Trick or Trailers: Silver Bullet (1985)

So, based on the early box office returns, we know that the new Carrie didn't set the world on fire. When a horror movie has the Halloween season all to itself and most horror fans still can't be bothered to show up for it, you know you've got a true dud on your hands.

On October 11th, 1985, a livelier Stephen King adaptation was released - the Dino DeLaurentiis-produced Silver Bullet, adapted from the novella Cycle of the Werewolf.



While the big appeal of the novella had been the illustrations of artist Berni Wrightson (above), the movie didn't evoke Wrightson's work at all. If anything, Silver Bullet looks a bit chintzy - a typical mid-'80s, mid-budget horror picture.

Of course, that works in its favor now as a typical mid-'80s, mid-budget horror picture can be a sight for sore eyes in 2013. The cast is good, too, with Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Everett McGill, Terry O'Quinn and Lawrence Tierney all giving Silver Bullet a considerable boost.



I always thought of myself as both a big Silver Bullet fan as well as a big Don Coscarelli fan but somehow I remained oblivious until now about the fact that the Phantasm mastermind had been involved in Silver Bullet as a director, to the point of filming the non-werewolf scenes before he quit over issues with the werewolf suit and being replaced by Daniel Attias. This blows my mind - both the fact that it happened and the fact that it took me this long to find out about it. It definitely goes a long way towards explaining why Silver Bullet is kind of good without being all the way good.

Too bad Coscarelli couldn't stick around and see the movie through. If he had, I bet Silver Bullet would've been a lot closer to pure gold.

The Delusion Of A Disordered Mind

Call me crazy (or slow on the draw) but I noticed something new while recently rewatching Phantasm II. While Reggie and Mike are driving through a Tall Man-ravaged small town, one shot of the debris-strewn streets and boarded up store fronts suddenly jumped out at me as being not an actual location, as I always assumed it to be, but in fact a miniature set.

This detail has probably been completely obvious to everyone all along but it's taken me I don't know how many viewings for my eye to detect telltale signs of artifice in this shot.

But rather than ruin the moment, spying the fakery instead put a big smile on my face. This is the kind of unexpected discovery that the digital age has robbed us of now that moviemakers no longer have to use a variety of practical methods to pull off their illusions.

This moment amounts to just a brief few seconds of screen time and it's not any kind of pivotal scene - it's just there to give a sense of the Tall Man's path of destruction. But yet it required some craftsman on the crew (perhaps Ken Tarallo, credited as model maker in the film's credits) to spend what was likely weeks to construct a cool little miniature full of finely acheived detail which then had to be lit and photographed just right to make it convincing. Or...perhaps I'm just seeing things.

Either way, Phantasm II continues to be damn cool.

Reflections In A Silver Sphere

One good thing about the disappointing Super 8 is that its 1979 setting prompted me to revisit 1979's own Phantasm. You see, it just isn't the '70s unless there's some thick-ass shag carpeting and Phantasm has that covered:

In his non-fiction essay on horror, Danse Macabre, Stephen King argued that not all, but surely a very large share, of horror tales could be assembled under three major archetypes: The Thing, The Vampire, and The Werewolf. A film like Alien (1979) would be an example of The Thing. Dawn of the Dead (1978), with its scenes of cannibalism and blood-drinking, has its roots in the myth of the Vampire. And the shadow of The Werewolf can be seen in a film like Psycho (1960), in that it features a character who is outwardly normal but who hides a secret self. But Phantasm? Good luck finding any antecedents or close company for The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm).

Having a mortician as the villain of a horror film isn't in itself such a radical notion. For a society like ours that lives in deep denial about death, morticians and undertakers are naturally ghoulish figures.

The mysteries surrounding their practices, and the fact that most people show an aversion to learning too much about how bodies are prepared for burial, just fuels the taboo aura surrounding their profession. But while morticians and undertakers had appeared in horror films before Phantasm (as in 1964's The Comedy of Terrors and 1966's The Undertaker And His Pals), none had featured a mortician who was also an interdimensional (or is it intergalactic?) being.

We tend to take the original Phantasm a little for granted since it's been in our collective consciousness for over thirty years and since three (mostly worthy) sequels have recycled its imagery but it's worth remembering just how surprising this movie was in 1979. I mean, prior to Phantasm, nobody ever saw anything like this:

Flying silver spheres that drill into people's skulls? That was some next level shit. And just when you thought that Phantasm had played every card it could possibly have to play, Coscarelli introduced us to The Tall Man's "space gate" and this trippy movie got even trippier:

When we think of examples of sci-fi horror, we typically think of films like The Thing from Another World (1951) or Alien - films where either an alien comes to Earth or we go out to space and encounter it. Or else films in which technology runs amuck, like Demon Seed (1977). There are no other sci-fi horror film like Phantasm, though. In fact, I'm still not even sure it is sci-fi.

But with sights like this, don't you think it must be?

Phantasm is the only big horror hit of the '70s that has escaped a remake or a reboot and I think it's because no one beside Coscarelli is capable of navigating that universe. As fans, we know that no one can make a Texas Chainsaw movie the way that Tobe Hooper can or make a Halloween movie like John Carpenter but there's something deceptively simple on the surface of those films that allows some idiots to believe that they can but with Phantasm, I think even the densest studio exec must intuitively realize that they're out of their league.

The same year as Phantasm, Tobe Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot featured a young protagonist that was strikingly similar to Phantasm's thirteen-year-old hero Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin). But while Mark Petrie (Lance Kerwin) of Salem's Lot was a horror buff whose interests lent him an edge against the evil enveloping his community, Mike had no such advantage. After all, late night creature features can tell you how to kill a vampire but what's a Tall Man?

Being a geek would not have helped Mike. A bedroom full of Aurora models wouldn't have been an asset to him. It does help Mike, however, that he grew up with an older brother that knows his way around cars and guns and can give him useful advice like "Don't aim a gun at a man unless you intend to shoot him. And you don't shoot a man unless you intend to kill him."

Speaking of Mike's older brother, Jody (Bill Thornbury), Wes Craven and the folks behind the Scream franchise like to claim that what makes Scream different from other horror franchises is that it continues the stories of the protagonists, rather than just bringing back the same villain in each sequel to attack a different set of victims. Well, on that count it must be said that Phantasm was there first. They might have had to recast the role of Mike for Phantasm II (1988) but the character was still there and A. Michael Baldwin returned to the Phantasm phold for III and IV. For four movies, Coscarelli made the Phantasm series as much about the camaraderie between Mike, Jody, and their ice cream-slinging buddy Reggie (Reggie Bannister) as much about the immortal evil of The Tall Man.

Some would also say Phantasm had the jump on another famous Craven franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street. In the way that this movie jumps back and forth between dream and reality, Phantasm anticipated Craven's 1984 sleeper hit by five years. I say this not to take anything away from Craven's accomplishment, only to note just how ahead of the curve Coscarelli was.

Or maybe I should say, how on the ball he was.

The Ball Is Back!

In an unexpected bit of good news, the lone Region 1 holdout among the Phantasm series, 1988's Phantasm II, is finally coming to DVD in the US on September 15th courtesy of Universal. This'll hit stores on the same day as a slew of other Universal horror titles, including back catalog classics from John Carpenter and Wes Craven, but the arrival of Phantasm II eclipses everything. Until now I've held off buying any of the other three Phantasms until I knew that II would be available on disc because the Phantasm saga isn't a saga without its best entry.

With the deep pockets of Universal backing him, writer/director Don Coscarelli didn't squander the opportunity to go bigger and better on this follow-up. The new spheres, with more accessories than a Swiss Army Knife from Hell, were great and the array of new mayhem they were able to inflict was bad-ass. And even though Coscarelli ran into problems with the MPAA, I still feel that he was able to get away with a lot. The scene where a sphere burrows through the body of one of the Tall Man's lackeys remains one of my favorite splatter moments of the '80s, as does the Tall Man's oozing 'demise' as acid is pumped into his body.

With its action taking place in cemeteries, funeral homes and mortuaries, there was a grand ghoulishness to Phantasm II that I loved. That summer I wanted to be riding along in that black '71 Hemicuda with Reggie and Mike, tracking the Tall Man from one ravaged small town to the next, prowling among the crypts and graves that his minions had raided. I was never one for role-playing games but by God, if they had ever come out with one for Phantasm I would've been the biggest dork for it.

By rights, Phantasm II should've been Coscarelli's graduation to the big leagues and vaulted the Phantasm series to the forefront of horror franchises instead of being consigned to the graveyard of cinematic duds. How audiences didn't respond to this, I don't know. Maybe it was too confounding, or too corny, for most people. I loved it unabashedly, though. In every regard it struck me as cool. For me, it was a sequel just as successful as Aliens or Evil Dead II. When it comes to Phantasm II being more widely regarded as one of the best of the '80s, though, maybe this DVD release will finally get the ball off the ground.

Phantasm 3-D!

With the release of My Bloody Valentine 3-D on DVD this week, I'd like to nominate another horror franchise for a 3-D remake - Don Coscarelli's 1979 head trip, Phantasm. I know that plenty of people still regard 3-D suspiciously as a distracting gimmick but by now the technology has advanced to a point where it isn't the same hit-or-miss prospect that it used to be. And honestly, how frigging awesome would it be to see Phantasm's trademark flying silver spheres (with their protruding blades and drills) careening right off the screen?

3-D or no, I'd only want Phantasm to return if a remake was masterminded by Coscarelli himself. If he didn't direct it, I'd at least want him to write (he already wrote a script for a remake a few years ago when New Line had the rights to the property) and produce. With the list of still-untouched 'name' properties from the '70s and '80s having dwindled to just, well, Phantasm (seriously, is there anything else left?), it's only a matter of time before we see Phantasm reborn on the big screen (hey, now there's a title: Phantasm: Reborn). I just hope that when it does, that Coscarelli's vision will be augmented by the glory of 3-D. It's what the series was tailor-made for.

Phantasm II

Amid the bright hues of the '80s, writer/director Don Coscarelli's Phantasm II (1988) forged a dark path through a wasted America of violated graveyards, abandoned towns, and ghoul-ridden mortuaries. With Angus Scrimm at his cadaverous best returning as the Tall Man and with his arcane arsenal of flying spheres capable of even more diverse acts of mayhem (they have so many astounding applications they deserve their own not-found-in-stores infomercial), Coscarelli's sequel to his 1979 cult classic was a satisfyingly macabre follow-up.

Phantasm II is essentially one long chase as the survivors of the original film - young Mike Pearson (James Le Gros, replacing A. Michael Baldwin) and balding ice cream jockey Reggie (the returning Reggie Bannister) - hit the road in their black Hemi Cuda to hunt down the elusive Tall Man and kill him once and for all or die trying.

Seamlessly picking up from the last moments of Phantasm (with some ingenious sleight-of-hand from Cosarelli, making it convincing that not a minute has passed for these characters), we see Reggie put down his guitar and jump into action, saving an unconscious Mike from being dragged off by the Tall Man's diminutive minions. Reggie gets himself and Mike to safety and - thanks to a gas stove - is able to blow Mike's house to debris as the Tall Man watches.

When we next see Mike in present times, he's intent on seeking out a young girl named Liz (Paula Irvine) who he's developed a psychic rapport with (and who also has visions of the Tall Man) but because Mike never backed off from telling his tale of the Tall Man, first he has to bullshit his way out of the mental institution he's currently incarcerated in. Once on the outside, Reggie tries to convince Mike that they only imagined their incredible ordeal of years ago. But when the Tall Man strikes again, exacting a catastrophic toll, Reggie is forced to team with Mike on a do-or-die mission of vengeance.

Even though the '80s were known for its portrayals of macho invincibility, Coscarelli doesn't depict Mike and Reggie as Rambo-esque action heroes. Instead, they're credible, fallible characters - always a frustrating step behind the Tall Man, working past an array of lethal booby-traps and taunting messages ("Come East if you dare!"). When they do offer some signs of bravado (as Reggie calls out to one henchman: "Come on, you Mutha!"), it's quickly followed by a humiliating smackdown.

More often than not, the overwhelmed duo are seen openly doubting what they'll be able to accomplish against the Tall Man's forces. Mike and Reggie are portrayed as soldiers embedded in enemy territory - rousting mausoleums, prowling cemeteries, and torching funeral homes - and like most foot soldiers, they're denied a view of the big picture. From one bloody skirmish to the next, they can't ascertain whether or not their missions are thwarting their foe's larger goals.

But the audience never has a privileged view of what's going on, either. In true Phantasm fashion, by the end of Phantasm II we have no clue as to what the Tall Man's goals are. Is he from another planet, or from another dimension? We don't know. But to me, it hardly matters. The action is fierce, the gore is gratuitous by late '80s standards (compared to what the MPAA was letting, say, the Friday the 13th sequels get away with at the time, Phantasm II was spectacularly nasty - like the moment where a drill-equipped sphere burrows its way through a henchman's body), the car and weapons are memorably bad-assed (check out the four-barreled shotgun!), and the chemistry between Le Gros and Bannister has a natural camaraderie (I wish Le Gros could've continued in the part, in fact, rather than Baldwin reclaiming the role).

It may not have a proper beginning or a real ending but for all its loose-ends and open ambiguities, Phantasm II feels oddly complete to me. It may not tell the most coherent tale but by sticking close to the grave, Coscarelli's morbid instincts prevail. While the Phantasm saga may have been sidelined, Phantasm II is a lasting reminder of a time when Cosarelli still had all his balls in the air.