The Strange Connections Between STAR WARS & PHANTASM
Don’t get cocky BOYYYYY
Happy May the 4th! The original PHANTASM and STAR WARS were both released in the late 70s and box office juggernauts that spanned many sequels. However, the 2 franchises seem to keep bumping into each other over the years. What are the connections? Keep reading to find out.
THE EVIL JAWAS
PHANS have always speculated why both movies feature brown hooded characters. PHANTASM creator Don Coscarelli explained what happened.
“We'd shot like 60 percent of the movie, and I get a phone call from somebody, and they go, 'We just saw a trailer for this new movie Star Wars and your characters, the little brown dwarf guys, are in it,'” Coscarelli remembered when I spoke with him on Friday. “And I was like, 'What do you mean?' And so I went and saw the trailer, and we actually sat around for a couple of days totally depressed and being like, 'Do we have to put them in red hoods, or grey hoods, and re-shoot everything?' Finally we just decided, 'Okay well, it's another movie. A few years later, nobody will remember it.'”
The PHANTASM crew has embraced the strange similarity and the moniker “Evil Jawas” has stuck.
The speculation remains. Who would win in a brown hooded duel between these 2 alien forces? Is this a spinoff nobody asked for but might actually be pretty awesome? Make it happen Hollywood!
BAD ROBOT ASSISTING WITH PHANTASM: REMASTERED
As UpRoxx/Hitfix wrote in 2016:
Bad Robot employees, discovered that the director only had what Coscarelli himself described as a “junky old print” of the film in his possession. That led Abrams to offer Coscarelli the resources he needed to give the original negatives a high-def 4K restoration, which allowed him, among other things, to edit out all the pesky fishing lines that could be seen in the original 35mm print. “Every damn piece of fishing line has been erased,” Coscarelli enthused with a broad smile. “Cause you know, that's the only way we could fly those balls.”
So ensued a second round of post-production work on Coscarelli's nearly four-decade-old film; over the next year, the director would frequent Bad Robot's offices, working on the remastered version that's due for release on cable and digital platforms this Friday (it's also screening in limited theaters). “It would just be like, a Tuesday night I'd get a phone call: 'Can you come over at 8:00? We've got like 4 hours. You can work with this guy.' And I would come over,” said Coscarelli, who continued: “Best part really though I think is the audio restoration. There is a real Phantasm fan who works over at Bad Robot. His name is Robby Stambler and Robby and his partner Lindsey Alvarez, they made it sound so great.”
We absolutely love that PHANTASM and Star Wars: The Force Awakens were being worked on in the same studio.
“I'd be sitting in there and they'd go, 'Don, you're going to have to leave the room now, because we're going to have to run some Star Wars stuff.' And I'd go, “okay, cool.” And I'm walking out thinking, 'Oh, so we've got Phantasm on the screen and then 10 seconds later, Star Wars is going to be on this screen. There's just something weird about both movies are being worked on at the same time.”
CAPTAIN PHASMA
In 2015 and 2016 many PHANTASM and STAR WARS fans noticed the similarities between the name of our beloved horror movie and a new character appearing in the brand new STAR WARS film.
Per Entertainment Weekly, Star Wars: The Force Awakens character “Captain Phasma” is named in honor of the Chrome Sphere from PHANTASM. Unlike most fan theories this one turned out to be true!
During preproduction, Abrams was reminded of Phantasm, a 1979 horror film that featured a gaunt, terrifying figure known as The Tall Man and a flying, silver sphere that bores into its victims’ bodies like a bullet crossed with a drill-tip.
“Phasma I named because of the amazing chrome design that came from Michael Kaplan’s wardrobe team. It reminded me of the ball in Phantasm, and I just thought, Phasma sounds really cool,” Abrams says, but as he was telling this story, I remembered the last time I’d seen The Tall Man actor, Angus Scrimm.
