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Phantasm Man
April 8, 2007

Though he’s worked in various genres over the years—the 2005 comedy Bubba Ho-tep, for example, and 1982’s fantasy-adventure The Beastmaster—filmmaker Don Coscarelli remains best known

for the horrific quartet of Phantasm films that he wrote and directed between 1979 and 1998. Two of them—the original Phantasm (1979) and Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), both of which were produced by Coscarelli, will be issued tomorrow as re-mastered, supplements-filled DVD under the new “Anchor Bay Collection” Brand. Each will carry a suggested retail price of $19.98. For Phantasm III, it marks a North American DVD debut. Coscarelli, who provides a director’s commentary for the first Phantasm and appears in a handful of extras on both discs, was enthusiastic about working on the new DVDs with Anchor Bay and his Phantasm collaborators, including actor Angus Scrimm, who portrays series baddie “The Tall Man.”

“I worked before with AnchorBay on The Beastmaster some years back, and I’m glad to be working with them again,” Coscarelli told us in a recent interview. “I like to work with these guys—they insist on making the product right.”

“There was a good five years in between the sequels and over those years, I’ve had a great relationship with the whole Phantasm family,” he added.

Coscarelli is currently working on a sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep with actor Bruce Campbell and he isn’t

ruling out a fifth film in the Phantasm series. Just as the Phantasm series’ flying sphere is filled with blood (albeit, blood siphoned from the sphere’s ill-fated victims), so does Coscarelli have horror (and blood!) in his veins—and he's not complaining about it.

“Those of use who are “stuck” in horror genre hell are still making bizarrely strange and imaginative movies while getting to play with Caro syrup and prosthetics,” he said. “In a weird little way, we enjoy practicing our art in the context of our little cubby hole.”

The horror extended to a segment that Coscarelli contributed to the popular Masters of Horror series, the 2005 installment “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” which is also available from Anchor Bay/Starz.

“Getting involved in the Master of Horror, I got to meet others who work in the same vein and with a similar spirit,” he said, “I think it comes from the ability to still be able to explore our inner child.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on April 8, 2007 | Comments (0)