March 11, 2016

Don Coscarelli is not only one of our favorite filmmakers in the genre, but in our humble opinion also one of the most underrated of the “Masters Of Horror” gang. His last 2 films alone, JOHN DIES AT THE END and BUBBA HO-TEP are as vibrant, radical and fun as his horror debut PHANTASM was when it originally hit theaters back in 1979! With the help of a director named J.J. Abrams who had a little movie out in December called STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, the original PHANTASM has been completely rejuvenated with a brand new 4K full restoration. This newly minted version of the horror cult classic is making its big screen debut this Monday, March 14th for the South By Southwest audience, but inevitably I think it’s safe to assume this is only the beginning of the PHANTASM revival. We caught up with Coscarelli to talk about how this all came together, what’s up next for the filmmaker and of course, we discuss our mutual love & admiration to the man at the heart of the PHANTASM franchise, Mister Angus Scrimm.

Blumhouse.com: A lot of time you hear about these fun movie tid-bits long after the fact, like for example with the new STAR WARS movie, rumors that the Captain Phasma name was an homage to PHANTASM. But that was one that got out early and JJ Abrams confirmed that it was in fact a nod to your film! When did you first hear about the character and had you known JJ before that?

Don Coscarelli: Oh, I had known him for quite a while actually. He called me out of the blue about 12 years ago when I believe he just finished his TV show FELICITY. He just called to tell me he was a big fan of PHANTASM! We talked for a while and he’s a super nice guy and I think he actually came over while I was editing BUBBA HO-TEP and watched a rough cut and gave me some ideas of things we could do. I don’t see him all that often, just from time to time. About a year and a half ago, he called me about trying to arrange a screening of PHANTASM over at his company Bad Robot. He really wanted to show it to the employees because it was a movie he’d seen when he was younger and he really liked it a lot. But the only print that I had was my hacked up 35mm print and I have the standard def DVD. And he was shocked that there was no high def material available on the title. And so he immediately set about to fix that! The head of his post-production called me up, a guy named Ben Rosenblatt who is so brilliant in many ways. They had this idea that the PHANTASM restoration could be done very economically and at the highest quality with me coming over there in the later evenings and working with the technicians. I’d get a call in the evenings and they’d say, “we’re finished working on STAR TREK or STAR WARS for the day. Come on down and let’s work a little on PHANTASM.” Sometimes I’d sit in the Bad Robot screening room and they’d run PHANTASM over and over and do the color correction and the negative restoration. Also, when we made PHANTASM, there wasn’t such a thing as visual FX. All of our FX were done the old fashioned way with cellophane tape and fishing line! I’m proud to say that all of the fishing line has been removed from PHANTASM! If you look closely at older releases, it’s been in the movie for years! It’s now finally gone. And just the quality of the picture is so terrific. I cannot wait for fans that have told me they’ve seen the movie dozens of times to see this, because it’s going to feel like they’ve been watching it with sunglasses on. You can see into the actor’s eyes. There’s a little gleam in the Tallman’s eye now.

Blumhouse.com: The beautiful thing about the advent of Blu-Ray is getting the opportunity to revisit old films and feeling like I’m watching them for the first time again.

Don Coscarelli: Well, especially if you’ve been watching it on VHS! We’ve got this beautiful new window into the PHANTASM world. True to form, I was walking in their offices when we finished for the day and JJ walked by and said, “What are you doing about the audio? You’ve got to restore the audio too!” I thought let’s not get carried away now. But it turns out there’s a guy on staff there named Robby Stamper, and Robby was another PHANTASM fan. So he took the digital files into his workspace and started working on it. The whole thing is gorgeous. The score and music has never sounded so rich!

Blumhouse.com: I know you brought your print to Texas Frightmare convention last year and you were a little nervous about the quality of it, but I thought it looked great! And that’s the thing, PHANTASM feels like a movie that definitely needs to be seen & experienced on the big screen. With this new 4K restoration, is that part of the plan? Is PHANTASM going to get some sort of theatrical re-release?

Don Coscarelli: Yes, absolutely. We hope to have an announcement very soon regarding where we can show it to fans, because they’ve got to come out and see it in theaters. That’s all coming together now, which is going to be really exciting.

Blumhouse.com: I recall maybe a decade ago, there was talk of not only a PHANTASM remake, but there was an ambitious plan to make a new trilogy of big-budget PHANTASM films. For whatever reason, it never came to pass, but at the same time I think that’s a good thing, because it enabled you, the original cast and director David Hartman to do PHANTASM V: RAVAGER. How serious and far did that remake trilogy get? And in retrospect, are you happy it didn’t happen because it gave you the opportunity to do RAVAGER?

Don Coscarelli: You know, absolutely true. There was a lot of activity and this whole idea of having 3 movies took on a life of its own, and yet nobody had any kind of inclination of what the storyline was really going to be over those 3 movies, and then I started to see that they were going to completely recast. Seeing some of the ideas and the direction they were thinking were a little worrisome to me. Because basically (the studios) have a template for how things are done, and most of the time they don’t turn out that well. So, I decided to back off from it. It was probably also because… I don’t know how I could ever have gone to Angus to tell him that they were going to remake PHANTASM and he wasn’t going to be in it! That would’ve been horrible, and something I never had an answer to how to surmount! It went away which was a good thing. It did clear the decks for us to do this one final tribute. And I will tell you that seeing the final PHANTASM film – it is now finished. And we’ll have an announcement about that soon too. It… it’s really a wonderful testament and swan song to Angus. It’s his final appearance on screen. He’s terrific. The sequences he was in were all shot when he was in excellent health and I was very happy that we were able to screen a version of it for him a few months back before he died. And he was very happy with his performance, which is rare! He could be very critical of his performances sometimes, but he’s great in this. Again, I cannot wait to share it with fans. It was created for the fans. Reggie’s back, kicking ass with his sawed off shotgun. There’s a girl that he meets in the movie and that he falls for and you just know that’s not going to end well. (Laughs) It’s got the bloodiest sphere kill in PHANTASM history. It’s got a lot of great stuff in it and I can’t say enough nice things about the director David Hartman. His background is as a supervising director in animation. So he’s so talented and did a bunch of visual FX for JOHN DIES IN THE END. All the actors are great and everybody’s back. It’s going to be nice.

Blumhouse.com: I can’t wait to see it! I had mentioned this before in some of the panels I’ve hosted, but I first met Angus Scrimm at a Fangoria convention when I was 12 years old and 20 some-odd years later, it was such an honor to share a stage with him and the rest of the PHANTASM crew for the various reunion panels over the years. But more importantly, he’s always been such a tremendous presence with the fans at the conventions. I’ve never heard a single negative thing about him and I think it says a lot about the type of person he was. Can you share one thing that stands out to you about Angus, about the man that we as fans got to see and fall in love with at the conventions?

Don Coscarelli: Well, you know… he had a power that just comes from another place that the camera captured and it really had an impact on horror fans. If you look back at the original PHANTASM, I think he’s on screen for about 3 minutes and yet he has this impact. Some of it has to do with cutting and filmmaking technique, but really a lot of it is this persona that he could inhabit. The thing is – when I think about it, here’s something I’ve never understood. The fans always tell me how terrified they were of Angus in their youth and then they come to these conventions and all they want to do is hug Angus and kiss him and pinch him! Like he’s their grandfather or something. Maybe it’s a compensation or a way for them to tell themselves that he’s not that scary. I always found that quite interesting. But, he was a dear friend. And whenever he was doing anything interesting – for example, he was appearing in a lot of these films back in New York with Larry Fessenden and the Glass Eye Pix guys. Or whenever he’d do a convention appearance, afterword’s he would always call me up and give me the blow by blow of the whole weekend and everybody he talked to and everything that happened. It’s a sad thing for me to realize now that I’m not going to get those phone calls from him anymore. I lost a dear friend and the first adult actor I ever worked with. But the great thing about this business that we work in is that his work will live on and certainly in the new remaster, he will continue to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers for years to come.

Blumhouse.com: Amen to that! I want to ask you about getting more of your films on Blu-Ray! BUBBA HO-TEP is one of my favorites of yours. Is there any talk of some of your earlier films, including BUBBA HO-TEP coming to Blu-Ray?

Don Coscarelli: Actually there is some talk about that! Nothing to announce just yet, but thank you for asking. Hoping this year we can make that happen. It’s a movie I’m very proud of and I’d love to see it come out in something beyond a DVD release. I can also go ahead and say that we can talk a little bit about my new project that I’m executive producing. It’s tentatively titled APPLECART and its being directed by a first time director named Brad Baruh, who produced JOHN DIES AT THE END with me. Brad is a very talented guy, and the storyline without giving too much away, I’ll just say that it’s a very structurally challenging transgressive horror movie with lots of good make-up FX. And we’re starting that up in about a week, so I’m really looking forward to that because it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Blumhouse.com: I know you get asked this all the time, so let me try to word this is a slightly different way. OK. Is it possible for all of the PHANTASM movies to come out in a boxed set together?

Don Coscarelli: (Laughs) Well of course it’s possible! The question is whether it will or not. At this point, all I can say is stay tuned, I sure hope so!

The new remastered and fully restored PHANTASM premieres this Monday, March 14th at SXSW! Stay tuned for more details regarding when and where you can see it!