|
|
|
Denise Dumars, Angus Scrimm and Todd Mecklem.
Introduction
By Todd Mecklem
After I interviewed Reggie Bannister in June of ’92, I was able to
finagle Angus Scrimm’s phone number from Reg. Angus was kind enough to
agree to an interview, and with my then-wife Denise Dumars I visited
his house in the San Fernando Valley. Far from a frightening “Tall
Man,” we found the actor to be a kind and friendly host, inviting us
into his home and supplying us with snacks and coffee as I questioned
him about his life and how he ended up as the evil face of the PHANTASM
phenomenon.
Later I’d get to know him better, enjoying some long conversations
about the cinema and other topics, and also visiting with him on the
sets of PHANTASM 3 and 4; but that was still in the future. For now,
let’s go back 15 years, to 1992, for this never-released conversation...
THE INTERVIEW:
Mecklem: Tell us about your
early life and what you did before you were
in films. You came to Los Angeles from Kansas City. Were you born in
that area?
Scrimm: In
Kansas City, Kansas, on Minnesota Avenue. I went to both
grammar and high school there, and graduated in ’43, some 18 months
after Pearl Harbor. My family had made many trips to California, and I
was crazy about the movies, so I decided if I was going off to be shot
at in the war, I’d like to spend my last few months in Hollywood. My
sister Lucille and I came out on a train packed with military men
headed for the Pacific. I got a job ushering at the wonderful old
theater in downtown Los Angeles, the Paramount. Great war films were
playing: Billy Wilder's FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, Colbert in SO PROUDLY WE
HAIL, Alan Ladd in CHINA. I was there two months, left to jerk sodas in
the RKO studio commissary, and then began attending the University of
Southern California. In my first semester, I suffered a massive lung
hemorrhage. I’d somehow contracted tuberculosis. I spent two of the
most fulfilling years of my life recuperating. I read both Testaments,
H. G. Wells’ History, the Iliad and Odyssey, Ben Franklin’s
Autobiography, Tolstoy, Dickens, Erasmus, Voltaire, Van Loon, Rousseau,
countless others. When the TB was arrested, the war was over. I went
back to USC and majored in Drama under William C. de Mille, Cecil’s
brother.
William had been a Broadway playwright and actor. Cecil lured him to
Hollywood, and William then became a screenwriter and director and one
of the first presidents of the Motion Picture Academy. He left films
under a cloud. William was highly respected, and his wife was lionized.
She was Anna George, daughter of the American economist Henry George.
But William de Mille fell in love with his screenwriter, Clara
Beranger, and left his wife for her, and Hollywood never forgave him.
He was banished. So he got a job as head of the Drama Department at
USC. He had strong credentials of the “old school.” I knew little of
Method acting from William C. de Mille.
Mecklem: After college, what
did you do?
Scrimm: I did a couple of
films, and I went to England for six months
during Coronation Year. In 1956 I got a job at TV Guide for almost five
years, on the L.A. staff. Then I went to KTTV Channel 11 as a publicist
for a year, and then to Capitol Records for nine years, writing album
notes for the great stars they had under contract, Nat King Cole and
Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Judy Garland and Liza
Minnelli. They had great jazz stars too, and a good country-western
lineup, and folk stars...they covered the whole field. I also began bit
by bit to get back into acting.
Mecklem: How did you first
get involved with film?
Scrimm: When I left
college, a friend of mine named Russ Burton was
writing short biographical films for the Encyclopedia Britannica. He
had me out to meet the producer, and I wound up playing Abe Lincoln! I
did a film after that for the Anti-Defamation League, one of the early
films showing the harm and social consequences of racial prejudice. I
did very little else until 1970 or so when Capitol Records suffered
grave financial reverses, and I left.
I had simultaneously been working on a film magazine called Cinema with
James Silke, who later went on to write for Golan and Globus. The
magazine got into financial trouble, so James sold it to Jack Hanson,
owner of the stylish Jax shop in Beverly Hills as well as the first
rock club, the Daisy. Jack had a nephew, Curtis Hanson, who took the
magazine over. Curtis’s driving ambition was to direct. In 1970, he did
a picture for Roger Corman called SWEET KILL and offered me a role in
that, so I got back into the movie business through Curtis. Curtis has
gone on to do very important films like BEDROOM WINDOW and THE HAND
THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE.
After that, I floundered. I had no agent, I wasn’t in the Guild. I
answered misleading casting ads that turned out to be soft-core porno
or required a $400 fee to apply, offices that you'd give a swift glance
and walk right out again. Around 1972 Variety printed a one-inch
casting ad that named the Century Plaza Hotel as the meeting place. I
thought, this must be legitimate. But I was, to say the least, bemused
when the interviewers proved to be two teenage boys. I gave them my
photo-resume, and they called me down to Long Beach to audition on
videotape for them. The teenagers were Don Coscarelli and his
then-partner Craig Mitchell. I read scenes for them with a young actor
just over from Catalina Island whom they'd signed to play the lead,
Greg Harrison. And that picture was JIM, THE WORLD’S GREATEST,
ultimately.
Mecklem: You played the heavy
in that film, didn't you?
Scrimm: The role was an
alcoholic father, deserted by his wife, and
parent to Greg Harrison and a younger son whom he believes not to be
his own. One night he kills the little boy in an alcoholic rage. It was
the first modern picture to deal with child abuse--a remarkable subject
for two new teenage filmmakers to tackle. Greg was wonderful in it, the
views of high school life were fresh and witty, and the little boy was
an incredibly appealing child actor named Robbie Wolcott. Universal
picked the film up for distribution, but the death of the little boy
was a tragic downer that sank the film at the box office.
Mecklem: To step back for a
moment…you said that your family visited
California often when you were young. Was that the L.A. area?
Scrimm: Yes. My early
memories of the Los Angeles area are from when we
came west to visit my aunt. We would stay in Linwood, where we had a
little cottage that we rented at the back of a motel ground. We’d stay
there for two or three weeks in the summertime. My aunt lived in Watts,
on East 105th Street, in a very nice little house with a huge palm tree
in front, and a huge date tree in back.
Long Beach was wonderful in those days, when it had
the merry-go-rounds, and the penny arcades, and the flea circuses. The
Pike, the wonderful Pike [amusement park]. Oh, it was grand. And
fireworks every Saturday night.
Dumars: They
still had the Pike when I was a kid, I remember it. Of
course, it was very seedy by then…
Scrimm: Yes, I remember…the
last time I saw the Pike was when I did
JIM, THE WORLD’S GREATEST in Long Beach, and we did it over a long,
long period of time. There would be long hours when I wasn’t required
on camera, and I drove down to the Pike one time, just to reminisce. It
was getting seedy. This would have been about 1974.
Mecklem: One of your
pre-PHANTASM films was called SCREAM BLOODY
MURDER. What can you tell us about that one?
Scrimm: I was told that
film had a single theatrical playdate, at a
Cincinnati drive-in in a snowstorm. It is still available, however, in
Movies Unlimited’s video catalog. I’ve no idea whether anyone else in
its large cast and company went on to further film work. The story was
about a troubled boy who kills his stepfather by causing a farm tractor
to run over him. By accident, his own hand also is chopped off. He then
becomes a psychotic serial killer who murders without provocation. His
victims include a wealthy old woman and her nurse. He takes over their
house, kidnaps a young woman he’s become attracted to and keeps her
there as his prisoner. I play the elderly lady's doctor. One day I
bluff my way into the house, find the corpses in an upstairs closet,
and am bashed in the head and shoved in with them. Brief role, but one
of the few in which I've appeared pretty much as myself, or as I was in
those days.
Mecklem: Your next film for
Coscarelli was PHANTASM...
Scrimm: I went alone to a
screening at the old Writers Guild theater on
Doheny one night, and Don’s father and mother Don Sr. and Kate were
there. They tapped me on the shoulder and we embraced, and they said,
did you know that Don has written a new script and there’s a part in it
for you? You're going to play an alien. I thought, how intriguing, a
film about a European immigrant coming to America, that’s going to be a
real challenge, great! Then I read the script. A different kind of
alien!
We shot PHANTASM over a long, long period, in various locations around
Southern and Northern California. Weeks would go by when they didn’t
use me, and then I would be called down for a night in a cemetery, or a
night in Chatsworth Park where they had set up tombstones.
Early on I formed the opinion that the Tall Man represented Death in
young Mike's mind. I had as a kind of reference to playing the role
that the Tall Man was actually the Grim Reaper.
Mecklem: Reggie Bannister
mentioned that there were a number of scenes
cut from PHANTASM. Can you tell me a little more about that?
Scrimm: Don had originally
conceived PHANTASM with Mike Baldwin and
Bill Thornbury as brothers, and two or three young girls as their
leading ladies. The horror elements came in about a third of the way
into the film. Don previewed a rough cut at Twentieth Century Fox, and
it became obvious that night that all the prologue had to go, that the
essence of the film was its horror story. In the revision, the girls
show up in the antique shop, and in the car where the dwarves attack
them but, sadly for them, most of their footage was eliminated.
There was also a hanging scene in which Mike tricks the Tall Man into
running into a noose and yanks him up into a tree as a prisoner, Indian
style. Don and his co-Producer Paul Pepperman phoned me the day after
the Fox screening and said, we’ve come up with a list of things that
have to be cut, and you're really going to hate this. I said, number
one on my own list is that the hanging scene has to go. They said, we
didn't know how to tell you! 1 said, well, obviously, I lose my Academy
Award but we’ll have a better chance at Best Picture. It was an eerily
wonderful sequence, but it stopped the picture cold.
Mecklem: When the time came
to do PHANTASM II, were you excited about
it?
Scrimm: Very much. I was
temporarily back on the staff at Angel
Records, holding down the job of Editorial Director for their Janice
May who was out on sick leave. Don told me he had the money to do
PHANTASM II, had a script in the works, and would I please start
letting my hair grow, and start losing weight. The Tall Man is
skeletal, and I think I was some thirty pounds over his PHANTASM
weight. So I obliged on both counts. The real downer of doing a
PHANTASM III would be that I dread growing that infernal long hair. I’m
saying this to a man who has longer hair than the Tall Man ever had!
Mecklem: Yes, but I've worn
it long since I was a little kid, so I'm
used to it! In PHANTASM II you have that really amazing death scene
near the end. Was that a very unpleasant effect to do?
Scrimm: It was strenuous,
but great fun. It involved getting up at
three in the morning to be in the makeup chair at 4:30, with Mark
Shostrom and the KNB fellows...Mark would be there first, and put on
the appliances, and do some of the makeup, and sometimes he’d need
assistance from Bob Kurtzman or Greg Nicotero, and then, just before we
went on camera, Bob would do the sliming.
Mecklem: You
had tubes coming up the sides of your face…
Scrimm: Exactly. To spout
yellow blood.
Dumars: I
understand that the MPAA didn’t get very upset when the Tall
Man was bleeding his yellow blood all over the place, but when people
were bleeding red blood the they suddenly got censorious.
Scrimm: Yes, that’s true.
As you probably know, they had originally
given PHANTASM an X rating because of the scene where the caretaker is
struck by the silver ball. And Charles Champlin [an influential movie
critic] had a heart-to-heart talk with the head of the thing, and said,
you know, this is really funny, the audiences laugh at the end of this
[scene]. So they left it in, and they evidently got criticism from some
of the parent groups, so they were all prepared with their scissors
when PHANTASM II came out, and they were vindictive about it. Obviously
many much more gruesome and cinematically vivid things had been allowed
to go through. But they were determined to get their own way, and they
demanded cuts, and Universal didn’t put up a fight. I don’t know why
they didn’t.
Mecklem: What was the
premiere of PHANTASM II like?
Scrimm: Universal staged it
at the big Pacific theater on Hollywood
Boulevard. They held a hearse-stuffing contest to see how many PHANTASM
II fans could cram themselves into a single hearse. Don Coscarelli and
Samantha Phillips were there, I showed up in the Tall Man makeup and
wardrobe. There was TV and radio coverage...it was a hilarious
premiere, of sorts.
Mecklem: Could you tell us
the "Twinkie" story?
Scrimm: While PHANTASM II
was still in the theaters, I went one
midnight into the Pavilion market on Ventura Boulevard. I’d asked my
sister Lucille if there was anything I could bring her. She said,
“Twinkies.” I looked throughout the store for Twinkies and could find
no Twinkies. A young clerk was stocking the shelves, so I asked “Are
there Twinkies anywhere?” He said, "Aisle seven." I thanked him and
started off, and he called out, "Sir! Aren't you the guy in PHANTASM?"
I said, “You have a keen eye.” He said, “Would you say ‘Boy’ for me?" I
looked nervously up and down the aisle and, seeing no other customers
about, who might assume an insane man was loose in the store, I said,
“B-o-o-o-o-y!” The young clerk said, “You are him! Wait till I tell my
friends the Tall Man was in here asking for Twinkies!"
Mecklem: We had seen that
story on the DEAD BEAT video, and not knowing
what we could bring you...(brings out a package of Twinkies)
Scrimm: Ah, nice!
Interviews always make me hungry!
Dumars: How
did you feel about the parody aspects of TRANSYLVANIA
TWIST? Doing a send-up of PHANTASM...
Scrimm: I thought Don
Coscarelli might not want me to do the scene. He
was delighted, so I did it with relish. TRANSYLVANIA TWIST is one of my
favorite films, not just of my own work but of the genre. I wish Jim
Wynorski would do a sequel. There’s that great Wynorski humor in every
one of his films, but TWIST is non-stop gags and many of them are
terrific, off-the-wall comedy.
Mecklem: What was your part
in LOST EMPIRE?
Scrimm: The diabolical Dr.
Sin Do. LOST EMPIRE is about three gorgeous
girls, “Charlie’s Angels” types, who fly to a remote island stronghold
where a sinister Chinese warlord is plotting to conquer the world. Sin
Do has a tough sidekick played by the late, formidable Bob Tessier.
Melanie Vincz, Angela Aames, Raven de la Croix and Linda Shayne were
the four very beautiful leading ladies (Linda was already a prisoner on
the island). The leading man was Paul Coufos, who has done a number of
action films since. But my personal co-star was a ten-foot Burmese
python Wynorski had me wear around my neck throughout the shoot. Nice
disposition as long as it was kept well fed with live rats.
Mecklem: In SUBSPECIES you
were only in the earliest scenes in the
film, but they flew you to Europe...
Scrimm: To Romania to play
King Vlad. I’d have hired a wonderful old
Romanian actor for the part, but Charles Band might have felt my name
in the cast might mean something to the genre.
They proposed to fly me over and put me to work the day I arrived. I
pleaded for two or three extra days to confer with the director, have
makeup and wardrobe tests and do something about a lank, scraggly wig
for this 400-year-old vampire. So Full Moon sent me two or three days
early. But after I boarded the flight at LAX, Lufthansa had a brake
problem. Takeoff was delayed three or four hours. I was late arriving
in Frankfurt, missed the Tarom flight to Romania and had to stay in
Germany overnight. The next day, Bucharest was fogged in, so I sat at
Frankfurt airport all day. Finally Tarom put me on a plane to
Timisoara, which is a great distance from Bucharest. We were hours
going through customs, hours in the airport waiting room. Finally they
bused us into town and put us up in a hotel which had a single working
telephone in the whole building. I traded my place in line to a
handsome Romanian lady who was desperate to make a call. She repaid me
by getting SUBSPECIES' Romanian producer Ion Ionescu on the line. He
reassured me that he could push back the shooting schedule if
necessary.
Next day we were driven back to the airport where we waited endlessly,
but Bucharest remained intractably fogged in. Finally that night we
were bused to the Timisoara depot to make the ten-hour overnight train
journey to Bucharest. I said, well, at least were finally going to
reach our destination. One of my new Romanian friends said, yes, but
have you ever been on a Romanian train? They have no light, no heat,
and most of them have no seats. Fortunately we got compartments with
benches. I sat on one side of the compartment, jammed onto a bench
against three other passengers, and there were four more passengers
sitting rigidly upright opposite us. And there were unlucky people who
didn't get a compartment, who stood in the corridor all night long.
We finally arrived at Bucharest the next morning at seven. The studio
had sent a car. I got to my hotel room about nine, and met the director
Ted Nicolau. We had a twenty-minute conference, and I was told I
wouldn't be needed until noon. I had two hours sleep. I was then driven
to the studio, where the crew had just learned that American workers
are paid overtime. They'd been working all kinds of overtime without
time-and-a-half, so they were on strike. We didn't get in front of the
cameras until the workers were all pacified. I think we went to work
about eight o'clock that night and worked until dawn doing the scene
that was later cut from the picture. I was driven back to the hotel,
slept, returned to the studio at five and worked all night long again.
On that second night, the intense, gifted Danish actor Anders Hove
worked with me in the scene in which he polishes me off. I was driven
back to the hotel at six, my plane back to Frankfurt was leaving at
nine, so I just stayed up.
Mecklem: So you didn’t get to
sightsee at all?
Scrimm: No sightseeing,
except for the fascinating drive to the
wonderful, decaying old studio outside Bucharest.
Dumars: What
was the scene that was cut?
Scrimm: The old king
survives Anders’ knife attack. His other son,
played by the deft Michael Watson, finds him dying, and carries him to
a couch. Vlad tells this good son that the evil son has returned, and
poses a terrible threat to the populace, and must be done away with. It
was a juicy death scene that ended with the old man expiring--for good
this time--with Michael crying real tears which, after years on the
General Hospital soap opera, he does very well. I'd love to see it
someday.
Mecklem: Tell me about
MINDWARP. That was shot a couple of years ago,
but wasn't released until recently.
Scrimm: It was shot in the
Spring of 1990. Fangoria magazine contracted
to produce three films. Christopher Webster, who produced the
HELLRAISER pictures, went into partnership with Steve Jacobs and Norman
Jacobs, the publisher of Fangoria and Starlog, to do them at
Christopher's studios in Wisconsin in the woods around Eagle River.
Fangoria’s editor Tony Timpone was consultant, and their first film was
MINDWARP. They signed Bruce Campbell of the EVIL DEAD pictures for the
hero and they cast me as the villain. Marta Alicia, Elizabeth Kent and
Wendy Sandow were the leading ladies. We all went to Eagle River, where
Kim Hix had constructed a huge interior set of an underground
community, the Crawlers, presided over by an evil "Seer." Steve Barnett
directed.
It's a very valid film about a world which has suffered the
consequences of rain forest devastation, destruction of the ozone
layer, greedy atomic waste disposal, poisoned rivers and seas--an
uninhabitable world with dregs of deformed humanity still struggling to
survive. Except for a privileged few sealed off in a safe, remote,
ideal community, from which one reckless girl decides she wants to
escape to see what life is like outside. It’s gory, violent, literate,
witty, articulate.
Mecklem: When did you take
the name “Angus Scrimm”?
Scrimm: At USC, William de
Mille had a rule that none of his students
could work off-campus. Unfortunately, in those days, there weren't many
productions on campus! The SC drama department didn't have a theater at
that time, as it has now. I had an offer to work with Frances Locker
and Frances Douglass Cooper, two women who had long operated a
neighborhood theater, the Callboard, at Melrose and La Cienega. Robert
Mitchum had done some of his first acting there. Proudly displayed on
the auditorium wall was a glossy photo, which I’ve never seen since, of
Mitchum as a husky young hopeful actor. So I acted a role for them and,
knowing there'd be reviews in the L.A. TIMES and HERALD, I thought, I
can't use my own name, Rory Guy. How I came up with “Angus Scrimm” I
don't remember. I think I wanted something humorous. Later I did other
plays with them and billed myself “Zeke Slade.” When we did PHANTASM,
Rory Guy seemed an unlikely name for a horror actor, and in any case I
didn't want the Guy name to become a Karloff or Lugosi-type synonym for
something monstrous. Scrimm--which I could find in none of the phone
books of major U.S. cities at the public library--seemed an appropriate
choice.
Mecklem: I’ve heard that when
your real name was published in Fangoria,
you received some prank phone calls.
Scrimm: I did! Around 2
o’clock in the morning people would call up and
do weird things on the telephone. I was listed in the L.A. central
directory—there wasn’t any reason not to be, at that time. But I’m
unlisted in the phone book now.
Dumars:
There's a scene in PHANTASM that I think is incredibly
imaginative, where Mike goes to a fortune teller. This old woman is so
still, it's almost like she's dead, and the granddaughter is sort of
interpreting, and the box...that whole scene is so creepy and
interesting.
Scrimm: There's a story
about that that haunts me. All the way back to
JIM, THE WORLD'S GREATEST, I'd been telling Don that there was a
terrific actress named Bettina Viney who worked at the Callboard. The
audiences there adored her. Bettina was an Englishwoman who had been
over here for years, tall, rail-thin, with dark red hair. She could
play a villainess who could chill your bones, or the sweetest, most
understanding, heartwarming nun. She had a great range. And Bettina
belied the story that if you work in Hollywood long enough, Hollywood
will find you and put you in the movies. This was a brilliant actress
who worked all the time, but only at the Callboard. She even knew
people in the industry, but she never got before the cameras. I said, I
want this lady to be on film. I don't want this whole career to be
limited to one theater.
When Don did PHANTASM, he said, all right, we'll give your English
actress the part of the fortune teller. It was perfect for her. I told
Bettina, and she was rather pleased, but Don could never give her a
starting date. Finally, I think, it was decided to film that scene with
one day’s notice to Bettina. Bettina said, I can't work that day,
that's my nephew’s birthday, and I'm going down to Huntington Beach to
the family party. Don and Paul told her, we've got to film it tomorrow.
And Bettina said, I can’t, I won’t. She phoned me and said, I hope I
haven’t got you into trouble with your friends, and I said, no, but
Bettina, won’t you reconsider, Don’s first film got national
distribution, this may do as well or better, and I do so want you in
the part. She said, I couldn’t think of missing my nephew’s birthday.
Mary Ellen Shaw had already filmed scenes as Mike’s grandmother. In
desperation, Don gave Mary Ellen a different makeup, hair style and
wardrobe, and had her play the fortuneteller.
Mecklem: Her other scenes got
cut, though...
Scrimm: It was obviously
the same actress, so grandmother was
eliminated in the final cut, and Mary Ellen as the fortuneteller became
one of the unforgettable images in the film. I’ve wondered since if
Bettina’s nephew might not have preferred to have his aunt’s artistry
preserved in a classic film. Still, there’s something refreshing about
a woman who unhesitatingly put family values above a shot at being in
the movies.
Mecklem: What live theater
have you done?
Scrimm: I did some
childhood work in Kansas City. It’s mostly been West
Coast. I worked with three highly regarded groups, the Circle Theater,
the Player’s Ring, and the Stage Society in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1967
I traveled with John Blankenchip and Bill White’s USC company to
Scotland to do WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? and THE CRETAN WOMAN at
the Edinburgh Festival. It’s been spotty since then. I should pursue
live theater more--I love it--but I usually do it only when somebody
asks me to.
Dumars: What
is Reggie Bannister like?
Scrimm: Reg should be in a
weekly situation comedy. He would be beloved
by all America. He's so natural, so relaxed and unpretentious, so easy.
Something about Reg draws people to him.
Mecklem: Reg said you've
always wanted to do a parlor comedy.
Scrimm: I grew up admiring
William Powell, Cary Grant, and Ronald
Colman. I imagined I’d play sophisticated comedy. I’ve had just one
crack at it: a one-line bit in a television Movie of the Week called
"Secrets of Three Hungry Wives." (laughs) It was a mystery, actually.
There was a penthouse, a lavish party scene, and I played a party
guest, in a tux. I had a rather funny line…and for some reason, they
cut off the first half of it, and started the scene just as I was
speaking, midway through my line. That was the only chance I’ve ever
had to wear a tux in a motion picture.
Mecklem: You’ve appeared on
at least one soap opera…
Scrimm: “Santa Barbara.” I
played a funeral director. (laughs) Of all
things. You’d never imagine that! They must not have had any more
funerals on that series, because I’ve never been called back.
Mecklem: Do you enjoy
appearing at conventions?
Scrimm: Yes. They stroke
the ego enormously. I meet the fans of science
fiction and horror movies who seem to expect me to be very much like
the Tall Man, and seem surprised when I’m not. Probably disappointed,
too. I should go to a convention some time and be thoroughly sinister
throughout the weekend, scowling and growling and threatening. And see
what would happen!
|
|
|
