Friday, March 25, 2022

Death Battle Analysis: The Tall Man

 

Welcome one and all to probably one of my most anticipated Horror Blogs to date, as we cover the main villain of the Infamous Phantasm Series. Being a Unique combination of Cosmic Horror and Slasher film, Phantasm is one of those more obscure and beloved films that even big fans of the franchise struggle to truly grasp what is going on. But after hardcore looking into everything from the films to the statements, I feel like I have finally solved the mystery, and believe me, there is a lot more going on with The Tall Man than you might think, some things Far more terrifying…

Background:

What is it you are most afraid of? Is it the unknown? Death? Being forgotten? Damnation? The Destruction of all things we hold dear? Whatever it may be, It is perfectly reasonable, fear is a natural response to danger that is made to help humans and other species survive in the natural world. There are many ways to overcome fear, through things like reason and logic against problems we anticipate, safety and security against things that are dangerous, and understanding and research against what is Unknown. But there are some things, some Entities, that can defy all of this, such as our subject of today's discussion, The Tall Man.

What this Being is, is a complicated question, with many different answers, theories and more questions on top of it, but I suppose we will start from what our mortal minds can most easily comprehend.

In the mid 1800’s United States, there lived a wealthy mortician named Dr. Jebediah Morningside. Jebediah was enlisted as a Field Doctor during the American Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in the country's history, and afterward retired to his family's farm as an undertaker. As you can imagine, this career path led to him bearing witness to the stark passage between life and death countless times, something that troubled the doctor greatly. The more people he put in the grave, the more questions he had about what it all means? What purpose does life and death serve in the grand scheme of the cosmos?

Wanting to find the answers for himself, Jebediah poured himself into study and came to the conclusion that the source and meaning of it all is hidden in mundane simple subjects such as the shifting phases of matter, vibrational frequencies, or the differences between warmth and cold. This became his life’s work, his passion, his obsession to learn the craft.

And learn the craft he did, eventually Dr. Morningside managed to invent a device called The Dimensional Fork. This machine produces powerful vibrational frequencies at high temperatures to act as a sort-of doorway, allowing subjects to faze into other realms ala String Theory. His goal was to use this to travel to a dimension higher than our own existence to gain a deeper understanding of things. We do not know what things he saw or experienced after stepping through his gate, but one thing we know for certain is…

The man known as Jebediah Morningside, Never came back. The place that the Dimensional Fork took the Doctor was a dark, higher dimensional planet referred to as The Red World, which through one of several potential means, essentially assimilated Morningside and made him an extension of its own will, an Entity that those who have encountered can only refer to as The Tall Man.

Despite that description, whatever The Tall Man is, he is anything but human, possessing Yellow blood, inhuman strength, otherworldly powers and even more alien motivations. Upon his emergence, The Tall Man took over Morningside Cemetery, and began his wicked deeds.

What The Tall Man does, is essentially plunder cemeteries, stealing all the corpses and crushing them down to a small dwarf like state, before removing their brain from their body, and separately reanimating both parts by filling them with the same yellow fluid that flows through his own body.

The Brains he places inside of powerful higher dimensional weapons called Sentinels to be used as its operating system. 

Meanwhile the zombified corpses he sends back to The Red World to be used as slave labor, their shrunken state allowing them to cope with the intense gravity of the planet. Using these Sentinels, The Tall Man then will kill all the currently living people in said town and do the same process to them.

Small towns are like people…some get old and die a natural death….some are murdered. The Tall Man will continue this wake of destruction and Death until there is no one left.

He is out to conquer entire dimensions and worlds unknown, spirit off all their dead to a planet worse than hell, and turn this planet into a mere extension of The Red World itself, and the only ones who can possibly stop him from doing so, are a young boy and fictions most badass Ice Cream Man.

Those who dare stand in The Tall Man’s way will be met with tragedy, suffering and futility beyond mortal comprehension, as the unknowable and the dreams collide into the perfect kind of Nightmare.

Personality:

The Tall Man is a cold, cruel and malevolent force that cannot be bargained with, reasoned with, or feel emotions like empathy or guilt. He comes off as extremely sophisticated and enjoys toying with those who are onto what he truly is, going out of his way not only to terrorize and torture them, but also to spare those he finds entertaining to watch struggle in a never ending cat and mouse game. Despite that however, his view of things is totally alien to what a normal person would believe. He sees humans as simple skin sacks of water and meat, ideas as tiny electrons firing off in insignificant brain cells, and ideals like freedom, hope and loyalty as even more meager inventions of that, that the universe is uncaring and vast beyond us. The reason why The Tall Man is so scary is because he represents the inevitable Fears that one can’t escape from. The Grief one feels when a loved one passes, The Existential Dread of losing one's mind and memories, The Fear of one day growing old and dying, They are ALL him. These are not things one can fight traditionally, they are only things one can come to terms with, it's in pressing onward and never losing the hope that makes one human that one defeats things like him.

Intellect:

Age: Roughly 220

Weight: Over 200lbs

Height: Taller Than YOU

Even before becoming The Tall Man, Jebediah was clearly a supergenius capable of inventing the Dimensional Fork, a device that produces specific vibrational frequencies that can allow someone to teleport across spacetime and into higher realities via String Theory, despite living in the mid 1800s, a solidly Type 4 Intelligence feat on the Kardashev Scale. After becoming The Tall Man however, he invented the far more advanced Sentinels, the flying death spheres that do his bidding. We know that becoming The Tall Man gave Morningside a significant intelligence boost beyond what he could previously do, as seen when Mike, after developing similar abilities to The Tall Man, became intelligent enough to create his own rudimentary Sentinel out of nothing more than car parts, a feat that The Tall Man clearly would scale above. When speaking to Mike on this matter he tells Mike that all that is unknown will become known to him, implying The Tall Man himself has some vastly greater awareness of the order of things.

Weapons & Creatures:

  • Sentinels: 

The primary weapon of The Tall Man and icon of the series, the Sentinels are flying metallic spheres of absolute Doom. Sentinels are advanced 5th dimensional devices beyond human understanding, each one contains and is powered by the shrunken brain of a dead human, and are just absolutely full of surprises. 

They are fast enough to outpace cars on the highway and durable enough to tank being repeatedly shot with Pistol Fire, giving them subsonic speed and building level durability. They can send people flying with physical hits, break a pair of nunchucks on contact, and easily kill a Horse.

That said they can be destroyed by more powerful hits like Shotguns. Sentinels are controlled by The Tall Man and used to kill people to create MORE Sentinels and continue the cycle.

He has shown to be able to control countless thousands of these devices at once and can do so from a range seemingly across the entire north-western United States and possibly even from other dimensions.

The Primary Method of execution employed by Sentinels is to produce bladed prongs and attach themself to the victims face, before producing a Drill that bores directly into their skull and violently sucks all the blood out of their body through their face like a faucet. Not only does this basically guarantee a kill, but removing all their blood means The Tall Man can more quickly reanimate the victim by directly filling them with his yellow fluid.

But as flashy as that move is, it’s far from the Sentinels only trick. These chrome spheres can produce numerous other weapons like buzz saws to slice victims up, 

As well as more freaky stuff like Eyeballs that act as cameras for The Tall Man, he can see things in the reflections of his spheres that allow him to spy on his enemies

But being operated by a human Brain allows Sentinels to do some incredibly advanced tasks. First of all, Sentinels can be put into the bodies of the dead in place of their brains in order to control them. 

These are full sized Zombie people who are extremely loyal to and controlled by The Tall Man, while they aren’t that much harder to kill than most humans, they do have the benefit of being able to unleash a Sentinel from their skull upon being defeated.

They seem to be able to switch between Zombie and Human Forms in this state, allowing them to perfectly disguise themselves and blend into society. Examples of these beings include Liz’s Grandfather, Alchemy, that Zombie Nurse, that Demon Police Officer, and Jen from the 4th film who had Sentinel’s for boobs….seriously.

Sentinels can also be sentient and take on the form of whoever they were in life, this uses a lot of their power, but Jody was able to turn from a Sentinel back into human form and vice versa at will.

The Balls also have some potent psychic abilities, they can not only communicate telepathically but enter into and manipulate people's dreams to show them events or hallucinations.

They can also project Dimensional Portals through both normal space And mental space, even allowing physical plane beings to enter into minds, or mental plane beings to enter into the real world.

That said the Balls do have a weakness towards things that create powerful vibrations at opposing frequency to their own. Objects like Tuning Forks have caused them to explode when used near them.

  • Golden Sentinels: 

Golden Sentinels are a much more powerful and suffocated version of the standard ones. Instead of being powered by the brain of a normal person, these spheres are powered by the brain of someone who actually had some degree of psychic powers in life. Gold Sentinels have much of the abilities displayed by Normal Sentinels, but merely get stunned by vibrations rather than destroyed, and also have a different main method of execution.

Instead, the entire thing can turn into a Saw-Drill which allows it to tunnel its way inside of someone and ravage their body inside out. Gold Sentinels are incredibly powerful (Stronger than 3 adults), can turn on an absolute dime, and have a motion detector that can track a target's position.

The Gold Balls are also coated in some sort of substance that allows them to rapidly vaporize anything it comes into contact with, allowing it to simply fly straight through most obstacles.

They can even do this to The Tall Man’s own Zombified Minions, completely destroying all matter in its path.

It can also produce significantly more types of bladed weapons than an average Sentinel, including things like twin buzz saws and pronged blades,

And is able to shoot goddamn Lasers that can incinerate beings and burn holes through most objects.

  • Crimson Sentinels: 

Seemingly mindless Red Sentinels that simply grow spikes all over and fly into and stab targets, then explode kamikaze style.

  • God Sentinels:

These are giant sentinels larger than buildings that can shoot lasers than obliterate skyscrapers and tank attacks from military artillery, these are generally reserved for full scale invasions only.

 

  • Lurkers: 

Lurkers are small, savage dwarf creatures, created as the byproduct of Sentinel production, which The Tall Man controls. These beasts are shown to be as strong and heavy as a full grown man, and are able to take multiple bullet wounds in the head and torso before going down. One was even able to come back after being blown through by a shotgun, and locked in the freezer of Reggie’s ice cream truck. It escaped the locked back of the truck and proceeded to overpower Mike and two women and drive them away. 

The Tall Man has literal armies of them that he can seemingly spawn in places as they can always attack seemingly out of nowhere, often hiding in surprising places or climbing through the trees like squirrels. While they do not have Brains they do maintain some level of instinct and cognitive thought. They are smart enough to drive cars, and could speak and remember those they knew in life, but will still be evil due to The Tall Man. These beings are eventually shipped to The Red World for slave labor.

  • Gravers: 

Gravers are Supernatural beings who also work for The Tall man. They are corpses that The Tall Man chose not to shrink so they could be used to exhume bodies from graves. These creatures are much stronger than Lurkers, one was able to beat up and nearly kill Reggie in a chainsaw fight.

Powers:

  • The Red World Avatar Nature:

The Red World is the planet in the 5th dimension that Dr. Morningside traveled to that fateful night. Little is known about the planet but we do know that it exists in a higher plane, and according to the Wiki, is 20 times larger than the Sun. 

I couldn’t find the source on that latter part but its gravity is at least far more intense than that of Earth, to the point of sucking people in at its gates, and its atmosphere is Toxic. When Dr. Morningside became The Tall Man, he became an extension of The Red World Itself, and therefore cannot be permanently killed so long as The Red World exists. 

Any time that The Tall Man has been killed in the series, it simply resulted in a New Tall Man, with all the same powers and memories of the last one, Instantly Manifesting in the same location to pick up where he left off. When Mike and Reggie killed The Tall Man at the end of Phantasm II, a New Tall Man just walked right out of a portal and destroyed the old ones body and the exact same thing happened after he was completely destroyed by cold in Phantasm III and yet again when this body got incinerated in an explosion in Phantasm IV. 

There are actually countless Thousands of The Tall Man, lying in an untold amount of dimensions at all times, essentially meaning The Tall Man can instantly come back from complete physical destruction, and duplicate himself indefinitely.

  • Higher Dimensional Existence:

Now here we get to the Main ability of The Tall Man, the secret to why he is so powerful and terrifying and that is his Higher Plane Nature. The Tall Man becoming One with the higher plane Red World, essentially disconnected him from the natural order and he became what I would describe as A Being Without Borders.

In a metaphysical sense, borders are things which separate something from everything else, they define the boundary of everything from physical objects to concepts themselves, but as far as The Tall Man’s existence is concerned, these don’t affect him. 

Time and Space, Life and Death, Reality and Dream, to The Tall Man they are all one and the same, and he can have them both be True or False at the same time to mix and match anything he wants about himself, this makes him unaffected by differences in lower forms of reality, like continuity, dreams, flashbacks and alternate realities, and is the source for practically all of his abilities. 

In the first film's ending, The Tall Man was established to be nothing more than a nightmare that Mike was having, but because Borders do not bind him, he then manifested himself to be real and attacked said Mike anyway. He then later made THAT event be a dream only to then attack Mike later in the next film. 

The Tall Man has stated that he is ‘Unbound by Space and Time’, and changes to it do not affect him whatsoever, he can freely go between them however he likes as he is Acasual and Has control of his Quantum State.

He has many times used this power to Teleport himself, or spatially warp others to different locations, allowing him both to scatter his enemies about, or move his pawns into infiltration positions. 

He can Phase himself into other dimensions, summon dimensional forks which function as Portal Creation, spatially pull an entire Funeral Home into his domain, and has stated it is impossible to Damn him to Hell, meaning he cannot be sealed. 

The Tall Man can also use his Spatial Powers to sever objects regardless of durability via creating additional space between them, such as when Reggie used his Dimensional Fork to slice his own Hands off.

He can not only manipulate space but also Time. Mike, using the same powers, was able to time travel back to the 1800s and back, and later traveled to The Future as well. During this, The Tall Man seemingly prevented Mike from traveling to times the tall man didn't want and established himself to be acasual, as he recognized Mike immediately after first becoming The Tall Man in the past as if he already knew him, and nothing changed the future.

Time’s irrelevance to him is So extreme that even an old Photo of Jebediah from the Civil War was able to zoom in, turn and look at Mike as he gazed upon it in present time, and this same thing happened again in Oblivion, even when they went back in time to before the tall man existed.

The Tall Man has stated that death is no escape from him, and that he exists in dimensions one cannot possibly imagine. When Mike’s Soul was descending into Heaven, The Tall Man was still able to show up there and block his path. He has also Traveled to hell, and apparently can go to anyone’s version of hell.

The Tall Man can give someone horrifying nightmares and mental visions where if they die in either of those things, it is as if they die for real due to him being able to blur the border of Dream and Reality. In Lord of The Dead, Jody’s Sentinel was able to enter into Reggie’s Dream and create a portal to where Mike was being held to save him, and it actually happened in the real world. This suggests that he made a portal connecting the consciousness plane to the physical and allowed Reggie’s mental body to manifest here, only to disappear when he woke. The Tall Man can travel into people‘s minds and extract intel he needs, and also can use it to destroy people‘s hopes and dreams and memories.

He also has absolutely Cosmic Super senses. In Lord of The Dead, he was able to sense that Mike was being shown what he was doing inside of a dream, then could actually SEE Mike’s dream self there with him, meaning he could tell that Mike’s mental dream self was watching him and after looking, managed to both see and attack him, despite Mike essentially being a disembodied consciousness. In Oblivion, He was also able to See Mike and Jody when they traveled back to his past, this is despite Mike and Jody existing on a separate dimensional plane overlayed over this one, they could not interact with the past in any way and were undetectable to Dr. Morningside, yet once he became The Tall Man he could see them, and could presumably attack. According to the psychic girl Liz, who was having dreams and visions of The Tall Man, he knew that she sees him. He can also lock onto the signal of his sentinels and track them like he did to Jody.

Heck, when he detected Mike’s dream self was spying on him, he was able to show up where Mike was in the physical world the second Mike woke up and continue where he was without interruption.

According to The Tall Man, from his perspective his enemies are merely His bad dream and aren’t even real to him. In fact it's actually been stated a few times by the credits of the films, and by the actor himself that The Tall Man can potentially attack the IRL Audience although that's likely a joke…..hopefully.

  • Shapeshifting:

The Tall Man can Shapeshift his body into any physical form he wants seemingly by changing his matter state. Most often he will take the form of a beautiful blonde woman known only as The Lady in Lavender, to lure in men to have sex, and then kill them afterwards with a dagger.

  • Technopathy:

The Tall Man has shown to possess incredible control over all forms of technology, able to cause motorized bikes to die, shotguns to misfire and an entire building to lose power without him even being there. At one point, The Tall Man took technopathic control of the car that Mike was driving, Mike could not stop the car even by pressing on the brakes, could not steer the car even by turning the steering wheel, and could not even break the window to escape. The Tall Man caused the car to autonomously drive itself all the way to where he wanted Mike, even while he wasn’t physically present, implying a massive distance.

  • Telekinesis:

Probably The Tall Man’s most commonly displayed power is Telekinesis, the ability to move things with his mind. The Tall Man is able to telekinetically fling objects around, restrain and levitate foes or levitate himself, as well as affect not only physical things, but also things like Mike’s Mental Projection.

He can also use this to telekinetically attack or choke people and disarm foes of their weapons in an instant.

  • Telepathy:

He is also a Telepath, who is constantly sending telepathic messages to his enemies from seemingly any distance throughout most of the films. This is very consistent to the point even his Sentinels are able to do it. Not only can he simply go into telepathic communication with others, but he can burn images into someone's mind, or even talk to people who are in other time periods.

  • Zombie Manifestation:

As a Lord of The Dead, The Tall Man can manifest the dead to attack his foes. He made a bunch of Zombie Arms emerge from the ground and grab Mike, and later caused an entire Zombie to materialize and grab Tim through a window.

He can also manifest inanimate objects like large Tombstones to block one's path, or medical restraints to hold someone down.

  • Psychic Aura:

The Tall Man has a powerful psychic pressure emanating off of his presence; he at one point used this to BURN Jody’s Sentinel and make it inoperable for a while.

  • Regeneration:

The Tall Man has an impressive healing factor that allowed him to shrug off having a sentinel latch onto his head and drain all his fluids out of his body like nothing, as well as completely regenerate small severed body parts like both his hands or all of his fingers when they were cut off. That said his regeneration does have its limits as he was not able to heal from his body being flooded with Acid.

  • Universal Animacy:

Somewhat of a minor power, but his body parts remain alive and able to move while detached.

  • Insect Transmogrification:

Every time a part of the Tall Man’s body is severed it turns into an insect, but not just any insect, these are 5th Dimensional Insects which are stronger than full grown men and incredibly deadly to anyone unfortunate enough to come across them. When Mike caused a sentinel to drill into his head, a Centipede like creature came out of his wound and started ripping into Mike’s face.

His severed finger turned into an extra dimensional Beetle that could fly and seemed to be covered in blades, this thing also had massive teeth and could endure being thrown into a garbage disposal.

Most freakishly however, is when his Hands were severed and turned into nightmarish crawling Arachnid monsters with enormous stingers that stab ones brain through their nose, Major Nightmare Fuel.

  • Can Breathe without oxygen:

Felt it was worth mentioning but The Tall Man does not need to breathe, he was able to survive indefinitely from being hung by a noose, and can also freely breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of The Red World.

  • Event Manipulation:

Here we get to one of the most broken Powers in The Tall Man’s whole arsenal, Event Manipulation. With this power, The Tall Man can remove events from the timeline, and put said events back in at any point in the past or future as he sees fit. In Phantasm II, he was able to remove the event of Reggie blowing up his house with a gas explosion to kill his Lurkers from time, then later put that same gas explosion that destroyed his house into another point in time 7 years later to kill Reggie’s Family. In Oblivion, He took an event from a previous timeline where Mike cut him down from a hanging rope in order to cut the hanging rope of Mike when he tried to kill himself.

  • Illusions:

True to the title of the series, The Tall Man can make people experience Phantasms, delusions of a disordered mind. According to Mike when one battles The Tall Man, they can never trust the things they see. He made both Reggie and Mike see an apparition of Liz with a mutated Tall Man Head coming out of her spine and giving them a message, and later made Mike see numerous apparitions of his past while he was driving.

  • Necromancy:

The Tall Man is a well known Necromancer who has the ability to resurrect the dead as zombies, even Without the use of Sentinels or the Yellow Fluid. He Turned Tim’s Father into a Zombie and had him Murder his own wife, and stated he could do the same to Reggie’s Family.

These Zombies are surprisingly much more sturdy than the ones that he creates using sentinels. When he turned those 3 looters into Zombies in Lord of The Dead, they survived things like getting shot point blank by a quad barrel shotgun, run over by a speeding car, and a building sized car explosion with no visible damage.

  • Intangibility: 

He can also make himself completely intangible allowing attacks like gunfire to harmlessly phase through him.

  • Disease Manipulation:

The Tall Man was able to create a powerful alien virus that was able to quickly spread and wipe out most of humanity via causing their heads to swell up until they exploded. This disease was so potent that even traveling to this point in the future could infect someone from sheer air exposure, yet he himself was unaffected by this illness.

  • Sentinel Form:

The inside of his head is apparently a Gold Sentinel. This gives The Tall Man all the powers associated with Gold Sentinels including increase in speed, and possibly the ability to shapeshift back into his original form even after it leaves said body.

Feats:

DC/Durability:

  • Easily lifted an entire occupied coffin by himself. It took 6 men to carry it earlier.

  • Is far stronger than any human possibly could be, is able to lift and throw humans like nothing.

  • Tanked crashing his Hearse into a tree and having it explode with him inside.

  • Tanked being shot by an RPG-7 Rocket Launcher.

  • Seemed to tank falling down a 100-foot mine shaft and having several 4 ton boulders fall in after him.

  • Could portal his entire Funeral Home into his dimension Possibly causing a massive windstorm by doing so, this would likely require an energy in the Multi City Block Level Range, due to the sheer scale it affecting the entire Morningside Cemetery grounds.

  • He was also able to flat out Crush a Sentinel in his hand as if it were a tin can. These same sentinels have been able to endure multiple shots from a pistol, and therefore he must have been exceeding the force of here to pull off.

  • At the end of Phantasm, The Tall Man gets Kamikaze attacked by Chuck, who charges him with numerous grenades strapped to his body and creates an explosion comparable to a large section of the canyon in size. 

While we don’t actually see The Tall Man endure this explosion, Chuck himself managed to survive the explosion despite the bombs being strapped to him, and The Tall Man definitely scales far above that guy in power. But then you get an interesting bit of information, this whole sequence of events took place not on Earth, but on The Red World. We know that The Red World has significantly higher Gravity than Earth, not only does it suck people in at the gates but it's the entire reason the corpses he enslaves have to be turned into Dwarves. If you take the Wiki statement that it is 20x the Sun in size, than the sheer gravitational force would be so powerful the Tall Man would basically be tanking Megaton levels of TNT with every step, and this explosion still gaining that large size would make The Tall Man tanking it far above even that.

Speed:

  • Despite his appearance The Tall Man is generally portrayed to be a very nimble man capable of chasing people down at impressive, though not superhuman speeds. Honestly it is very possibly, likely in fact, that The Tall Man does have some degree of superhuman speed, but if he does he’s never shown it. To be fair if you have the ability to instantly travel anywhere in spacetime there isn’t much reason to actually run fast.

General:

  • Literally conquered the world.

  • Has survived being killed more than 4 times.

  • Is essentially an Unbeatable entity in his own verse.

Weaknesses:

Despite how impressive The Tall Man is, he does have a couple weaknesses which are related to how he achieved his power in the first place. The first and most prominent weakness he has is The Cold. The Tall Man usually only operates in warm locations to avoid this as it can completely destroy his body. A freezer can melt off his skin and render him immobile, and forcing him to escape in his Gold Sentinel form, but then even that was destroyed using Liquid Nitrogen.

He’s also vulnerable to powerful opposing vibrational frequencies like tuning forks, much like his Sentinels are. The frequency it generates can stun him, preventing him from moving or thinking while it vibrates.

Summary:

Advantages:

  • At least Large Building Level DC and Durability. (Arguably City Level)

  • Star Level Durability. (in True Form)

  • Peak Human Speed. (Possibly Higher)

  • Subsonic Speed. (As a Sentinel)

  • Type 4 Intellect.

  • Mid Godly Regen. (Existence Tied to Red World)

  • Duplication.

  • Acausality.

  • Time Travel.

  • Event Manipulation.

  • Spatial Manipulation.

  • Teleportation.

  • Portal Creation.

  • Higher Plane Travel.

  • Dream Manipulation.

  • Mental Plane Attacks.

  • Cosmic Super Senses.

  • Shapeshifting.

  • Technopathy.

  • Telekinesis.

  • Telepathy.

  • Zombie Manifestation.

  • Necromancy.

  • Psychic Aura.

  • Regeneration. (Low-Mid)

  • Any Severed Body Part Turns into a Bug Monster.

  • Can Breathe Without Oxygen.

  • Illusions.

  • Intangibility.

  • Disease Manipulation. 

Disadvantages:

  • Weak to the Cold.

  • Can be Stunned by Vibrational Frequencies.

  • Can’t Stop Shilling his Man in a Suit Brand Men’s Ware.

Recommend Opponent:

Pinhead:

Pinhead from the Hellraiser series really does feel like a Perfect Match Made in Hell for The Tall Man. The two series both are extremely intelligent yet insane slasher movie series that are connected to otherworldly things beyond human understanding. Pinhead and The Tall Man have a LOT of thematic connections from similar origin stories, similar levels of bullshit reality breaking powers, and a tendency for menacingly holding a geometric shape with a lotta tricks. Not to mention these two would both Absolutely hate each other with a passion so it would be really fun to imagine them interacting.

Next Time:

4 comments:

  1. When you said this character was both cosmic horror and a slasher villain I was a bit confused how that was possible. Now....I'm a lot confused but I kinda get the feeling that fits the tone of the series :P Great Analysis and it seems like it must have been hard given how estoric the series seems. I was definitely finding some of the feats hard to conceptualize. You set up that this series was pretty hard to analyze with theories and transcending continuities and true/false, and I could definitely tell.

    The Tall Man seems like a really cerebral horror villain. On some level I do agree with the notion that the most frightening things are the conceptual horrors but on the other hand the most frightening the blog was when the bugs showed up so... While the Tall Man has a lot of the more conventional abilities like telekinesis and illusions, he also has some of the most broken abilities for anyone on his tier to my knowledge. A Possibly City level character with transcending boundaries, mid-godly regen conditional on a transcendental stellar sized world, causality/event manipulation, and thousands of higher dimensional selves unbound by time-space? Any one of those abilities would be absolutely absurd for a city tier character, let alone ALL of them, let alone if he's building tier. Even his relatively more "normal" abilities are absurd in degree such as his planet-wiping Disease Manipulation or his Spatial Manipulation that can reach 5-dimensional worlds in higher planes of being.

    Personality wise, he seems like quite the somber fellow, fixated initially on life and death. After being converted to an extention of the Red World, however he does indeed become the seemingly paradoxical "cosmic slasher", so I guess "cosmic horror" and "slasher villain" is just another boundary he's transcended. He does strike me as more of a King-ian Cosmic Horror than a Lovecraftian one, more like Pennywise than Cthulhu, reflecting the human condition rather than illuminating the limitations of that condition. This is also seen in him having more spiritual powers than a Great Old One, one of the most memorable powers in the blog. Speaking of, his opponent really should be one who is called angel or devil, to fight him in Heaven or Hell. Pinhead sounds like a really good opponent, and I could easily see their life/death and pain/pleasure transcendences being a good dichotomy.

    I only have a bit of knowledge about the two characters in your next time, but I'm excited to see how these two verses, quite different in tone and content level will interact. :)

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  2. Well, this was a great choice for a horror blog. I haven’t heard of this series before you brought it up; I didn’t know what to expect from a series that represents both cosmic and slasher horror, besides the fact that I would be learning about a real freak of course :P. But seriously, this was pretty fascinating. The idea of this doctor from the era of the civil war coming back from another dimension and start turning dead bodies into dwarfs for slave labor on “The Red World” is really creepy. The concept of the sentinels as these slick looking little floating death balls controlled by human brains though has gotta be one of the coolest things I’ve seen from horror films thus far though. But just in general, this guy is super versatile and has powers that are both complicated yet fun to think about with his higher dimensional abilities, acausality, nature as an avatar, etc. Just from watching the first Hellraiser, I can already tell that Pinhead would be a PERFECT choice to fight the Tall Man; it would be fun to watch them interact.

    I think you have a real gift in retelling the stories of the characters you write about in a way that distills their essence and is entertaining to read in the background section. You did a great job in explaining all of his abilities as well. In general, I had fun reading this.

    The next time is a surprising but cool choice for a matchup. Interested in seeing how it goes :)

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  3. IT'S HERE! I've got stars in my eyes, I've bee SO looking forward to this one! The Tall Man's one of my favorite horror villains of all time, from one of my favorite horror series! It's also probably the strangest movie series I've watched overall when you factor in the craziness of each film combined. I could gush about Phantasm for paragraphs but lemme get into my thoughts on this awesome blog.

    First off, I'm glad I can leave it to you to figure out who this guy really is and how his strange powers work; I've seen every movie, some of them multiple times, and I still walked away in a daze of sorts. I suppose that's part of the Phantasm experience though, being unable to tell what is real and what is not. Still, that doesn't mean ya can't analyze all this odd and sometimes contradictory stuff! The Tall Man being an avatar of The Red World actually makes a ton of sense and clears up a lot of weird things about his nature, such as the multiple Tall Mans we see throughout the series. It also explains why he's so hard to stop! Truly a fearsome opponent for (mostly) normal humans to face! I love that his bodies don't have very high stats at all, just enough to seem intimidating to normal folk, and yet his powers make him one of horror's most powerful villains! Special shoutout to that event manipulation power, that explanation you gave blew my mind! The double house explosion and the hanging scenes make so much more sense now! And it's a pretty dang busted ability. Makes you wonder how you can possibly know if the events you're going through while battling The Tall Man haven't already been arranged in the order he desired. His intangibility might be one of his most underrated powers, as he almost never shows it off but it makes even his weakish bodies practically invincible when facing people with similar stats.

    I really dug your Weapons & Creatures section, I love that “creatures” are standard equipment for this guy! It was a blast seeing the entire gallery of his minions laid out in one place. The Sentinels are freakin' iconic and while the golden ones will likely stay my fave, the OG silver ball always has a special place in my heart...and not because I have one replacing it to animate me, I swear I'm still human! The Sentinels sure gained a lot of crazy feats from the Jody one doing whatever the heck it wanted to in the sequels and that wraps right back around to scaling to The Tall Man himself with the golden balls used to make his bodies. Speaking of getting to see all the minions across the series in one place and connections to The Tall Man, I love how this blog pays respect to the series by showing how he is truly at the center of everything. In going over his backstory, his minions, the nature of his abilities and how his powers work, you truly have to stretch across the entirety of Phantasm. It's a big bonus for fans like me that entails making this blog a huge trip down memory lane with great clips from every movie and several groovy mixes of one of the best and most underrated horror themes ever scored (I listened to the Nightcrawler one the most, so 80s!). It's probably because this blog is covering something near and dear to me that I can see how well it functions as a testament to its subject matter, which makes me believe all the blogs you've done for series/characters I don't know are likely just as lovingly crafted and just as fantastic for their fans to read.
    Continued in the reply to this comment.

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    1. I heavily agree with your choice of opponent for The Tall Man: it's gotta be Pinhead. I didn't realize they had such good connections until you started listing them, made me realize the similarities in their backstories when I think back on them. Spheres vs cubes sounds fun too! Stoked (or should I say “smoked”) for the battle next time as well. There's nobody around who could do a better Mortal Kombat vs Touhou Project battle than you! I've always thought Smoke was a cool character who got overshadowed by Sub-Zero and Scorpion. Looking forward to learning more about Sannyo too!

      Congrats on making this blog bro, I can only imagine how pretzeled your brain got at times. Oh, just remembered a few more things I wanted to say! First, great job on the personality section. You made The Tall Man feel alien and terrifying which means you captured his essence perfectly. Second, I like how you explained his higher dimensional nature by describing him as a “being without borders”. Higher dimensions interacting with lower ones can get pretty abstract, but you did a good job of communicating what needed to be said in a concise manner. And finally, I gotta give a shoutout to my boy Reggie! Just as The Tall Man cannot escape everyone's favorite ice cream man, this blog had to include some good bits with him too. Reggie deserves his own respect thread/blog!

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