- Vidal Petersen, Something Wicked This Way Comes, 1982. Auteur Don Coscarelli and one of his regular actors, Reggie Banister, had this idea of filming the Ray Bradbury horror – with the two kids played by the leads of Don’s 1976 movie, Kenny & Company: A Michael Baldwin (as opposed to The Michael Baldwin?) and Dan McCann. Coscarelli started scripting and further casting when the bad news dropped – Bradbury had scripted his own version for Disney. And a talky old bore it was, to be sure. Probably why Don’s villain was mute when his scenario churned into the start of his Phantasm franchise, starting five years before Wicked that way went… and starring Baldwin and Bannister. McCann never made a second movie.
- James Le Gros, Phantasm II, 1987. “Phans” were annoyed when their hero, A Michael Baldwin was replaced by, well, anybody… Proving as crass as his eventual franchise, the Tripoli-born auteur Don Coscarelli actually bypassed Brad Pitt for Le Gros. Gros error! Baldwin returned for III, 1993, and IV, 1997 (video fodder, both) and wound up teaching in his own school in Austin, Texas. Like US President Harry Truman’s S, Baldwin’s A stood for nothing.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 2