It has been 50 years since one of horror cinema’s cult favorites made his debut as a teenager. Horror has been a genre that helped several young directors get their start in Hollywood. There are so many films that saw young filmmakers find an audience thanks to the low-budget possibilities of the genre. However, this specific filmmaker didn’t start in horror.
Not only did he not start in horror, but Don Coscarelli got his start as a young teenager who shot his first movie with his parents helping him finance it. He then ended up becoming the youngest person at the time to ever get a deal to release his movie through a major studio. From there, Coscarelli became the cult horror favorite fans know him to be.
Don Coscarelli Directed His Debut Film When He Was 18
Don Coscarelli was one of the young filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s who got his start as a teenager, wanting to find a way into Hollywood. His father was in the U.S. Air Force, and when he retired, they moved to California, and Coscarelli wanted to make movies. However, he had no connections in Hollywood.
Instead, Coscarelli got a camera and began to make short films with the kids in his neighborhood. His father also helped him, as he had entered into the investment industry and helped put money into his son’s first two major films: Jim, the World’s Greatest and Kenny & Company. It was the first film that helped Coscarelli make his mark.
However, unlike the movies that made him a star, Jim, the World’s Greatest is not a horror film. The release is a 1976 drama film that Coscarelli and Craig Mitchell wrote and Coscarelli directed. It was the director’s father who paid for the film’s budget of $250,000. Coscarelli and Mitchell were 17 when they made the movie.
The movie was about a high school teenager named Jim who lived with his father and brother in a small apartment in the bad part of town. He is a popular student at school while working in a fast-food restaurant at night. However, when his alcoholic father is responsible for his brother’s death, it brings their relationship to a devastating end.
Universal Studios Made Coscarelli The Young Director To Have A Major Studio Release His Film
Don Coscarelli released both of his first two movies in 1976. However, he signed with Universal Studios when he was only 19 for them to release Jim, the World’s Greatest. At the time, he was the youngest director to ever have a feature-length movie released by a major studio.
The release helped Coscarelli get his foot in the door of Hollywood. However, the film also has a strong tie to the rest of his career. Reggie Bannister appears in Jim, the World’s Greatest as O.D. Silengsly. Horror fans know Bannister as Reggie in the Phantasm movie series, the protagonist’s best friend from the films.
Lead star Gregory Harrison went on to have a nice career as well, appearing on the TV shows Trapper John, M.D., Falcon Crest, and General Hospital. However, even more important was Angus Scrimm, who starred as the antagonistic father. Fans know Scrimm as The Tall Man from Phantasm.
It seems shocking, but the teenage director used this drama, and his follow-up, Kenny & Company, a comedy-drama also starring Reggie Bannister, to help him launch his horror career just three years later.
Don Coscarelli Became One Of Horror’s Most Iconic Directors
After the two early releases, one of them a film he made as a 17-year-old aspiring filmmaker, Don Coscarelli directed the movie that made him a star. In 1979, at the age of 25, he released Phantasm. The movie starred A. Michael Baldwin and Reggie Bannister as two teens who faced a terrible evil.
Angus Scrimm was The Tall Man, a funeral home mortician who developed a time travel machine, and after a trip through time and space, he returned irrevocably changed and with supernatural powers. He made everyone’s life a living hell and stands alongside Michael Myers and Leatherface as horror icons of the 70s.
Coscarelli said he came up with the idea for Phantasm from a nightmare he had as a teen when he dreamed of flying spheres chasing him down a hall to drill out his brain. He based the story’s themes on Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, and it was his first big success.
Don Coscarelli made the movie for approximately $300,000, with his dad as one of his investors again. Phantasm has made $22 million—a tremendous success. Coscarelli then directed the next three sequels in the series in 1988, 1994, and 1998. The Phantasm franchise has made him a cult horror icon and a festival favorite.
Coscarelli also produced a fifth movie in the series in 2016 based on a script he co-wrote with director David Hartman. Reggie Bannister, Angus Scrimm, and A. Michael Baldwin starred in all the movies except for the second one where James LeGros played Baldwin’s role of Mike Pearson although Baldwin returned for the next film.
On top of the Phantasm series, Don Coscarelli also directed Beastmaster in 1982,Bubba Ho-Tep in 2002, and John Dies at the End in 2012. Coscarelli was 56 when he directed John Dies at the End, and it all began when he was a teenager with a drama movie shot with his father’s financial backing.
