I will be introduced to people and they go 'Oh, you did 'Phantasm,'. the impact of that sequence really woke audiences up," he said. "That image of the sphere and the way that this sphere, you know without giving away too much, it becomes a deadly killing device. While writing the film, Coscarelli decided the orb in his dream would make an interesting storytelling device. "It’s maybe one of the only dreams I’ve remembered vividly enough to put into a film," he recalled. " And not really knowing it, but I ended up making a mashup of horror, fantasy and science fiction," Coscarelli said.Ĭoscarelli got the idea for the silver sphere that flies down the corridors of the Morningside funeral home from a dream he had when he was 15 years old. Coscarelli was intrigued by the idea of having a kid who saw strange things but was left on his own to try to figure out what was going on.
PHANTASMIC RADIO MOVIE
And I thought this would be a great setting for a horror film."Ĭoscarelli was also inspired by a 1953 indie science-fiction movie called " Invaders from Mars." The story revolves around a boy who witnesses a flying saucer disappear into the large sand pit behind his house. Nobody believes the boy when he tells them what he saw. And then the corpse comes back looking kind of like your relative but not exactly. And you give them the dead body of your deceased relative and it goes away into sort of a, I don’t know, experimentation or scientific operating lab. "There’s this strange practice of men dressed in dark suits and they’re in these mausoleums. And our hero, Mike, witnesses some strange things and notices this strange, very enigmatic and sinister mortician (played by Angus Scrimm). And he and his brother and their neighborhood friend Reggie who’s the ice cream vendor (played by Reggie Bannister) get involved in trying to learn what is going on up here and pretty soon, it takes some really strange, frightening turns."Ĭoscarelli explained that the inspiration for the story came from the way our society deals with death. There’s a funeral up at this odd mortuary cemetery complex called Morningside.
PHANTASMIC RADIO SERIES
There’s a series of murders, one of their friends is killed. "And he starts to notice some strange things going on. "(Mike) has an active imagination but he just might be the sharpest knife in the drawer in that town," Coscarelli said. Mike is trying to come to grips with the loss of his parents and the potential loss of Jody who wants to leave. "Phantasm" is about a 12-year-old boy named Mike (played by Michael Baldwin), who lives with his older brother, Jody (played by Bill Thornbury).
But at any rate, I got this bug in my mind that maybe my next film, I needed to do something a little bit more commercial. "Somebody once told me that horror films make money," Coscarelli told WPR's " BETA." "It’s funny because today that’s absolutely the truth because some of the most successful films are the horror and genre films. "Phantasm" was released in 1979 and has since spawned four sequels. The film is now considered a cult classic and has appeared on many critics’ lists of best horror films. Coscarelli writes in great detail about making "Phantasm" and other films like "The Beastmaster" and "Bubba Ho-Tep" in his memoir, " True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking." He was only 19 years old when he sold his independently-produced and critically-acclaimed drama, "Jim, the World’s Greatest," to Universal Pictures.īut it was Coscarelli's third film that put him on the map - an indie horror movie called "Phantasm." He wrote it, photographed it, directed it and edited it. Don Coscarelli is the youngest filmmaker ever to have a feature film distributed by a major studio.
0 kommentar(er)
