<\/p>\n
I won tickets to Bubba Ho-Tep<\/em>, After quickly organizing my uncle to be my date, as long as he agreed Bruce has become a household name these days, and I can only I’m the guy who went back to Video 99 the following day and picked up Well, in those days, Bruce Campbell was the quiet hero for the Sam Raimi, and Bruce, went on to the top tier of cultdom. The I went to Video 99 every day after school. On Fridays, I picked up an Halloween night. In those days, kids could eat apples. But I rarely Gargoyles<\/em> was up first. It’s a Bernie Casey nightmare flick and, Well, I got in bed with a bottle of Bacardi and waited for gargoyles to The second feature was always Phantasm<\/em>.<\/p>\n Don Coscarelli. There’s a name you should know if you fancy yourself a horror buff.<\/p>\n Picture, if you will, 1979. $300,000 is pretty hefty for a drive-in Angus Scrimm. You’ve seen him around. He played Agent McCullough in TV’s Alias<\/em>. Phantasm<\/em> in 2004 is a yawn. I’ll warn you right now. But it’s Turns out that the Tall Man is a time-traveling, dimension-sliding Coscarelli, after that, had some weight. He’s responsible for the Beastmaster<\/em> franchise.<\/p>\n So flash forward to 1988, a sequel\/homage\/reboot comes into play. Phantasm II<\/em>. Phantasm III<\/em>. It’s 1994 now, in real time. Despite the eight That’s fine, though. He has full license to proceed with Phantasm IV<\/em>. Phantasm IV<\/em> is a weird head trip that ties together the first Phantasm IV<\/em> is a personal favorite because the storylines fork. We end this 20 year experiment, where the same actors and crew Am I worried about the production? No, there’s an average of four years And what are they doing in the meantime? Bubba Ho-Tep<\/em>. So, now you know who Don Coscarelli is. Your mission, Mr. Phelps, is to
\nafter entering the Washington City Paper weekly giveaway. Everybody
\nwins the giveaway, and it’s usually a Xerox of a movie pass to the low
\nrent premiere night of some DC-only release. An old gag – 200 tickets
\nfor 100 seats.<\/p>\n
\nto head down to E Street well before the show and stake a claim, I
\nbabbled away incoherently to anyone who would listen about a few of the
\nshining stars of modern cinema – Bruce Campbell, Reggie Bannister and
\nDon Coscarelli.<\/p>\n
\nsay that my heart leaps with joy to know that. I’m the guy who went to
\nVideo 99, rented Crimewave<\/em> (directed by Sam Raimi and written
\nby the Coen brothers) and went through great pains to link up two VCR’s
\nand make a copy. VCR’s weighed 67 pounds each in the late 80’s, you
\nknow. Crimewave<\/em> is, of course, another shining star of modern
\nAmerican cinema. “Hey baby, why don’t ya come on over to my pad. We’ll
\nhave a scotch and sofa.”<\/p>\n
\nthe first two Evil Dead movies, clutching them close to my chest and
\nwith wide, wet eyes. See, I got the two VCR’s working so my dubbing
\nmania had begun. By that point, though, I had rented the Evil Dead’s so
\nmany times that Ho Chin (Video 99’s cult leader) just waved me past the
\ncounter. I’d pay him back in compulsive sour bears purchases later in
\nthe week, anyway.<\/p>\n
\ndefenseless nerd. Now I can babble senselessly to the old black lady I
\nwork with and she sucks her teeth, nods, and says, “That’s right…
\nWho’s laughing now? Who’s laughing now<\/em>!?”<\/p>\n
\nstratosphere. Still cult, but mainstream enough to be kooky.
\nKook-culture. But, down here with the people who get in fistfights over
\nwhether or not 28 Days Later<\/em>
\nwas a zombie movie, cult-culture continues to spin with the same
\nrhythmic beauty one could find in the thousands of tiny suncatchers
\nhanging from the ceiling of Video 99. Which was in a poorly lit,
\nwindowless basement. But those suncatchers had a power<\/em>, man. A
\nthousand beams of pure alien light shining on the “Cult” section.
\nHundreds of videocassettes, all of them as familiar to me as the curves
\nand valleys of a dead, decaying, out for revenge zombie, vampire
\ngirlfriend.<\/p>\n
\narmful of tapes and walked home along the oh-so-dangerous abandoned
\nrail tracks, wobbling slightly, to watch the best and the worst of
\ncult-culture until, at some point on Saturday afternoon, mom would have
\na meltdown and physically throw me out the front door with a string of
\nobscenities.<\/p>\n
\nwent out to play. Captain 20 hosted our local UHF station, and he
\nalways showed two films starting at 8pm. Every year. Same two flicks.
\nCuriously, during his host segments, he would offer completely
\ndifferent tidbits of trivia. It wasn’t just canned stuff. He showed the
\nsame movies, but filmed new host segments. One year, Reggie Bannister
\neven came (“Hi kids!”) and did the host segments with Captain 20. “All
\nI remember from this scene is that I got to sleep with that girl in the
\ngreen room!”<\/p>\n
\nduring my travels in New Mexico, I stayed at the hotel that was torn
\napart by the monsters. The desk clerk, a bored looking middle-aged
\nwoman, had no knowledge of the 1972 made for TV movie. I told her it
\nwas a Bernie Casey classic. Not to mention a major vehicle for Jennifer
\nSalt, who went on to head up the TV series Soap<\/em>, star in the frightening and gory Sisters<\/em>,
\nwrite the teleplays for A&E’s Nero Wolf mysteries and, ultimately,
\ngo insane and insist that sex, drugs and rock and roll “saved
\nHollywood” and everyone who thought such things were a bad influence
\nshould “loosen up.” That was just recently.<\/p>\n
\nrip the hotel apart. Alas, the movie lied. Or maybe the gargoyles had
\nmoved on.<\/p>\n
\nmovie budget, but that’s what it cost for Coscarelli and buddies Reggie
\nBannister and A. Michael Baldwin (nope, not those Baldwins) to put
\ntogether Phantasm<\/em>.
\nMike Baldwin and Bill Thornbury play orphans sticking it out in a rough
\nworld. Their middle aged, oversexed, balding ice cream vender friend
\n(the high-larious Reggie Bannister) joins them on a splatter-gore
\nScooby Doo adventure. There’s something afoot in their small town. Of
\ncourse, we know because we see it in the first five minutes. Back in
\nthe late 80’s, UHF could show titties on TV. Well, they couldn’t, but
\nthey did anyway. Phantasm opens up with a sex scene in a graveyard that
\nturns pretty scary pretty fast.<\/p>\n
\nHere, he’s the Tall Man. The superhuman mortician from some alternate
\ndimension (an idea and image stolen, incidentally, by the miserable Highlander II<\/em>). Now, there’s just something…wrong about the Tall Man. Young Mike Baldwin knows it in his heart.<\/p>\n
\nthe foundation for brilliance. It’s a comedy, a horror, a sci-fi flick,
\na buddy film, a coming of age story. It’s just about every cinema genre
\nthrown together and patched up with blood, brains and slime. It’s
\nfucking weird.<\/p>\n
\nmadman who is using his corpses as slave labor to…uh…something
\nsomething. Now a young boy, his elder brother and a balding,
\nmiddle-aged ice cream vender must seal the dimension rift, stop the
\nTall Man and…uh…something something. The Tall man is armed with the
\nfamous killer machines – flying razor blade spheres – and he’s not
\nabout to sit tight while a bunch of misfits shut down his operation.
\nOut come the killer spheres, engage in mortal combat and end on a high
\nnote. Perfect. If you’re several vodkas in, it’s mesmerizing. If you’re
\na student of these films, you’ll realize with a sinking feeling that
\nnothing since 1979 is original.<\/p>\n
\nMichael Baldwin, now in his mid-20’s and the well-armed ice cream
\nvender Reggie Bannister, now balder, fatter and older, begin the story
\nin classic Mad Max fashion. We blast out of the gate hot on the trail
\nof the Tall Man, who is enslaving small towns across America and
\nleaving weird wastelands behind. Only Mike and Reggie can stop him, and
\nwhat ensues is a barely coherent, deeply insane road-trip comedy that
\ntips the hat more than once to Sam Raimi. In fact, Raimi even gets
\ncremated. Heavily armed, Reggie and Mike soon find that there’s more to
\nthe game than the Tall Man and his scary gnomes. In what we’ll go ahead
\nand call anti-climatic, the Tall Man slips past our heroes. There’s
\nnothing for it, let’s go to:<\/p>\n
\nyear gap, we pick up at the moment the second film ended. Turning a
\nclassic horror movie ending into an unintentional cliffhanger. Our duo
\nsurvives the freak-out finale and, armed with a new resolve, sets out
\nto finish the Tall Man once and for all. But they’re in way over their
\nheads. We discover that poor, tortured Mike is more than just victim
\nand hunter, he is the key to everything that’s happening. Returning
\nfrom the original Phantasm<\/em>, Mike’s older brother visits him as a sort of American Werewolf in London<\/em>
\nghost, providing plenty of spirit-guide action (and comedy, thanks to
\nReggie Bannister). Meanwhile, our favorite mortician is making more
\nspheres of death and<\/em> re-animating the dead. Ho, ho! It’s a
\ndeadly game, now, and a different type of film. It goes out of its way
\nto fill in all the plot holes. We learn a bit about the Tall Man, and
\nplenty about what was going on in the first film. Coscarelli, in a
\nmoment of pure genius, splices cut scenes from the first film into
\nflashback sequences. Now that’s a thrill! But he dances to the side and
\nfails to deliver the Ultimate Answers.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s 1998 for us, but part four picks up where the third one left off
\nin what I think is one of the top five goofy grindhouse cliffhangers.
\nAt least, since Bruce Campbell landed in 1300AD.<\/p>\n
\nact of the series, tells us everything we need to know about Mike,
\nReggie, ghost brother Jody, the Tall Man, the gnomes and anything else
\nthat was nagging you. Then Coscarelli does a mean thing. He makes up a
\nwhole new set of questions and ends the movie vaguely.<\/p>\n
\nMike and his brother are off battling the Tall Man while Reggie and
\nfoxy Heidi Marnhout (you’ll see her, along with Reggie, in Bubba
\nHo-Tep), battle the killer spheres in a continuation of the insane
\nwasteland roadtrip along America’s blue highways. Small towns were
\nnever this unfriendly! But, by now, Reggie’s learned how to handle
\nhimself. That crazy ice cream vendor gets to blow the shit out of
\neverything and even earns himself a kiss. Rock on, Reggie Bannister!<\/p>\n
\npioneered a new and inimitable sub-genre in horror, with a vague loose
\nend. Phantasm’s End<\/em>,
\nthe fifth installment, became trapped in production limbo. Will
\nCoscarelli ever get it made? Mike, Reggie and Mike’s dead, decaying
\nbrother live in a strange half life, waiting for the final battle with
\nthe Tall Man. In the final installment, the Tall Man will control half
\nof a diseased America, ruling over the dead. After what we learned in
\nthe fourth installment, there’s no doubt that this will be a serious
\nfight.<\/p>\n
\nbetween Phantasm films. A decade between the first and second. I trust
\nmy crew of misfits to hold on.<\/p>\n
\nCoscarelli delights fans as he resurfaces with this Bruce Campbell
\nindie. Moving up in the world, eh? Tickets in hand, I await the showing
\nwith the same wide, wet eyes that Ho Chin at Video 99 had to bear on
\nthose nights when I was short 12 cents. Bruce heads up the cast as a
\nsenile old man cum Elvis Presley along with washed-up powerhouse Ossie
\nDavis as Jack Kennedy (the<\/em> Jack Kennedy, right?). Reggie
\nBannister and Heidi Marnhout circulate and, dear 2004, welcome a
\npromising interpretation of author Joe Lansdale’s (High Cotton, Sunset & Sawdust,<\/em>
\netc, etc…) little short story about his mummy. Coscarelli, being a
\ngiggling fan of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, should deliver a little
\ntaste of total cult-culture that can fuel an evening.<\/p>\n
\ngo out and collect all four Phantasm films. Then go see Bubba Ho-Tep.
\nEvery ticket is a step closer to Phantasm’s End<\/em> kids. Support your local gunfighter: bubbahotep.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,352],"tags":[403,353,158],"class_list":["post-2551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cult-culture","category-gsarchive","tag-cult-culture","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2884,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2551\/revisions\/2884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}