  Tall Man of the Phantasm series. |
The Academy Awards have an Oscar honour roll, no more so than this year when the Three Amigos -- Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg -- teamed to hand over the best director prize to their pal Martin Scorsese.
But the horror genre has a different pantheon of heroes, names you are unlikely ever to find inscribed on the base of an Oscar statue. Names such as Don Coscarelli. Yet his cult of fans is every bit as passionate about their man as Scorsese's mainstream following.
So Sun Media decided to look more closely at Coscarelli's career and a series of new DVD releases from Anchor Bay Entertainment. Fresh out this month are two films in Coscarelli's signature franchise, Phantasm (1979) and Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), as well as his wilderness survival thriller, Survival Quest (1989). Also available from Anchor Bay is Coscarelli's 2005 entry in the Masters of Horror series, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road.
We also spent an hour on the telephone with the 53-year-old, Libyan-born American filmmaker talking about his DVDs, the power of the cult, the lure of the horror genre and other topics. Coscarelli, an affable family man who was raised in California, has been a filmmaker since his teen years. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
On being known for the Phantasm series, the mystery-laden story of the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) and his penchant for digging up the freshly dead while haunting the dreams and nightmares of young Mike, his intended future victim:
"Well, it is a blessing and a curse, no question about it. But, you know, I'm fairly resolved to the fact that my tombstone will read: 'The guy who did Phantasm.'
"Look, it's exciting to have some success early on in your career. But then, with the horror genre almost a bit of a ghetto, it is a slippery slope. If you're in, it's hard to get out. But, then, I've got director friends who have never made movies in the horror genre and they wish they could get in. So, in some respects, I'm lucky."
On why the horror genre keeps rising from the grave in every generation:
"It's eternal because it's the one genre where the subject is essentially death. And we don't have an answer to that yet. So that's why every generation will create them.
My friend Stuart Gordon, the great director of Re-Animator, likes to say that horror movies are a rehearsal of your own death. From that point of view, it is something that is eternal and will always be the central question in front of us.
"That's why horror is eternal, too. But certainly it ebbs and flows. There are periods where horror goes out of fashion and people ask these questions whether it's going to come back. Well, yes, it always does come back."
On whether there are boundaries of good taste or common sense in what horrors the genre can depict:
"As long as we are excluding children from the equation, no. But personally, yes. The kind of movies that I want to make, I have restraints in certain areas. I'm not that interested in violence that serves no dramatic purpose or the effect that I'm trying to get."
On the imposition of censorship (several films in the Phantasm series were affected by draconian rulings imposed by the censors of the MPAA ratings board in the U.S.):
"It is all politically based. Having been around for a while, I can really see how the politics of the ratings and the restrictions ebb and flow based just on the political climate. Right now, you can pretty much get away with anything. The R-rated movies now would have gotten the NC-17 a few years ago but everyone is so involved with the real bloody war that no one is talking about violence in media. So the ratings board becomes less restrictive. Once it becomes more normal, a few senators and congressmen will start talking about it and the violence ratings will become more restrictive."
On the censorship of sex, not violence, in U.S. movies:
"In America, certainly, we have this religious abhorance to sex. And that doesn't ebb and flow. It's always a freaky thing."
On restoring the original director's cut of Phantasm III for the new DVD, because it was censored on release in 1994 (as was his Phantasm II in 1988):
"We released that movie in a period where the ratings were very restrictive and I think honestly, in my opinion, they wanted to get back at us for the original Phantasm. I think they thought they gave us a bit too much latitude on the first Phantasm. There was a lot of blood-letting.
"Then, when Phantasm II and Phantasm III came out, they were just determined to cut the chrome sphere drilling sequences down to nothing. Consequently, on this DVD release, we were able to go back to the original master and show it exactly how it it was cut before the ratings board (interferred)."
On restoring both picture and audio on Phantasm III for the DVD:
"Nowadays, with the DVD collectors and the fact everyone has a home theatre, they are a little more sophisticated and they are expecting a little more spread in the audio."
The original two-track stereo, Coscarelli says, was enhanced and turned into a seven-track presentation. "It gives us a little more space to fly the sphere's around, which is fun, and it makes the home theatre aficionados happy."
On the content of the Phantasm movies, now that the restoration job on the original and Phantasm III has brought them back from the dead for the new DVDs:
"I'll tell you, the interpretations that the fans bring to me -- either through our website, phantasm.com, where we've always had a Tall Man guest book, or through meeting them and talking with them at the horror conventions -- are frequently more interesting than mine!"
On never completely answering all the mysteries the Phantasm franchise has raised in its open-ended plots:
"I think that the best horror films really explore the unexpected and certainly try to get the audience to feel that they are losing control and that they really don't know where it's going. I don't think that having it be a mystery is a bad thing."
On the clues to the mystery of the Tall Man in Phantasm II, a production that had rules imposed upon it by Universal studio executives who wanted Coscarelli to keep audiences informed and the story simple:
"The executives there gave us firm instructions that the movie had to be very understandable and the audience needed to know at all times where they were and who were the protagonists and what they were doing. So one of the characters says (of the Tall Man): "He's a grave robber from another dimension!' When you say it as baldly as that, it sounds cheesy. So it's better to leave it just as: 'What the hell is he? You figure it out!' "
On casting James LeGros as Mike in that first sequel, not Michael Baldwin, who returned for Phantasm III:
"It was like Sophie's Choice: 'Maybe you can have Michael Baldwin, maybe you can have Reggie Banister, but you can't have both of them.' " Coscarelli ended up with Banister and not Baldwin for II.
"I've always regretted it a little bit that we ever proceeded with that sequel because we're good friends, Michael and I. But the interesting thing is that, when we came around to make Phantasm III, it was a more video-driven enterprise. So I thought, I'm going to bring Michael back. Without giving too much away, James LeGros is left in the lurch at the end of Phantasm II and, when we cut back to Reggie coming in to save him in Phantasm III, it's Michael Baldwin. If people ask me about that, I just say: 'Well, it's the reality distortion that appears whenever the Tall Man is around."
On releasing Phantasm II to DVD some day:
"Well, I'll tell you. You know the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark and that big, cavernous warehouse? That's the way I see the Universal vault over there and I don't know (what their plans are). Realistically, the studios have massive libraries that they're trying to get out on DVD and my feeling is that anything with a Roman numeral falls to the bottom of the list.
"It's frustrating because Phantasm II is the most epic of the Phantasms in terms, certainly, of the budget, the nature of the effects and the production value. It's got some really great, exciting, big scenes -- big explosions and things. I'm sure, in a reasonable time, it will get out there. But studios work in mysterious ways."
On re-releasing Phantasm IV to DVD:
"It is currently released in a very simple version by MGM. In the next year, we'll be getting a deluxe edition released, hopefully through Anchor Bay."
On the much rumoured Phantasm V project, which Coscarelli would like to make after he finishes his Bubba Ho-Tep sequel, Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires, which is now in pre-production:
"There are plans that are not quite concrete yet. There is a screenplay that is pretty cool. It is just a function of getting everyone together. You know, one of the really nice things about Phantasm is that I've become quite good friends with all of the actors and I stay in touch and I see them and I talk to them regularly." Coscarelli is talking about core cast members such as Angus Scrimm, Reggie Banister, Michael Baldwin and Bill Thornbury.
On why a cult builds around a movie like Phantasm, which has legions of loyal fans:
"I don't know if I'm qualified to answer it truly. I have to look at films that I like a lot. Why do I get passionate about them? Usually it has to do with something that's different, something that's strange and something that I just love to death. I mean, I just love Shaun of the Dead, for instance. That's just a great movie."
So Coscarelli was eager to see Hot Fuzz, the follow-up picture by the same team of creators and actors (a movie he also loves). "I was just dying because I couldn't wait to see those guys again. Cult is passon. That's what it is. It's people who have a passion for something and it's something that stays with them."
On the original target audience for Phantasm, the people who have kept this passion for a lifetime:
"It really is an empowerment movie for preteen boys. The kid gets the opportunity to go out and shoot shotguns, and drive motorcycles and muscle cars." Then there is a little sex action to spy on: "Just enough to peak their interest!"
On directing cult horror icon Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, Army of Darkness) in Bubba Ho-Tep (with Campbell set to return as Elvis in the forthcoming Bubba sequel):
"How can any horror director worth his salt retire without once directing Bruce Campbell fighting a prosthetic rubber monster? That is probably the highlight of my horror career!"
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