"You play a good game, boy, but the game is finished. Now you die!"

Death is unpredictable. Sometimes when it happens, we don't necessarily have all the tools at our disposal to properly honor the life that was lost, or in my case, the soul that was gained.

For example, William Peter Blatty just died and Netflix has taken The Exorcist down. If you were hoping Death would go any easier on famous people in 2017, I have a feeling you're going to be disappointed. This week also saw the passing of William Onyeabor.

Shame about Onyeabor, really. He was a fantastic man.

It all reminds me of how just about this time last year Angus Scrimm died and the best movie I could find to talk about was John Dies At The End, and how I had to wait forever to see Scrimm's signature work.

This week's Thursday Thriller is Phantasm.

As many times as I've watched this 1979 Don Coscarelli film, and it's been many, I still can't say for sure what exactly happens and why. It's like a weird dream. It starts with this blonde woman having sex in a cemetery with a guy named Tommy, who has a handlebar moustache. By the sound of things, he finishes, and then she stabs him, and then she turns into Angus Scrimm. You get a sense that the sequence of those events is important. The blonde lady could have turned into Scrimm before murdering the guy. Scrimm didn't have to finish Tommy off, did he? But he did. What does that mean?

Then we learn at the funeral that Tommy was in a band with Jody (Bill Thornbury) and Reggie (Reggie Bannister). Reggie is the ice cream man, and Jody drives a sweet car and has a little brother named Mike (A. Michael Baldwin). Jody and Mike's parents died, and Mike is afraid he's going to lose Jody, so he follows him around everywhere, and asks a old, blind, psychic lady for advice. She has her granddaughter instruct Mike to stick his hand in a black box, and whatever's in there won't let go of his hand until he learns not to fear.

Later, Jody picks up the same blonde lady that was actually Angus Scrimm that killed Tommy at a bar and they go to have sex in the cemetery, but Mike was following and watching from afar, when all of a sudden he gets attacked by satanic jawas.

I could go on forever about the strangeness of this movie, how Scrimm's severed finger turns into a giant, red-eyed fly, how Scrimm, undercover as the undertaker is actually an alien stealing corpses and sending them to another dimension, but the coolest thing is the flying silver balls that stab people in the head and pump out all their blood.

Phantasm is a strange trip you can watch time and again, enjoy the visuals, and still not know what the hell is going on. It streams on Shudder.