The Dwarves wander around the great, labyrinthine mausoleum aimlessly, the Gravers’ pick axes and shovels remain hung up and unused, and the Dimensional Fork’s tonal hum has silenced. On January 9th of 2016, the Red Planet weeps, for The Tall Man has passed on to the other side.
Born Lawrence Rory Guy on August 19th, 1926 in Kansas City, Kansas, Angus Scrimm moved to California and attended USC where he studied Drama under the tutelage of Professor William C. de Mille, brother of Cecil B. de Mille. Scrimm, then credited as Rory Guy, made his acting debut playing Abraham Lincoln, another tall man, in an educational film for Encyclopedia Britannica, but afterwords, found it difficult to sustain a paying career as an actor. As a result, he obtained a job with Capitol Records as a journalist where he wrote liner notes for various musicians’ albums and even won a Grammy for best liner notes in an album one year.
With a love for acting, it was in 1972 that the seeds of destiny were planted for Scrimm, in that a one line ad in Variety Magazine called for actors for a feature film, entitled Jim, The World’s Greatest. Those filmmakers were then teenagers, ones by the name of Craig Mitchell and Don Coscarelli. A first introduction for what would become a friendship between Horror filmmaker Coscarelli and Actor Scrimm, the forty year old tall, lean man was hired to play the part of the abusive father.
- Universal Pictures
- Warner Bros.
Starring in films here and there, including 1977’s A Piece of the Action, it was not until that same year that the seeds of destiny bore fruit when Scrimm met Coscarelli’s parents at an event and they mentioned that their son had written a script and wanted Scrimm to play an alien. Completely unaware, Scrimm thought he was going to be playing an immigrant from Europe, but thankfully, this was not the case. Then, on February 21st, 1977, with a scowl, a squint, a raised eyebrow, and gravelly voice, Angus Scrimm transformed into the menacing Tall Man for the first time, and drilled his way into Horror history as work on the film Phantasm began. The Tall Man’s signature stare was based on the look Scrimm would give when he was called to shoot scenes on Jim, the World’s Greatest, then not get used the entire day. When he was on screen with no lines in Phantasm, Scrimm was given the direction of “Look menacing, or look sinister,” by Coscarelli. Although, off screen, Scrimm was the complete opposite of his doppelgänger; he was charming, funny, and exceedingly kind and gracious to cast and crew.
- Still from Phantasm (1979)
With the original Phantasm film released in 1979, it has an encompassing four decades. It also built a fan love affair of the years, thus spawning three sequels; 1988’s Phantasm II, 1994’s Phantasm III: Lord of The Dead, and 1998’s Phantasm IV: Oblivion. As far as the role of the Tall Man seemed to evolve around Scrimm, and as he got older, the part just got better. This was evident in the opening sequence of Phantasm IV: Oblivion when The Tall Man is walking through the mausoleum, making his trademark face, and he never looked more sinister. It is also in Phantasm IV: Oblivion that Scrimm shines as Jebadiah Morningside, the gentle undertaker who became The Tall Man as a result of tinkering with dimensional travel. Mike Pearson (A. Michael Baldwin) comes upon Jebadiah sitting on the porch of the funeral home and he offers him some lemonade with a smile. This is the closest to his real self Scrimm gets to be on screen.
- AVCO Embassy Pictures
- Universal Pictures
With no offense intended towards the other actors/characters whatsoever, as they were all great, The Tall Man was the lynch pin to the Phantasm franchise, much like Pinhead to Hellraiser, Freddy Krueger to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason Voorhees to Friday the 13th, and Michael Myers to Halloween. It would be argued that no one but Scrimm could have brought the sort of menace and the overall malignant nature that he brought to The Tall Man. Though the Tall Man’s lines were minimal, they were all golden. Some “phan” favorites through the years have been “Booooyyy!”, “You play a good game, boy. But the game is finished. Now you die!”, “You think that when you die, you go to Heaven? You come to us!”, “You have lived in this flesh construct long enough. Now it is time to come back…to me!”, “It’s never over.”, “Come boy, we have things to do.”, and “Ice cream man…it’s all in his head.”
- Still from Phantasm II (1988), Paula Irvine, Angus Scrimm.
Though he is known for his work as The Tall Man of the Phantasm series, Scrimm did appear in roughly forty-five other television shows and films, the most notable being: Chopping Mall (1986), Subspecies (1991), Munchie (1992), Alias (Television series 2001-2005), Incident on and Off a Mountain Road (Masters of Horror TV series 2005), Automatons (2006), I Sell the Dead (2008), and John Dies at the End (2012). With that said, anyone who has ever worked aside Scrimm would say what a pleasant man he was to work with on and off camera.
- Concorde Pictures
- Showtime
Scrimm was a gentle, kind, exceedingly caring man who always made time for his fans, and from various sources, was a very fine cook. In earlier convention appearances, if he was feeling up to it, Scrimm would sometimes do a duel Angus/Tall Man bit, where The Tall Man would try to take over and Scrimm had to fight him off to the delight of fans. Without Boris Karloff, there is no Frankenstein or The Mummy, without Bela Lugosi, there is no Dracula, without Lon Chaney Jr, there is no Wolfman, and without Angus Scrimm, there is no Tall Man or Phantasm. It seems only fitting that he completed his work in the Phantasm universe with the (hopefully) conclusive fifth chapter, Phantasm V: Ravager, set for release sometime in 2016. He stayed on earth long enough to conclude what he had started over thirty-seven years ago, as though it really was self-fulfilling prophecy, and though he is no longer with us, Angus Scrimm will live forever on countless cinematic reissues and in the hearts and minds of “Phans” everywhere for the rest of time.
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