Phantasm Remastered had not yet been announced and we received an invite from the Alamo Drafthouse Richardson, just outside Dallas, to screen the original film. As the Phantasm cast and I would be attending the nearby Texas Frightmare Weekend horror convention, we decided it would be fun to all attend the screening and do something different. The event was billed as the last 35 mm screening of Phantasm along with a live commentary of the film by the cast and me. We didn’t know it then, but this would be Angus Scrimm’s last appearance with us at a horror convention.
The fans loved to meet Angus in person. Once, while we attended Mike and Mia Kerz’s highly attended horror convention Flashback Weekend in Chicago, I watched a line of fans clamoring to meet, hug, and kiss this frightening icon of death. It puzzled me as to why, and I finally just chalked it up to a strange mix of both Angus’s warm, genteel nature and the fans’ desire to confront their fears in the flesh.
With the rigors of the requisite air travel it had become difficult for the eighty-nine-year-old Angus to satisfy all the convention requests he received. On several occasions I would arrive at a convention and not learn until the last minute that Angus was unable to attend. Angus truly felt bad about disappointing his fans, but since he was blessed with a mischievous spirit, he came up with a plan. During my panel discussions at the convention Angus would gamely ring up my cell phone right in the middle of it. I would make a fuss and pull out my phone, grumbling about who would have the temerity to call and interrupt during such an important conversation with the Phantasm fans. Then with feigned surprise, “Oh, look. It’s Angus Scrimm calling. Gee, would you mind if I answered it?” The fans would always roar and I would hold my cell phone up to the microphone and Angus could broadcast a greeting directly to the assembled crowd. The fans loved this and would always demand that I keep Angus on the line. They would bombard us with questions, with me onstage and Angus answering from the comfort of his own home.
One of the last screenings that Angus attended was a very small cast and crew showing of Phantasm Ravager at a postproduction house in Santa Monica. He was not driving anymore so Dave offered to swing by and pick him up on his way in. During the drive, Angus asked who would be driving him home. Dave, half in jest, told him that if Angus liked the movie, he would be driving him home, but if he didn’t like it, then Don would drive him home. This was Dave’s first feature film and I didn’t blame him for not wanting to endure a long drive alone with an unhappy star. After the screening Angus was rather inscrutable as to his opinion of the film. Dave couldn’t contain his anxiety and curiosity and finally blurted out the question on everybody’s mind: “So Angus, what did you think of the movie?”
In his mischievous way, Angus averred, “David, you will be driving me home tonight.”
Angus was a lifelong movie lover, and had started his showbiz career in his teens as a theater usher at the Paramount Theater, a grand movie palace in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Watching Karloff and Lugosi in that theater is where he developed a love of horror films that would serve him so well in later life. He moved to Hollywood to pursue his dream of a career in movies and studied at the University of Southern California under William DeMille, who was legendary director Cecil B. DeMille’s brother. His best classmates were (director-to-be) Sam Peckinpah and (humorist-to-be) Art Buchwald. Before his acting career took off, Angus always supported himself as a writer. He wrote for TV Guide and worked as an associate editor at Cinema magazine alongside future Academy Award–winning director Curtis Hanson. (Angus had a featured role in one of Hanson’s early films, Sweet Kill.) For most of his career, Angus supported himself between acting gigs as an author of liner notes for Angel, the classical division of Capitol Records. Angus never won an Oscar for acting, but in 1975 he did win a Grammy Award for writing liner notes on an Erich Korngold album. Along with notes for legendary artists such as Miles Davis, Sinatra, and Itzhak Perlman, Angus also wrote the liner notes for the first record album I ever purchased when I was just ten years old, Meet the Beatles! As a kid I remember reading those notes on the back of that album over and over while listening to that classic first Beatles record. Yet when the executives at Capitol Records asked Angus if he wanted his name credited with his liner notes on the back cover of the Beatles album, he demurred, as he had no faith this youthful British pop band would have any longevity.
Over our forty-year friendship Angus taught me so much about the movies. He introduced me to the work of many of the great stars and filmmakers of the thirties and forties. Over the years, as a benefit of his side job at Capitol Records, he gifted me with literally hundreds of soundtracks of the great movie composers, many of which he had worked with on their records. Over the years, as I married and had children, Angus became part of our family, and this was a genuine blessing. Even my dogs loved him: he had a practice of always carrying a small bag of dog treats in his pocket, and when they would spot this tall man walking up the front path to our house our entire pack would erupt in howling joy.
As Angus progressed into his late eighties, he had been in declining health for some time. Shelley and I were concerned that he had not been getting the best health care. Angus could be a very stubborn individual and despite his protestations that his doctors were treating him well, he just seemed to be continually getting weaker. Finally Shelley set up an appointment with a reputable gerontologist for a complete health exam. I picked him up and drove him over and sat with him during the appointment. The doctor declined to make any diagnosis until the medical tests were completed. The results were not good.
Angus was suffering from a blood cancer and had been living with this condition, completely undiagnosed, for some time. We were referred to a specialist and Shelley and I took him in for a consult. The doctor then told us about some excellent new treatment options that could easily extend the survival rate to five years or more. Angus made the decision to pursue the new treatment option, and with great hope he received a delivery of the very expensive medication. The plan seemed to be going well for several months, but on a subsequent trip to the doctor’s office he collapsed and suffered a calamitous event. Angus was admitted unconscious into the intensive-care unit of the adjoining hospital. The prognosis was grim.
As we raced over to the hospital and arrived in the ICU waiting room I witnessed something truly amazing. This small room was packed full of Angus’s neighbors. These were people who knew him not as a horror icon, but as their kindly neighbor who met them in the nearby park every evening as they walked their dogs together. I heard story after story as these nice people related to me how much they valued Angus’s gentle kindness, how much they relished sitting in the park in the evenings with him listening to the humorous stories he would tell about simple things like his youth in Kansas City. In turn, they were astonished as Shelley and I explained to them how beloved Angus was by horror fans worldwide and what an impact his work had made over the decades. Many of them were completely unaware that Angus was a celebrated horror movie star.
After several excruciatingly long days of no improvement in his condition, the doctors and family decided it was time to remove Angus from life support. The doctors asked us if anyone would like to be there as it happened, and I volunteered to accompany one of the family members into the room to attend to Angus in what might be his final moments. Angus had been such a prominent fixture in my life over so many years—professionally involved in key successes from Jim The World’s Greatest to the Phantasm films, and personally as a cherished family member—that I felt a duty to see him through to the end.
It was hard not to weep as the ventilator was removed and this strong man took his final breaths. I drew some comfort in appreciating this amazing and surprising life we led, a life in which Angus and I made our stock-in-trade exploring death and dying in the horror movie world, and yet here we would be together at the end of his life. I had never witnessed the intimacy of a person actually dying in front of me and the irony that my first experience with death would be with the Tall Man from Phantasm was not lost on me. However, it was strangely fitting that I would be there as my good friend made passage. In so doing he would give me strength for that one day in the future when I make that same journey.