror movies as a whole never really are but it made a fan out of me for the genre at a young age. The ads before the movie on the VHS are what led me gradually through the rest of Full Moon’s catalog and prepped me to throw down however much I ended up paying for Puppet Master 1:1 scale replicas years later. Horror movies aimed at kids really have become a lost art with the exception of a Stranger Things or two slipping through the cracks and I wish there was more of it being made these days.