Cody reads all about the Phantasm franchise.
PHANTASM EXHUMED: THE UNAUTHORIZED COMPANION by Dustin McNeill
2024 marks the 45th anniversary of one of the greatest horror movies ever made, Phantasm – and it also happens to mark the 10th anniversary of author Dustin McNeill’s book Phantasm Exhumed: The Unauthorized Companion... which I really should have read sooner than I did, but at least I’ve finally gotten around to reading it now. I have read a few of McNeill’s other books in recent years, and Phantasm Exhumed delivered exactly what I had come to expect from his work: a very thorough and respectful examination of notable horror films, following their progress from script to screen.
The book covers all of the Phantasm movies that had been released at the time McNeill was writing it; which is to say, it covers pretty much everything you could ever possibly want to know about the original Phantasm, which was a low budget, independent production that was primarily shot on weekends over the course of the year, to the bigger budgeted Phantasm II, which was a studio film that forced franchise creator Don Coscarelli to recast one of the lead roles, to the lower budgeted Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (where that recast lead regained its original actor), and the even lower budgeted Phantasm: OblIVion, which brought the franchise back to its indie roots... and, for a while, looked like it would be the end of the series.
McNeill also covers the unmade Phantasm that was scripted by Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, an epic idea that would have been the biggest Phantasm movie ever made, if only it could have found funding. And he addresses the idea that it might have been for the best that funding couldn’t be secured, because it wouldn’t have been the sort of Phantasm sequel most fans (other than Coscarelli and Avary themselves) would have wanted, as it didn’t handle the characters or the classic Phantasm elements correctly.
Phantasm, Phantasm II, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, Phantasm: OblIVion, I enjoy all of those movies to varying degrees and have a lot of respect for the overall franchise and the people involved with the movies – with Angus Scrimm’s The Tall Man and Reggie Bannister’s beleaguered, 4-barrel-shotgun toting ice cream man Reggie being two of my all-time favorite movie characters. So I was enthralled by this book as McNeill guided me through the making of all four of the films and could barely bring myself to set it aside.
There was one more Phantasm movie on the horizon when McNeill wrote this book. The franchise-ending Phantasm: Ravager. That one only gets quick mention here, but McNeill made up for its absence later. With another book.
FURTHER EXHUMED: THE STRANGE CASE OF PHANTASM: RAVAGER by Dustin McNeill
In the opening pages of Further Exhumed: The Strange Case of Phantasm: Ravager, author Dustin McNeill admits that he purposely avoided having to cover the fifth Phantasm movie (that being Phantasm: Ravager) in his book Phantasm Exhumed: The Unauthorized Companion, which covered the previous four, because he was worried that it could be a disaster. It was a bit of a patchwork movie, as half of it had been filmed with the intention of being a web series, then the idea of turning it into a movie came along and franchise creator / writer Don Coscarelli and Ravager director/co-writer David Hartman had to figure out how to use the existing footage as the core of a feature film. So it could have been a total mess... and McNeill was aware, having read drafts of unmade Phantasm movies, that there was definitely a chance that a bad Phantasm could be brought into existence. Thankfully, he ended up greatly enjoying Phantasm: Ravager – so much so, he decided to write an entire second book just to focus on this movie.
Further Exhumed covers the development and production of Phantasm: Ravager just like McNeill covered the other four movies in Phantasm Exhumed, starting with the project’s roots, some of which lie in unmade Phantasm scripts written by Roger Avary and Stephen Romano. Romano’s script was called Phantasm Forever, and at one point that was so close to getting made that the cast was brought together for a marathon script reading session: five full readings of the script, performed in front of green screens so backgrounds could be added later. The person who added those backgrounds was future Ravager director David Hartman. So a rough version of Phantasm Forever does technically exist. Coscarelli has the footage, he just hasn’t figured out how to show it yet. So in the meantime, we got Phantasm: Ravager, the most divisive entries in the franchise. One of the rare horror sequels that got better reviews from critics than from the series’ own fans.
Ravager is cheap, mind-boggling, and packed with digital effects, and it’s easy to understand why so many fans were put off by it. But McNeill thought it was a great epilogue to the franchise, and he digs into why he feels Ravager deserves more respect while also explaining the decisions that went into the making of it every step of the way. As a Phantasm fan who has always seen Ravager as a disappointment (even though I enjoyed getting to see the returning cast members play their characters one more time), I was left wanting to take in another viewing of the movie with a better understanding of why it is the way it is.
And as a completionist, I appreciated that McNeill circled back to the Phantasm series to cover the one movie he missed in the first book.
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