The terror of the Tall Man has stuck with viewers since his footsteps first echoed onscreen in 1979's Phantasm, and last March it was revealed that Angus Scrimm's legendary horror movie villain will stalk the screen one last time in Phantasm: Ravager. Fans were given their first look at the film back in March, and now new footage has been released in a holiday video message from Coscarelli and David Hartman.

Produced by Phantasm creator Don Coscarelli, who co-wrote the script with director David Hartman (marking the first time a Phantasm film has been directed by someone other than Coscarelli), Phantasm: Ravager is due out sometime in 2015. The film stars Reggie Bannister as ice cream man turned warrior Reggie and also includes original cast members Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Kat Lester and, of course, Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man.

In addition to the holiday video teaser below, we have details on Phantasm: Ravager from the film's official press release that came out in March:

"For the first time in the franchise’s history, a new director is helming the production, one David Hartman. Hartman is a multiple Emmy-nominated animation director, whose work can be seen in such celebrated shows as Transformers Prime and Roughnecks: Starship Troopers. Serious genre fans have long been familiar with Hartman’s edgier output, including two blood-soaked music videos for Rob Zombie (“American Witch,” and “Lords of Salem”), and his illustrations of Steve Niles’ “Strange Cases” for Image Comics.

“I felt it was time to let someone else play with my train set,” noted Coscarelli, who co-wrote the film with Hartman and produced the film under his Silver Sphere banner along with Executive Producer Brad Baruh. “David and I go back to my film Bubba Ho-Tep. He did terrific visual effects on that, and more recently created a wild animated sequence and some amazing visual effects in my most recent film, John Dies at the End. Our aesthetics are in sync and he’s quite an experienced director in his own right,” Coscarelli stated.

“Having worked with Don [Coscarelli] before, and being a huge fan of the entire Phantasm franchise, it was a great honor to do RAVAGER with him,” says Hartman. “This film is a real turning point in the series. There’s real closure for the core characters that I hope fans will respond to. We were fortunate to shoot amazing new sequences with horror icon Angus Scrimm—he has terrific scenes with Reggie (Bannister) and Mike (Michael Baldwin) that are truly powerful.”

Production on RAVAGER took place in and around southern California over the past two years. “The Phantasm films have been a guerrilla operation for decades now, totally outside of the studio system,” Coscarelli notes. “We do them for the fans, and I think Ravager will definitely please them. In the past few years several studios have made offers to remake Phantasm with large budgets, but the fans were very vocal that they wanted the original cast to return and finish this iteration of the story with class. And for the first time there’s an extended sequence on the Tall Man’s home world. I know Phantasm fans will be as excited as I am to see it.”

RAVAGER features Reggie Bannister (a veteran of all five films) in his decades-long pursuit of the malevolent Tall Man, and it finally forces him to confront the mysteries at the heart of the Phantasm saga. The entire original cast is back including Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Kat Lester and Angus Scrimm, along with some great new characters. Coscarelli allows, “There are also some surprises thrown in that I promise will astonish long-time fans.”"

  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.