Stephen Romano’s Kingdom: PHANTASM FOREVER Part 1
Welcome to back to the Kingdom, folks. Sorry for the time away, but I’ve been cooking up something really special this time. A lot of people have asked me over the years about my involvement with Don Coscarelli and the Phantasm films. Yes, I am indeed a member of the extended “Phantasm Phamily,” and my experiences with this awesome director and his unique series of remarkable horror films span many years. So, in final, definitive answer to these historic questions (not to mention rather large volume of letters I still receive on a monthly basis about all that), and looking forward into the future of Phantasm with the new sequel, due next year, I shall now break my 15 year silence in an epic 3-part confessional that begins today. It’s an intensely personal story of my life, through the making of one of the most infamous “lost” sequels in the history of horror, and I’m giving it to you for free, only here at Dread Central. Because these guys rule, and so do you.
It’s a fun little number I like to call:
CHAPTER ONE: THE KINGDOM AND PHANTASMANIA
When I was a child in 1983, the motion picture Phantasm pretty much changed my life. When I was an adult in 2000, it pretty much changed my life again. That was the year when I organized a film festival at the world-famous Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, showcasing the legendary horror movie and its three sequels.
That was the year I met Don Coscarelli.
Twenty-two years—an entire lifetime—had passed since seeing Phantasm for the first time, and I was no longer a child watching horror movies on VHS and wishing to be a star someday. Um. I was now an adult watching horror movies on VHS and wishing to be a star someday.
I was a working artist, more-or-less, even though my needs were very small and my overhead was shamefully low. I lived in a dark, media-obsessed bohemian crash-pad at the far end of Montclaire Street in Austin, which looked like what might happen if some insane collage artist vomited up every badass psychotronic exploitation film ever made.
As you may have already have heard, we called that place The Kingdom.
It was a multi-colored galaxy and a deep black hole, where rock and roll was happening at all hours, and youthful craziness was in full evidence. Wild women, over-amped psycho-fans, bizarre adventures, true romance, tragic heartbreak and every shade of debauchery. We drank ourselves silly and partied for weeks on end, gorging on movies, books, comics, and more movies, searching for some sort of ultimate truth.
On the living room ceiling were various posters for Phantasm 2, including this German one, which some wag “customized” one night during an especially wild gathering.
My professional achievements at that time were somewhat impressive. I had directed successful audio books in partnership with Image Comics. I had written six novels, only one of which had actually been published—by myself. (Self pubbing was a really different game back in the days before POD, by the way.) I had adapted two of Lucio Fulci’s finest horror films into epic graphic novels, which had seen ridiculously small print runs, though the first had been the official novelization of The Beyond when it had been released in 1998 by Quentin Tarantino’s short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures outfit. I had scripted and storyboarded an elaborate remake of Fulci’s Zombie, which was to star Sage Stallone and never got off the ground. I had founded a weird rock band who did horror tribute music, and we produced elaborate soundtrack/tribute albums to Cannibal Ferox, Cat in the Brain and Zombie. I’d even been paid to write a few screenplays, but nothing much. That was the racket I really wanted to get into. Making movies, man. It was all I dreamed about as a boy and was the endgame to every elaborate scheme I cooked up back in those days. That, and becoming a novelist. Being a writer, ultimately, was what I put on this earth to do.
“PHANTASMANIA” was another of my crazy schemes, cooked up in early 2000, just after I had made a good showing at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema with my first-annual LUCIO FULCI HALLOWEEN HORROR FEST a few months earlier. At the time, the Alamo was not the giant franchised machine that it is now. They did not have Fantastic Fest nor a million locations or corporate offices. They were punk rock. One location. One owner. A staff of about fifteen people. Tim League—who now oversees the rather huge Alamo empire—did everything himself in those days. He supervised the kitchen. He ran the projectors. He dealt with people like me, who wanted to “put on a show” and indulged us with wild weekend events that put asses in seats and brought down the house. These events provided very little, if any, cash for our threadbare pockets.
This was fine. I wasn’t in it for the money. We were outlaws.
Phantasmania was going to be a three-day “midnight movie” retrospective of all four Phantasm pictures, complete with attending filmmakers, special guests, and live pre-show stuff before each movie. It happened because I was friends with Reggie Bannister, the co-star of those horror classics—and I just asked him one day if he wanted to truck over to Austin and have a wild time with my crazy pals. He gave an enthusiastic “hell yeah!” and suggested that Don Coscarelli, the director and creator of the series, get involved. At the time, Austin was just coming into its own as a “film town,” and people like Harry Knowles were becoming famous . . . so the prospect of coming down South on film-related ventures was appealing for pretty much everybody. It appealed to Don Coscarelli so much that he didn’t just get involved with the fest—he got really involved. He offered up himself, talked Angus Scrimm into coming, and provided pristine film prints of each Phantasm picture—including numbers 3 and 4, which had hardly been screened at all in theaters.
This is from the final night of the show, when Reggie and Tim League gave out free ice cream to the die hards “Phans” at 2:30 in the morning, just before ObliVion flashed up on that screen.
My first phone call with Don was exhilarating, terrifying and a bit of a revelation. I had met many of my “horror heroes” before, and had even experienced meaningful interaction with a few of them. Once, in New York, I’d sat with George A. Romero one-on-one in a bar and listened to his tales of career woe, which were so weird and depressing that he’d even taken up smoking again, after a decade of being quit. (You know all these personal details about the legendary director of Dawn of the Dead when you are like I am—deranged.)
On the phone, Don was cordial and complimentary. It was hard not to be overexcited about meeting the guy, but I held it together, more or less. He really put me at ease. We talked for almost two hours that first afternoon, and Don told me something that was truly mind-blowing. He said that he still retained all the rights to the Phantasm series. This was the reason he was able to provide festival prints to us. This was why he had written and directed each movie in the series. It was how he’d managed to retain more-or-less complete creative control over the franchise.
It was unprecedented. Unlike other filmmakers who had created classic horror characters in films like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Coscarelli had never sold the farm to a studio or some other big company. (Though he had danced with Universal Pictures on II and III.) What that meant was that Don could make a new Phantasm film however and whenever he wanted to. Guys like John Carpenter would never have that right. (Though I suspect that John would probably rather disembowel himself with a spoon than even think about making another Michael Myers movie.) Don was a man clearly in charge of his destiny, for better or for worse.
And I was on my way to becoming fast friends with the guy.
Or at least fest friends.
Reggie, getting it on at the autograph table with The Satan’s Cheerleaders, Trixie Stix, Vixen Nixin and Katnip. The girls hosted the show and took Angus shopping for used records.
Even if the festival bombed (and it didn’t), I would have Coscarelli in town as my honored guest, four whole days. He would be my captive audience. And the fella seemed impressed with me. Hmmmm. I also had many ideas about what a new Phantasm sequel should be like. I was, technically, a professional screenwriter now, too. So I started thinking . . .
If I handled this right . . .
If I approached him correctly . . .
Didn’t screw it up . . .
I hatched a plan that was either incredibly bold or irretrievably stupid. Because I’d heard rumors that Don might be interested in creating a Phantasm cable TV series, I would sit down at my word machine and blast out three full-length 60 minute scripts, including a pilot, which would contain every crazy-ass fanboy idea I had ever come up with in 20 years of being a follower of those films. I would give these proposed TV scripts to Don Coscarelli at some point during the weekend, pitching them as best I could . . . and he’d take them home, read them, then call me up and tell me I was a genius and that we were going to make millions of dollars together and rule the world. What could possibly go wrong?
It was a real Rupert Pupkin move.
It was risky as hell.
And, of course, I had to write the damn scripts. In just two or three weeks.
While organizing an entire film festival.
To paraphrase James Cameron, I did what I always did in those days when I had an insurmountable problem. I simply made my problem someone else’s problem. In this case, I called on the citizens of The Kingdom, who all rallied around the idea of a Phantasm film festival like it was the cure for cancer. I didn’t even own a car back then—and yet I needed to pick up all the “celebs” at the airport and ferry them around the city, check them into their hotels, get them fed, and drive them to the events on time. I had little money to print flyers, posters and 
programs and even less time to get it all done—so I took up collections, put up what little money I had, and delegated the workload among our many “volunteers.” I put one of my roomies in charge of security. Another in charge of the film prints and trailer reels. I recruited two of my oldest buddies to form an acoustic band which would accompany Reggie on guitar when he played his live music set in front of Phantasm II. (I played conga drum.) I recruited a husband and wife team to hang an elaborate display of two hundred “silver spheres” in the theater lobby. I talked Tower Records into buying us a full-page newspaper ad. (Yeah, Tower records; it was that long ago.) Tim and the Alamo gang picked up a lot of the slack. They were amazing and supportive and totally hands on about everything. And all the while, in every spare second I had . . . I banged out those TV scripts. Just got it the hell done, however I could.
The show itself was . . . amazing.
I could go on for a very long time about it.
Our three-night “midnight movie” event was filled with glorious madness. Awesome goth girls and dedicated dementos in full Phantasm gear packed in to get a glimpse of “The Tall Man” in person. Reggie’s acoustic show went over like a demon. A gang of nutty muscle car enthusiasts went wild in the front row the first time Jody’s classic Hemicuda appeared on screen. The last night was an awesome blur, when we showed 3 and 4 back to back, and only a handful of “Phans” remained in the theater after four in the morning. We cut down the spheres in the lobby display, one at a time, and Don signed them enthusiastically with a Sharpie marker for the die hards. It was a moment in history. The kind of thing you keep with you always.
Angus Scrimm with “Team Sphere” in the lobby. Angus later presented Mike and Sarah matching T-shirts that proclaimed “I hung my Balls At the Alamo!”
So, yeah . . . the darn show was loads of fun, guys.
Don Coscarelli later told me that my crazy cadre of friends were truly amazing, and that he’d always wished he had a “gang” like that. Nutty, dedicated true-believers who always had your back in a pinch. Guys who’d pretty much do anything for each other.
“A man is judged by his friends,” Don said.
I told him he was part of the gang now and he smiled like the sun.
Turned out I was right the first time; Don Coscarelli was a stand-up guy who cared about people and liked making new friends. High concept, man.
A few other members of the extended Phantasm Phamily came to Austin for the event, including a very special lady named Kristen Deem. She had read over part of my Phantasm TV proposal and had encouraged me to go ahead and casually pitch them to Don during the weekend. She had served on all the Phantasm sequels in some capacity or another, from production assistant to script supervisor, and I had a great deal of respect for her experience with Don and the series. Also, she turned out to be a really swell person, too. The Phantasm people are some of the warmest, most human beings you could ever hope to meet on this earth.
So I was convinced. Just do, it man.
The day after our last screening, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Don and I got together to watch some pay per view with his son Andy, and Don even brought the beer. (Whatta guy!) It was Coscarelli’s last night in town as my guest and I still had not pitched him my TV ideas. The “right moment” had just never seemed to present itself. Just as Don was leaving my home for the final time—literally as he was walking out the door—I realized it was now or never. So I held my breath and handed him my stack of “Phan” scripts.
He started backing away slowly.
Oh shit . . .
NEXT WEEK: The Plan Almost Fails. And Then some comic books happen. BE THERE!
Stephen Romano’s new novel now available exclusively in e-book from Simon and Schuster
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