{"id":21883,"date":"2026-08-11T09:57:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/?p=21883"},"modified":"2026-08-11T09:57:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:57:42","slug":"reggie-bannister-dies-phantasm-actor-was-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/?p=21883","title":{"rendered":"Reggie Bannister Dies: \u2018Phantasm\u2019 Actor Was 80"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SOURCE: deadline.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reggie Bannister, actor best known for starring in the Phantasm<\/em> film series, has died. He was 80.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actor died on Sunday, August 9, in his home in Crestline, his wife, Gigi Bannister told TMZ<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1979, Bannister would star in the supernatural horror film directed and written by Don Coscarelli. The film starred A. Michael Baldwin as Mike, a teenager in a small town, as he investigates strange things going on at a local funeral home alongside his older brother Jody (Bill Thornbury) and family friend Reggie (Bannister).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film was followed by four sequels, in which Bannister would reprise his role as Reggie starting with 1988\u2019s Phantasm II<\/em>, 1993\u2019s Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead<\/em>, 1998\u2019s Phantasm IV: Oblivion<\/em>, and 2016\u2019s Phantasm: Ravager<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannister\u2019s other credits include Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation<\/em> (1990), The Demolitionist<\/em> (1995), Wishmaster<\/em> (1997), Bubba Ho-Tep<\/em> (2002), Cemetery Gates<\/em> (2004), The Mangler Rebor<\/em> (2005), Last Rites<\/em> (2006), The Rage<\/em> (2007), The Quiet Ones<\/em> (2008), Carnies<\/em> (2009), Sawblade<\/em> (2010), Not Another B Movie<\/em> (2011), The Ghastly Love of Johnny X<\/em> (2012), Bloody Bloody Biuble Camp<\/em> (2012), The Obsidian Curse<\/em> (2016), and Bonejangles<\/em> (2017).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bannister was a U.S. military veteran who served in Vietnam during the\u00a0Vietnam War<\/a>. In an interview, Bannister stated, “Getting back to the Vietnam thing. I was not for that war, I was against it, but there was this thing called\u00a0the draft<\/a>. I had friends who were going to Canada and I wasn’t going to do that, I stand up to what’s in front of me, and so just like anything else, I just thought, ‘Soldier? Really? You’re gonna be a soldier? Okay, well then you’re going to be the baddest-ass soldier that ever put on a uniform.’ So I just took that attitude, Landon, and just went for it. I was a head radio operator for an automatic weapons specialty group.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While in the service he was often around .40 and .50 caliber weapons, ultimately resulting in some hearing loss. Because of this, he is a service-connected disabled veteran, on top of which he was exposed to\u00a0Agent Orange<\/a>. Bannister took his GI bill from the military and used it to study acting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He resided in\u00a0Crestline, California<\/a>, where he lived with his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2016, he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On February 21, 2025, it was announced that Bannister’s health was deteriorating and that he was going to begin receiving hospice care at his home in Crestlin. \u00a0He died on August 9, 2026, at his Crestline cabin at the age of 80.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOURCE: deadline.com Reggie Bannister, actor best known for starring in the Phantasm film series, has died. He was 80. The actor died on Sunday, August 9, in his home in Crestline, his wife, Gigi Bannister told TMZ. In 1979, Bannister would star in the supernatural horror film directed and written by Don Coscarelli. The film starred A. Michael… Read More »Reggie Bannister Dies: \u2018Phantasm\u2019 Actor Was 80<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21885,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883\/revisions\/21885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkultramagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}