Over the weekend, the highly anticipated sequel Phantasm: Ravager enjoyed its world premiere at the 2016 Fantastic Fest. Soon, “Phanatics” everywhere will have the chance to finally see the film for themselves when Ravager arrives on VOD on October 4th, before hitting theaters on October 7th courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment.
During the press day at Fantastic Fest, Daily Dead had the opportunity to sit down and chat with both Don Coscarelli (who co-wrote on Ravager and directed the first four Phantasm films) and David Hartman, the lifelong fan of the Phantasm series who had the honor of delivering what looks to be the final installment in this iteration of the long-running franchise. During our time with the duo, Coscarelli and Hartman discussed the long journey to get Phantasm: Ravager to the big screen, the bittersweet feeling that came with premiering the sequel after losing Angus Scrimm, an integral part of the Phantasm family, and much more.
Congratulations to you both. I know this has been a several years’ journey for you guys to get this film together and get it out there for the fans. And now we’re sitting here the day after the premiere, less than two weeks away from its official release. How good does all of this feel right now?
David Hartman: Wow. It's an amazing feeling. It's bittersweet, because these guys have all become close friends. You spend several years on something, while I'm still producing a Transformers TV show at the same time, so this really is a love thing. My free time for the last few years has all been devoted completely to Phantasm.
Don Coscarelli: In terms of visual effects, Dave was pretty much doing it 90% himself, and there were years that went by where Dave was slaving every night in his room working on this.
David Hartman: Well, when time goes like that, technology is changing every few months. You do something and all of a sudden new software comes out and you say, "I can make that so much better. I need to make it as great as I possibly can.” We didn't have a hundred million dollars, but at the same time, there was this ambition that we wanted to put into the scope, and I think it needed to be there.
Don Coscarelli: For me, it was just a joy because in some respects, it was a low-pressure affair for me because I didn't direct the film. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that we had done something that would be satisfying to the fans. That's what I enjoyed working on the most with Dave. It was always his intention to stay true to the characters, even though from time to time, we were a little resource shy. He was very ambitious in what he wanted to do.
It is bittersweet because, you know, Angus should have been here. In a perfect world, he would have loved to have been here last night, and the night before, too. He just loved so much about relating with the fans in the conventions, and it was a cruel twist that he was unable to be her physically. It’s very sad. We're all still a little raw, trying to get through that, because he was such an integral part of Phantasm, obviously.
I mentioned this on Twitter last night, and it's something that I've always appreciated about the series, is that this franchise has always been about these huge ideas, and you’ve always had to make them without a huge budget. You always found a way to make it work. Was that a challenge for you coming into this knowing that you didn't have ten million dollars at your disposal, but you still had to find a way to make it all work?
David Hartman: I'm an artist. I’m constantly drawing, so I'm used to working with limitations. I prefer having limitations because it forces you to be creative in ways outside your comfort zone. That's when magic happens, when you force yourself to go somewhere you're not comfortable going and face that fear, much like Mike did in the first film. No fear.
At the same time, for me, I knew we were going to try and somehow have all these cool factors. We got the Cuda car chase, we got these giant spheres. The most challenging thing for me was that it was all about the story. These are the characters we all grew up with as fans, and it's really important to me that this film honors that. Phantasm has always been a very character-driven franchise. I'd say it was difficult, but it really wasn't for me, just because I did it all with a sense of affection for these characters and this world.
Don and I wrote this together, and if I ever wrote something that wasn’t quite right, he'd say to me, "Ah, Reggie might not handle it this way." Then we would show it to Reggie [Bannister], and ask him, "Hey, Reggie, how would the Reg Man react to this?" So, it really was a family collaboration.
Don Coscarelli: Dave made some great decisions early on though, because one thing he was not afraid to shy away from was the age issue. By not doing that, it actually opened up so many opportunities and I was just thinking about this whole budget concept and some of the things that were going to draw some parallels with the first movie. In the first movie, we wanted to do shape-shifting between The Lady in Lavender and The Tall Man. Obviously, today, you would morph the images, and it would look great. Back then, it was just all done with the cuts.
Now Dave has gone down this path where he's not going to shy away from aging, and some of the real successes came from just the cutting of the film, especially when we cut from the wheel of the car to the wheel of Reggie’s wheelchair. I thought that was a great cut.
The next thing Dave did that I loved was this passage where Reggie has lost where he is. You've just done a lot of time-shifting through cutting and wardrobe changes, so you don’t know where he is. Is he in the old folks’ home? Is he in a battle to save the planet? He runs around the corner and he's in his robe again. It's just quick cuts, and it was inexpensive, but those were some really cool moments for me.
David Hartman: That is one of those moments when you and I were in the edit bay, where it was kind of a "whew!" [moment], because we shot these at different times with different costumes. I always had this idea in my head, and I storyboard everything, but you never know in the end. It all worked on paper, but you still don't know, because there's tempo and rhythm involved. Is it going to work with these cuts jumping back and forth? Don and I worked together, really hard, on that sequence in the edit bay. And seeing it on the big screen last night, I agree with you. That's one of my favorite moments, seeing how that worked.
Hearing you speak last night, Dave, obviously this was in the right hands, because it’s truly evident that you’re a fan. So Don, for you, going into this, was there something early on that you saw in David that made you know he was the guy for this job?
Don Coscarelli: Well, David's first passion is illustration. If you get a chance to go to his website, check out the work that he's done, it's all monsters, but he's got a style like no one else. When he would mock up even just still images, there was still an artistic quality to them. There are people who can do the software, but when you have an artist who can also do them, in terms of the decisions that he's making, the final palette can be very amazing.
The thing is, Heather, and I might have mentioned this to you before, the weird thing about Phantasm over the decades is that with the gaps between the movies, I forget what's in the other Phantasm movies, so when revisit it, I'm like a fan all over again myself. I love Reggie as a friend, as an actor. I love Angus, and when I see David interpreting them again, it's like I'm the number one fan. I'm going, "Oh, yeah! We could really make something that I think the fans would respond to." Nobody makes movies like this and its very weird, but it's a process that we've got.
David Hartman: Everybody's passionate about it, the actors especially, because everyone wanted to revisit these characters again. They wanted more. Every single person involved in this production was passionate about the series. None of it was just work for them, Everybody wanted to be a part of this. And that's what makes it special.
Phantasm really is one of the few franchises in which everybody's stayed a family from the beginning until the end. That doesn’t happen too often.
David Hartman: I'd include the fans in that, too. I keep saying we're an eclectic group of an eclectic group [laughter]. You have your horror fans, then within that, you have Phantasm fans, and they're like no other. And I’m one of them, too. I'm just a little boy in a candy store and he's just been given free reign. It's been a pretty amazing experience.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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