According to Don Coscarelli, the idea was to create a horror filmabout a boy inside a funeral home because he thought the way Americans handled dead bodies was mysterious. Angus Scrimm was chosen to portray the main villain because when Coscarelli and Scrimm worked together in a previous film, Scrimm was able to frighten a kid by just staring at him while raising his one eyebrow. Coscarelli also got the idea to feature flying spheres as Tall Man's minions. According to him, the idea came from his dream at his teen where he was being chased down corridors by a flying chrome ball. Later, when he wrote the Phantasm screenplay, he modified the spheres so they were able to drill and drain the blood from its victims.
Originally, the Tall Man was a mild-mannered 19th century mortician by the name of Jebediah Morningside. After years of performing funerals and burying the bodies of those who had died, he began to develop a fascination with any possible connection between our world and the world of the dead. Jebediah's research eventually led him to construct a machine that enabled him to travel through time and space. After going through the portal for the first time, travelling to a destination unknown, he promptly returned, irrevocably changed and henceforth known as the Tall Man.
Characterization
The Tall Man appears as a tall and older white-haired man usually posing as a mortician. Subsequent to his transformation from Jebediah Morningside, he has only ever been seen to wear a tailored black suit, befitting his assumed profession. He seems to speak only rarely, preferring instead to rely on facial expressions, particularly the raising of one eyebrow, the latter of which in particular has become an icon of the character.
Powers and weapons
The Tall Man has superhuman strength, and has been seen lifting a man or even an entire coffin with only one arm and little effort. He has also been seen to possess telekinetic abilities, able to control both inanimate objects and people with only the use of his mind. Despite his mundane outward appearance, any parts of the Tall Man's body that are severed or otherwise amputated from the whole have been known to subsequently transform into hostile insect-like creatures, or to bleed a yellow colored substance He also has the ability to shapeshift into other people including women in order to trick potential victims. The Tall Man routinely surrounds himself with various accomplices, ranging from apparently willing human aides to resurrected corpses and other demonic creatures. His main source of assistance comes in the form of corpses that he exhumes from the graveyards under his control; after digging up the cadavers, he crushes the body to the size of a dwarf, removes the brain and reanimates the body. Despite their diminutive stature, these dwarves constitute the majority of the Tall Man's forces, alongside foes wearing gas masks. The Tall Man also utilizes flying metallic spheres that conceal within them many offensive weapons, including blades, drills, lasers and circular saws. The spheres, which have come to be considered the Tall Man's signature weapons, contain the shrunken brains removed from the Lurkers. Later, Tall Man also utilizes some kind of alien virus. When a human is infected, the victim's head will explode and the virus will spread. Though he has thus far been impossible to permanently kill, the Tall Man can be hurt. It has been shown on more than one occasion that he has an extreme aversion to cold; Mike Pearson, another main character in the Phantasm films, says that this might possibly be because the realm he comes from is very warm. He has also displayed a vulnerability to certain pitches of sound, which can temporarily immobilize him. On those occasions when his body has sustained mortal injury, an identical new Tall Man has immediately emerged from his portal, ready to continue on unfazed from where his predecessor left off.
Other media
The Tall Man appears in .
An action figure of The Tall Man was created by REEL TOYS NECA in their Cult Classics Series 2 set.
The Tall Man appears, alongside his minions, in the October 19, 2017, strip of Erma, titled 13 Days of ERMA-WEEN 2017: Day 2, themed around his appearance in Phantasm. In the strip, The Tall Man overlooks Erma Williams, the series' titular character, as she sleeps.
Influence
The character Captain Phasma from Star Wars series was named so because according to J.J. Abrams, the metallic appearance of Captain Phasma reminded him about Tall Man's metallic spheres.
