RIP Reggie Bannister
How an Ice Cream Man Became a Working-Class Hero to Horror Fans
NOTE: I don’t normally post twice a week, but this felt important and immediate.
Longtime readers know how much Phantasm means to me. I love its dreamlike atmosphere, the iconic score, and the mythology. Most of all, though, I love the characters’ natural rapport with each other. They feel like real-life friends (which they are behind-the-scenes) and it comes across so well that, even when the horror’s happening, the audience feels like they’re part of movie’s core group. Their peril is our peril, their friendship is our friendship, their triumphs and losses our ours.
This is due in no small part to the character of Reggie, the ice cream man who becomes a hero standing between us and the menacing Tall Man.
Reggie is an everyman thrust into the uncanny.
Before learning that something very strange is happening at Morningside Cemetery, he sells ice cream from his truck, plays guitar with his pal Jody, and tries to score with the ladies (with varying results).
After he and his friends learn about the Tall Man’s antics, he admirably joins the fight against turning the dead into dwarf slaves (trust me, just go with it).
Reggie Bannister, the actor who portrays Reggie, sells it all admirably. Sure, some of his expressions are over the top, but it works. He feels real, every step of the way. The same can be said about Mike and Jody in the first movie. While things get more fantastical in the sequels, Reggie keeps things grounded. Sure, he wields a four-barrel shotgun in his battle against evil, but he also consistently shows up for his friends and often lands in trouble for thinking with his dick.
In 2016, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and dementia. This disease is personal for me because of reasons I’ve already covered. I learned about his health troubles a year or so ago, when it was announced that he’d been moved to hospice care and didn’t have much time left. His wife Gigi requested fans send postcards to let Reggie know what his work meant to them. I didn’t even know they still made postcards, but after finding one at the local postal shop, I wrote a message to Reggie and mailed it because his work resonated that deeply with me.
I never got to meet Reggie, but my peers who have all had nice things to say.
He was 80, and it wasn’t sudden, but that doesn’t make it any less of a loss for the people close to him. For his fans, it’s hard not to see a parallel between the last part of his life and the fifth entry of the Phantasm franchise. I don’t know how much the production knew about Reggie’s affliction, but even though it is a messy movie that tries to be bigger than its budget, it does feel like an apt sendoff for Reggie—for all the characters, but especially him. Today, learning that the real-life Reggie is now gone, it hits differently than it did at first.
On Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed, I write about how horror helps us heal, understand, and feel seen. Phantasm did all of this and more for teenage me, and a big part of that was because of Reggie Bannister.
Rest in Peace to one of my favorites.
