By Daniel Robert Epstein

Reggie Bannister is legend in the horror film industry. From his work on all four Phantasm films to Wishmaster to his latest movie, Mangler Reborn no one rocks the ponytail like Reggie.

I got a chance to talk with Reggie about the gory second sequel to The Mangler. It gave him a chance to reflect on Phantasm, his recent work with many young filmmakers and his new movie that he will be directing next year.

Really Scary: I read that the directors of Mangler Reborn went and met you at San Diego Comicon.

Reggie Bannister: Yeah, they did. I was there promoting Cemetery Gates. We were signing posters and [directors] Erik [Gardner] and Matt [Cunningham] came up to the booth and waited to talk to me. I asked them if they wanted a poster and they said "Yeah! But we actually want you to be in our movie." I asked what the movie was and they explained it a little bit. I gave them a card, and I said, "Well contact me and I'll talk to my wife Gigi and we'll see what we can work out." That's how it happened.

RS: Is it that easy to get you to appear in someone's movie? [laughs]

Reggie: [laughs] Yeah, it's not really rocket science. What's interesting is that after all the years of promoting the stuff that I do at shows, a lot of the young people that I've met over the years have gotten into the film industry and really want me to be in their piece. So generally I get most of my film roles by responding to emails that people send me. Then if we can work out the business end of it, which my wife handles, and I like the script, then we do it.

RS: From what I read, it seems like you work quite a bit. What attracted you to Mangler Reborn?

Reggie: I really liked the character. I got to play a character by the name of Rick, who is a small time ex-con burglar. He has a son that he works with. I thought it would be fun to play this guy. I liked his dialogue. I've been able to really do a lot of stretching in the last 18 months or so. I've worked on a lot of films and played a lot of various types of characters, not just the hero or the non-descript guy. I've been able to play scientists, burglars and cops. So that's really what draws me to a part.

In fact we're getting ready to go to Michigan in December to shoot another picture called Final Curtain, which is a ten little Indians kind of story, where there's a lot of red herrings and you're not really sure who the killer or killers are.

RS: Have you seen the other Manglers or read the original short story?

Reggie: I saw the original one with Robert [Englund]. I didn't see the second one. But Mangler Reborn is really brutal. In the original this giant industrial machine eats people but in this case it's a little more myopic. It is about a guy who builds a machine from parts of an old laundry machine and he becomes obsessed with building it and then becomes possessed by it. Now he has to feed it. Mangler Reborn is a really brutal movie. Nobody gets out alive in this one.

RS: You've been in a lot of violent films over the years and you were in the Vietnam War. I saw this great documentary that included Tom Savini and he said that a lot of the special effects he created wasn't nearly as bad as what he saw in the war. Does it ever bother you when you see some of this gory stuff or even when you see the final film?

Reggie: Well being involved in the Phantasm series there wasn't a lot of gore in that. There was just all that yellow shit. Certainly in Phantasm 2 when we melted the tall man that was pretty cool. But I never did a lot of pictures that had a lot of gore. A lot of slash and gash in them. Just recently I've done several films that have a pretty high level of that slash and gash in them. But Mangler Reborn has a lot. Weston Blakesley who plays the washing machine repairman uses a rubber mallet to stun his victims. I think it's because he wants them to be alive when they go into the machine. But my wife is a special effects person and we just have fun with it. It doesn't really bother us.

RS: I was shocked to read that Mangler Reborn was shot in ten days. That's unbelievable.

Reggie: It was amazing. But there was a bit of technology involved in that and it depends on how you write your script. We mostly shot in this house in the LA area and so there wasn't a lot of moving around. Most of the action parts were played there. So if you carefully craft your script and use high definition cameras you can get away with shooting in ten days.

RS: Does the makeup and special effects have to applied in a different way because of the look of the HD cameras?

Reggie: Well, you should probably talk to my wife about that. She's very hip to that. If I recall the way she told me that the red has to be a bit bluer so that it reads better and it reads more gory. I know that the stuff used in Mangler Reborn was done by Evolution Effects. They did some nice blood work that read really well on the monitors. So they do have to adjust for HD but I'm not exactly sure of all of the little methods and stuff that they need to use to get that to look good.

RS: Of course your famous ponytail is included in Mangler Reborn.

Reggie: Yes, it's intact.

RS: Has anyone ever asked you to tuck away the ponytail or keep it under a hat?

Reggie: There have been characters that I could see without the ponytail and I'm willing to lose it if necessary. But in each one of the last ten films that I've been in they've all wanted the ponytail. [laughs] I know when I was a kid growing up, it was always hard to keep the ponytail. If I had to do any day jobs I always had to cut it. But everybody seems to think it worked in all the characters that I've played recently.

RS: You had the ponytail going all the way back to the first Phantasm.

Reggie: In the first one I did, it was fairly short. It took us so long to shoot that first movie, I had cut my hair already but if you notice in the last scene of the Phantasm where I'm with Michael in front of the fireplace, my ponytail was extremely short. I just barely could get one out of my hair and then in the second one I didn't have the ponytail. It was just fairly long hair.

I've cut it for various other parts. In Wishmaster I didn't have the ponytail. I cut my hair for The Demolitionist. But now I've got it.

RS: Do you like working on horror films?

Reggie: There have been a couple of films that I've done over the past few months that were not specifically horror films. I did one called Interstate that was very kind of Pulp Fiction-ish. I did another one called The Journeyman that was about a young woman who goes out to try and find her dad. It is her story on the road and the stories that get told to her by people who have known her father. But I don't mind doing horror. I like to work and I love what I do. So any script that I like I will do. Of course the Phantasm thing put me on a much different course cinematically speaking but I don't mind.

RS: In doing my research, I found it very funny that both you and Angus Scrimm have had huge music careers. Angus even won a Grammy.

Reggie: Most people don't know it, but Angus used to write liner notes on albums for RCA/Victor. As I recall he wrote the liner notes for Meet the Beatles when that album came here to America. He actually wrote the liner notes for my last CD which was very kind of him to do. He wrote some very nice things about my music.

RS: Have you two ever collaborated on music?

Reggie: No, we haven't. But I understand that he just did a picture back east called The Off Season which he wrote a tune and sings.

RS: Did you see Don Coscarelli's episode of Masters of Horror?

Reggie: I didn't get to see it. Gigi and I were in London when it aired on Showtime. We were in London at the London Expo to promote the UK release of the Anchor Bay box set of Phantasm. But I'm anxious to see it. I know Don was in Italy a couple of weekends ago at a film festival with Joe Dante and Mick Garris showing their episodes.

RS: I spoke to Don a few years ago about Bubba Ho-tep and I asked him where you keep your naked pictures of him because he keeps casting you in his movies.

Reggie: [laughs] Bubba was a big highlight in my life. I kind of wormed my way into that by the way. I knew he was shooting it and I'd read Joe R Lansdale's short story so I knew it was going to be great. Of course I wanted to work with Bruce [Campbell] and Ossie [Davis]. So I kept writing Don and going, "Hey what's going on with this?" Finally he wrote me back and said, "Well I'd really love to have you in the picture but it's not really a big part. I didn't want to offend you." I said, "Are you kidding me? Show me the script and let me see what's going on." He ended extending the part of the rest home administrator a bit and it was just a joy for me to be involved in that picture.

RS: Do you think there'll be a part for you in Bubba Nosferatu?

Reggie: Don's got a lot going right now. We've all been very busy. I know that he's talked about another script that he's written with Steve Romano who co-wrote Incident on and off a Mountain Road with him. Don has also co-written a new Phantasm script. I know that he'd like to do the Nosferatu thing but whether I would be involved in that I have no idea.

RS: People are talking to Don about a Phantasm remake so if that happened, would you like to be involved?

Reggie: Of course. We've been expecting to make this picture for years. Roger Avary wrote a Phantasm story several years ago. Roger Avary has an Oscar on his shelf at home and Don Coscarelli has been incredibly popular over the years. Then Bruce Campbell was going to be involved in that picture as well as myself but it never happened. As I said there's a new script now. I haven't seen it but I understand that it's pretty exciting.

RS: Is that a remake or a Phantasm V script?

Reggie: From what I could tell it is a retelling of the original story. But I don't see Phantasm taking a 90 degree turn. I can't imagine it being exactly right down to the nth degree a total remake. I think there's got to be some twists and turns that weren't in the first picture.

RS: Could you reflect on those four Phantasm films?

Reggie: The original paradigm as it was set up in the first picture was so clever and so out of the blue that you really weren't sure if what you were experiencing was reality or not. In that second picture with James Legros as Mike it became a little more action packed and it was a little bit more of a linear story. The special effects were just really terrific and over the top because we had Bob Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero and Mark Showsrum. The special effects were flying fast and furious and that's my take on the second picture. The third picture was a mix of the action and went deeper into that dream logic again so it became a mix of the previous two movies. With the fourth movie, I think Don really wanted to give the fans a little more to chew on and so in revisiting some of the older footage and stuff and then identifying the tall man as Jebediah Morningside which I thought was interesting. I thought the end of the fourth one was just very sweet, where I pick up Mike in the ice cream truck and he hears himself out in the desert saying "I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying" and I go, "What was that?" and he says that it was just the wind. In the end I think they all fit together as a fabric of the original paradigm.

RS: Do you have any desire to write and direct films?

Reggie: As a matter of fact I'm trying to get a project mounted right now. I had a script written a few years ago with some friends of mine. I gave them names of certain actors that I wanted to be a part of this project and so they wrote out those parts with those actors in mind. So it looks like we might be able to get that up and running. We'll keep our fingers crossed because we hope to get that running in the first quarter of 2006.

RS: What's it about?

Reggie: It's called Worst Fears. It starts off in the '70s and it focuses on a young boy and his brother. Then it leaps into present day and has to do with the building of a haunted attraction and as they're building the attraction some very unusual things begin happening. You can't really tie it to one certain thing that's going on because each person's experience is very individual and very personal. I like pictures like that such as Polanski's Repulsion. Angel Heart, Memento and Fight Club. I like pictures that are psychologically frustrating for the observer.