Reggie Bannister and the Endless Whiteboy Summer - Life is a Series of Phantasms

Reggie Bannister passed away on August 9th, age 80. For those that don’t know, he starred in Don Coscarelli’s cult classic PHANTASM (1979) and the four sequels that followed, as well as Coscarelli’s earlier efforts, Jim - The World’s Greatest (1976) and Kenny & Company (1976).

The PHANTASM film are peculiar - on their own terms, conceptually, but also what they represent to the cult fandom that values them. The original is a bona fide horror/sci-fi classic; the sequels are of varying quality (PHANTASM II is fantastic - and has big-studio polish on its production; III and IV are awful, PHANTASM: RAVAGER is a great and proper send-off, and is especially poignant considering the subject of this editorial).

Coscarelli observed, years after the release of the original film, that he received a tremendous volume of letters from men who were great fans of the series; and who relayed that they found the movie(s) intimately relatable. This seems superficially odd - considering the movie is a surreal and remarkably weird, low budget horror film about an undertaker who is some sort of inter-dimensional alien ghoul who robs corpses from the grave and re-animates them as dwarfish slaves to serve in endless bondage on his home planet (a Hellscape the viewer only gets brief glimpses of).

What draws young guys to Phantasm is the fact that the series captures something that proves elusive to most novelists and filmmakers - the subtle (and not so subtle) anxieties about growing up and making transition from a boy to a man.

Women have their own challenges - neither more severe nor comparatively easy as compared to their male counterparts. Simply, different. Most notably, girls become women by a punctuated act of nature - girls become women when they become capable of motherhood. The transition announces itself in such a manner that is unambiguous and cannot be ignored.

Boys traditionally become men when they become capable of handling weapons - but in some respects, this leads to arrested development - as often men become fascinated with a kind of permanent adolescence that comes with the fun and comradery of organized violence - be it warfare, gang life, or some combination thereof (such as the life of the Partisan). This leads to an existential ambiguity, which can be catastrophic to spiritual and psychic health as men age.

Coscarelli of course also was exploring a motif similar to what Ray Bradbury explored in his classic youth novel, The Halloween Tree - that being, childhood ends when we learn that we are going to die; and our conscious experience of living is but a brief and fleeting glimpse of Being amidst a permanent sleep within an infinite cosmos.

Reggie Bannister - who literally plays himself in the Phantasm series (his name in the films is ‘‘Reggie Bannister’’); opposite his young protege and surrogate son ‘‘Mike’’ (played by Mike Baldwin in all but the second film). Reggie and Mike (and Mike’s big brother Jody) live in 1970s, Northern California - Reggie drives an ice cream truck and spends his off time jamming on his guitar with Jody and working on a 1971 Hemi-Cuda owned by Mike and Jody.

Mike’s parents died sometime before the opening of the film - and he is worried that Jody will leave him. There is a subtle, and eventually not so subtle, evil that Mike detects within the small town where he lives. People die under circumstances that don’t make sense. Clearly supernatural things occur that nobody seems to notice. Its as if dream-logic (or illogic) applies in lieu of consensus reality.

Ultimately, Mike, Jody and Reggie find themselves battling something supremely powerful and monstrous - and in so doing, decipher the brutal realities of death and the passing of the human consciousness not into oblivion, but into a kind of horrific slavery. As the alien Undertaker (dubbed ‘‘The Tall Man’’ in universe) says to a lapsed Priest, ‘‘You think that when you die, you go to Heaven - you come to US’’.

What saves young Mike’s sanity - and what allows him, and Reggie as well - to sustain Faith in God and the potential for that which is Godly despite coming to knowledge of the eldritch horrors that surround us - is the bond he shares with his Pals. And that is what sustains men throughout their lives.

Women have their children - men have Pals. You have three or four good Pals, you got yourself a Tribe. You got a Tribe, is all gonna be OK.