Weird Phantasm Stuff: Foreign VHS Covers

I dig seeing how Phantasm travels throughout the world. I also dig retro-VHS artwork. So you know I'm a sucker for the four international videotape covers featured in this post. The first two covers are from the Republic of Croatia, the third from Spain and the fourth from France. And there is something weird about each one of them. Then again, there's something weird about pretty much every Phantasm home video cover ever, but that's a blog post for another day.

Click here to continue reading this post and see these unusual cover artworks. If you want to, skip the text and scroll down to the covers to see if you can spot what's weird about each of them before I tell you.

The first artwork, despite being for the original Phantasm, features a spine and front cover that solely feature images from Phantasm III. It's also interesting for the dual spellings of Phantasm and Fantazam, which the sequel also features.

The second film's VHS artwork is mostly normal, except that the Universal Studios key art has been flipped horizontally. I always figured the Tall Man for a right-hander, but I suppose a man of his talent could be ambidextrous.

The third film's VHS artwork is interesting for featuring the Tall Man materializing out of the sky on.... the Red Planet? Is that the Red Planet?? That location didn't even feature into Phantasm III, so its inclusion on the cover is curious. Clearly that Tall Man pose hails from the spacegate/campsite scene, but there is no spacegate here. While I appreciate the cool images on the back cover, it's kind of weird that pretty much *all* of the supporting players are present, but the top-billed Reggie Bannister is absent!

The fourth film's artwork is mostly normal and pretty cool-looking. I especially like the unusual design of the back cover, but wait - are those gold spheres floating about? Weren't those exclusively in Phantasm III? Or more specifically, didn't we only see one of those burst from the Tall Man's head near film's end? I could be wrong, but I don't remember seeing one of them in Phantasm Oblivion.

You can click any cover to enlarge it!

The first two covers were found on eBay from this seller. The third cover hails from here and the fourth from here. The top image was made by combining and cropping images found on this fantastic website.