Jim, the World’s Greatest (1976)

          When examining the domestic melodrama Jim, the World’s Greatest, which concerns alcoholism and child abuse, it’s helpful to consider that the picture’s co-creators, Don Coscarelli and Craig Mitchell, were only 17 when their parents bankrolled the low-budget project. Whereas some movie-crazy kids might have used this opportunity to put sex fantasies or sports fables onscreen, Coscarelli and Mitchell attempted to diagnose a social ailment. Therefore, even though the movie doesn’t quite work, thanks to clumsy plotting and leaden pacing, Jim, the World’s Greatest is in some ways a noble endeavor. Furthermore, seeing as how the project got both filmmakers started on idiosyncratic careers, good things sprang from these humble beginnings.

          The “Jim” of the title is a high-school athlete, Jim Nolan (Gregory Harrison), who lives with his preteen brother, Kelly (Robbie Wolcott), and their drunken father, Russell (Angus Scrimm). Because Russell’s emotional problems and substance-abuse issues prevent him from holding down steady jobs, Jim keeps the family afloat with a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant. Jim also serves as his little brother’s protector whenever booze causes Russell to vent his anger by beating Kelly. The story, which is more of a rambling travelogue through Jim’s life than a proper narrative, tracks Jim’s struggles to reconcile all the confusing things he encounters. In terms of girls, Jim likes a smart classmate named Lisa, even though he appreciates sexual advances from another girl. In terms of sports, Jim enjoys doing well on the field but seems unsure whether his future involves athletics or something else. And at home, Jim faces the biggest challenge—standing up to an abusive parent.

          Some of the episodes in this film connect, such as Jim’s discovery of why his father resents Kelly, and some feel more like filler, notably a discursive bit during which Jim and Kelly encounter a hang-glider pilot while they’re out wandering one day. Directors Coscarelli and Mitchell shoot the film inconsistently, presenting some scenes economically while letting others drag on and on. Their storytelling is especially unfocused during the climax and the coda, since the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner. However, the overall tone of the film is mature and sincere, with Harrison endeavoring to infuse his scenes with heartfelt emotion. Accordingly, Jim, the World’s Greatest is best viewed as a promising first stab at filmmaking, particularly for Coscarelli. Later the same year, he released his first solo directorial effort, the youth adventure Kenny & Company, and then, three years later, he found his groove with the cult-fave horror flick Phantasm (1979). The iconic “Tall Man” character in Phantasm and its many sequels was played by Angus Scrimm, the bad dad in Jim, the World’s Greatest. 

Jim, the World’s Greatest: FUNKY

Kenny & Company (1976)

          Capturing the wonderment of childhood without slipping into sentimentality is tricky, and that’s just what producer/writer/director Don Coscarelli achieves with Kenny & Company, the first movie that he directed alone. Depicting the adventures of an average 12-year-old kid living in the suburbs of southern California, the movie takes a warm look at everything from bullies to first love to Halloween to mortality. In many ways, it’s a typical coming-of-age comedy, and yet there’s something endearingly authentic about the picture’s specifics. Featuring kids’-eye-view narration, the scrappy little movie emphasizes the people, places, and things that affect the worldview of film’s young protagonist. For viewers who were kids in the ’70s, Kenny & Company offers a blast of pure nostalgia to the fleeting period in life when days seemed to stretch out forever.

          The episodic storyline takes place in the fall, when Kenny (Dan McCann) and his misfit buddies anxiously await Halloween. Most of the time, Kenny explores the world alongside his best friend, Doug (A. Michael Baldwin), though the duo somehow inherited a clumsy nerd named Sherman (Jeff Roth) as a perpetual tag-along. The boys do foolish things like planting cherry bombs under trashcans and sitting atop the trashcans so the resulting explosions will launch them into the air. They also endure the practical jokes of Doug’s father (Ralph Richmond), a Secret Service agent who finds it hilarious to lock up kids with his handcuffs and then pretend he’s lost the keys. Kenny tries to work up the nerve to ask out his pretty classmate, even as he clashes with a bully who demands protection money. The real world isn’t kept totally at bay; hearing that an aging neighbor is approaching death and then learning that his beloved dog is terminally ill forces Kenny to wrestle with existential questions.

          Although Kenny & Company is not the slickest of movies, the piece works overall. Coscarelli keeps his kid actors from playing cute, and he kicks the movie into overdrive during the climactic Halloween sequence, which unfolds like a surreal horror movie. (Not coincidentally, Coscarelli has spent most of his subsequent career making surreal horror movies, including the Phantasm series.) Best of all, Coscarelli gets Kenny’s attitude just right, encapsulating the hopefulness of youth and shooting it through the prism of the southern California sunshine. As Kenny says in a typical line of voiceover, “What if she likes me? Boy, that’d be bitchin’. Goin’ steady with Marcy would be great!” Seeing as how Kenny & Company features of a scene of Doug’s father unloading his .45 and handing the gun to a group of kids as a plaything, this movie’s all about reveling in a time that was bereft of the everyday anxieties we take for granted today.

Kenny & Company: GROOVY

Phantasm (1979)

A strange horror picture written, produced, and directed by then-23-year-old Don Coscarelli, Phantasm is filled with images that burned themselves into viewers’ brains—literally, as you’ll discover in a moment. The movie isn’t particularly frightening, and it takes forever to kick into gear, but the sheer ’70s-ness of the thing contributes to its mystique. Everyone in the cast has a little too much hair, much of it feathered, Farrah Fawcett-style; the plot is filled with Chariots of the Gods-type hokum about aliens with a master plan for humanity; and the awkward score (think melancholy electric-piano solos) has an eerie closing-time vibe. The rudimentary cinematography and editing, also by multitasker Coscarelli, add a student-movie creakiness that gains power after a while, because it’s like the gruesome story oozes directly from Coscarelli’s young mind. The narrative concerns two brothers investigating mysterious goings-on at a funeral home, which is run by a pasty freak known as “The Tall Man” whose aides are scampering little people in brown robes. Phantasm is the sort of picture in which villains do creepy things in public and nobody notices except the heroes; I dig the moment when the Tall Man stops on a sidewalk and inhales car exhaust with an orgasmic look on his face, earning nary a bewildered glance except from the movie’s protagonist. Because the characters are ciphers, the flick’s real star is a prop—the flying, bladed metal ball that jams into people’s heads and drills until blood gushes out like water from a spigot. Unfortunately, it takes about 38 logy minutes to get to that high point, and the movie’s only 90 minutes long. Viewers with stamina are rewarded with a deranged third act, because the conspiracy the heroes discover is one of the most preposterous sci-fi concepts ever committed to film. FYI, Phantasm developed a cult following and spawned three undistinguished sequels, all made by the persistent Mr. Coscarelli.

Phantasm: FREAKY