Reggie (Phantasm)
| Phantasm character | |
|---|---|
| Reggie | |
| In-story information | |
| Gender: | Male |
| Occupation: | Ice cream vendor |
| Development information | |
| Creator: | Don Coscarelli |
| First appearance: | Phantasm |
| Last appearance: | Phantasm: Ravager |
| Portrayed by: | Reggie Banister |
Reggie is a fictional character from the Phantasm series of horror films. In all of his appearances, Reggie has been portrayed by Reggie Bannister.
Writer/director Don Coscarelli wrote the character for Reggie Bannister and based it on their friendship. They then pushed the character into new directions, divergent from Bannister's personality. Bannister describes the character as an everyman. According to Coscarelli, everyman characters like Reggie are important, because they ground the film and allow humor to unfold. Bannister further described the character as written to be extremely loyal; Bannister says that Coscarelli "wrote this character to be every guy's guy, every man's friend, the guy that would throw himself on the flames to the door of hell to save a friend." The character was named after Bannister himself, as Coscarelli liked to draw characters from his own experiences. Instead of struggling to find a unique name, Coscarelli named him after the inspiration. Bannister had much input into the character's portrayal, and Coscarelli frequently sought his opinion. Bannister was influenced by the comedy of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin; he states that Reggie is "a humorless character" who, like the characters of Lloyd and Chaplin, does not recognize the humor of his situations. Nate Yapp describes the character as rising in prominence from a third lead to main protagonist. Bannister states that the character starts as a simple ice cream vendor and progresses into an action hero, and his rise to series protagonist turns him into the Tall Man's nemesis. While working as a musician, Bannister was drafted during the Vietnam War, and he used this experience to guide his characterization of an ice cream vendor forced to confront evil.
Marc Savlov describes the character as "a shotgun and guitar-wielding mensch with a receding hairline and a turbo-charged libido". Brad Miska of Bloody Disgusting describes Reggie as "always horny" and identifies a traditional "Reggie Girl", a beautiful woman sent by The Tall Man to tempt Reggie.
In Phantasm (1979), Reggie is a friend of Jody (Bill Thornbury), whose younger brother Mike (A. Michael Baldwin) tries to convince them that a mortician called the Tall Man is responsible for a series of local deaths. Mike, Jody, and Reggie investigate the Tall Man and discover that he is reanimating the dead to use as slaves in another dimension. In a final confrontation, Jody and Mike defeat the Tall Man, and Reggie is seemingly killed. However, Mike wakes up with a start, and Reggie tells him that he was having a nightmare. Reggie explains that he has been taking care of Mike since the death of his older brother from a car crash, and nightmares have been a common occurrence. Confused, Mike goes upstairs and is attacked by the Tall Man, who captures him.
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