This is the 20th anniversary year for this landmark animated movie, which was originally supposed to go direct-to-video. It ended up getting rushed into a lousy theatrical release. From Paul Dini's post on Facebook:
A year after BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM opened on the kiddie matinee bill to poor box office and little critical notice, I was pleasantly astonished to turn on AT THE MOVIES one weekend and watch Roger and Gene deliver a rave review of the picture. PHANTASM was so poorly distributed they had missed it in theatres (Roger would later tell me he thought it was a Bugs Bunny-like compilation of TV episodes with bits of new linking footage) and they never watched it until they had received a review copy on tape ten months later. They praised the noirish look of the feature, the writing, and the voices, and apologized for letting it slip under the radar the year before. A few months later Alan Burnett and I met Roger at a Sundance screening, and we had a chance to talk before the show and thank him for the nice review. He had many nice things to say about the show, which led into a long conversation about movies in general. It was a very nice night, and even though we never met face to face again, we swapped e-mails now and then. Roger was a good guy, a gifted writer, and as he proved over the last few years, a tremendously courageous soul.
A transcription of a portion of Roger Ebert's comments:
"I think that the day is coming, and it's also happening with the Disney pictures, when adults are realizing that animation is not limited to an entertainment form for children...and that animation can do some things that live action can't do.
"For example, the sets for the city in this movie are seen more clearly than they are in the live action movie, where they're kind of murky. The exaggeration of the effects and the camera angles can be stretched and played with in a way that isn't available in the real world. And then also here, it's really interesting that they actually have a story, more of a story than the movies. They have characters, and they think, and they pause, and motivations, and you get involved in it."
The review itself (which like many "rogue" S&E postings, could disappear):