R.I.P. Angus Scrimm

Word surfaced this weekend that veteran actor Angus Scrimm passed away. Angus, best known as The Tall Man in the excellent PHANTASM series, actually got his start in the music business, where he worked writing liner notes for a variety of musicians, even winning a Grammy in 1974 for his notes for “Korngold: The Classic Erich Wolfgang Korngold."

His first couple of film roles were in horror pictures - SWEET KILL (1972) and SCREAM BLOODY MURDER (1973). Three years later he would work with Don Coscarelli on the film JIM THE WORLD'S GREATEST. The two would reunite in 1979, when Coscarelli wrote the role of The Tall Man for Scrimm.

 In 2015 Coscarelli filmed the fifth and probably final installment of the Phantasm series, PHANTASM RAVAGER. The previous installments were PHANTASM (1979), PHANTASM II (1988), PHANTASM III: LORD OF THE DEAD (1994), and PHANTASM IV: OBLIVION (1998). Ravager is scheduled to premiere this year.

I remember showing these films to my kids when they were younger, and how much they loved them just as I did. I think I'll be revisiting them sometime soon, for sure...

Convalescent Terrors

I am always intrigued when creative people tread common territory. I’m not talking about plagiarism, mind you, just coincidental mining of similar themes. I ran across just such a case recently while I was reading an old issue of WEIRD TALES MAGAZINE – actually, it was a Weird Tales paperback book, the 4-issue series Edited by Lin Carter. It was in issue 2, a story called FEAR by JOSEPH PAYNE BRENNAN.

It is one of Brennan’s supernatural detective stories featuring detective Lucius Leffing, on a case in Connecticut with his assistant. Here’s the plot – Leffing and partner have been called to investigate a series of strange deaths at the Hemlock Hills Convalescent Center. Turns out a supernatural being is stalking the halls of the nursing home, and the patients are dying of fright at the sight of the hideous being.

I was, of course, immediately reminded of BUBBA HOTEP, written by Joe R. Lansdale and filmed by Don Coscarelli. Perhaps the only similar element between the two stories is a supernatural entity in a nursing home, but that in and of itself is pretty significant. Beyond that the two stories diverge pretty widely, and Lansdale’s plot features a retired Elvis Presley in place of a supernatural detective. The actual monster is different, too – it’s an ancient mummy in the Lansdale story, while here it is the physical manifestation of a witch who was burned alive 200 years prior. Still, the description isn’t that far off from ole Bubba H. –

“The air appeared to shift and waver and the ghastly remains of a face, little more than a blackened skull with shreds of shriveled flesh, etched itself immediately in front of me. Puffy lips writhed away from a toothless mouth set in a rictus of final agony. The red, glazing eyes seemed to reflect fire; they glared from the wrecked face with an expression of ultimate fear and ferocious hatred which I hope never to see again.”

Brennan and Lansdale were definitely both inspired by the depressing and oppressive nature of retirement homes, and the constant companion of death that always lingers nearby. Makes for an interesting study in similarities between the two tales.