As my editor, Rob Wright, and I attended the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors several weekends ago, an interesting debate came up. In the classic horror film Phantasm, the main villain, known only as The Tall Man, uses his evil powers to shrink people down to size so they can serve as slaves in another dimension. They wear dark brown cloaks, very similar to the jawas in Star Wars. Its odd to think that both movies that were worlds apart had this strange dwarf synergy to them, and with the 30th anniversary of Star Wars coming up, the question was raised: Who came up with the hooded creatures first?
As Phantasm writer / director Don Coscarelli recalled, “The idea was trying to come up with something weird the tall man would do. This idea came to me, ‘Well, what if he took a human and shrunk it down?’ We couldn’t really afford to do that kind of a make-up effect on our budget, so we got the cloaks, and there were these kids next door to this house we were filming. We recruited them to come over and play the dwarf creatures, and these kids were made like rubber. They would jump off boxes and fight (Phantasm star) Reggie Bannister, and they had a good ol’ time.”
When asked if the Phantasm team invented the dwarves before anyone saw the jawas in Star Wars, Coscarelli joked, “Yeah, we did. George Lucas stole it from us! No, truthfully what happened was we were filming the movie, and we shot for about three months. Then somebody came in and said, ‘Oh, we saw a trailer for a movie called Star Wars and your little guys are in it!’ So we went and saw the trailer, and thought about changing the color of their robes, but it was just too much of a hassle on a small budget movie. So we just decided, ‘Ah, that movie will come and go, and we’ll just go ahead with this.’”
Phantasm was made with independent money, with the film often being shot on weekends, and was released by Avco Embassy in March 1979. By the time it was released, it’s hard to recall if anyone ever noticed that both movies had similar little guys running around in hoods, but it should be clear to anyone watching both films that it was an accident of some weird dwarf zeitgeist, and nothing more.
Comments (3)
for the love of all that is good and holy
your worried about an awfull B movie like phantasm copying another awfull B movie starwars
look and Dune and star wars
Frank Herbert and Lynch found more then 50 counts
of that fat ass Lucas being an opportunist and a copy cat
but its not his fault really
this type of retardation efects most north american audiences
please look it up
Posted by mark | June 5, 2007 2:29 PM
Posted on June 5, 2007 14:29
for one star wars was not a B movie just ask the box office, i mean even if you didn't like the movie, just the amount of cinamatacal breakthroughs the movies made by themselves puts them up in the best movies of all time, also just because the phantasm people say Lucas stole their idea doesn't mean it's true i would like to remind you that Star Wars came out before Phantasm so it is much more likely that they stole it from Star Wars, it is also possible that the resemblence is just a coinsidence you know it is possible for two people to have the same idea. so think about what your saying before you just let it spew from your mouth like vomit.
Posted by Soul_Sabotage | October 17, 2007 5:24 PM
Posted on October 17, 2007 17:24
oh and another thing, take a look at every movie ever made and you will find bits a pieces borrowed from books, religions, other movies, and history so yeah no shit there are parts that resemble other movies.
Posted by Soul_Sabotage | October 17, 2007 5:26 PM
Posted on October 17, 2007 17:26