Mike Pearson

{{Character Info Box

**Mike Pearson** is the main protagonist of the *Phantasm* series and the brother of Jody Pearson. After the deaths of his parents, Mike tries to convince him and their local ice cream man Reggie that a local mortician nicknamed The Tall Man is responsible for their deaths. Coscarelli attributes the enduring popularity of the original film to young audiences who responded to Mike's adventures. The film was partially written for A. Michael Baldwin, as Coscarelli had worked with him before.

In *Phantasm II*, Universal mandate required the role to be recast with James Le Gros.

## *Phantasm*

Mike is a precocious 13-year old who lives with his adult brother Jody after their parents passed away in an accident. Mike is very attached to him as a result, and lives in fear of Jody leaving. After noticing the Tall Man lift a coffin on his own, he investigates the Morningside mortuary and discovers the Tall Man is an alien. He escapes with one of the Tall Man's fingers, which proves his story to Jody. After the finger turns into an aggressive insect, Reggie is convinced as well and they eventually return to the mortuary to gather more evidence. There, they discover the Tall Man's Dimensional Fork, which he uses to send the shrunken down undead to his own Red Planet to use as slaves.

At the end of the film, it's revealed that Mike had dreamed it all up, and that Jody himself was also actually dead. Reggie consoles Mike and promises to look after him. As Mike goes up to his room to pack for a road trip, he finds the Tall Man waiting.

## *Phantasm II*

Reggie rescues the unconscious Mike from the Tall Man and carries him out of his house shortly before it explodes.

7 years later, Mike is in an institution and fakes recovery in order to hunt down the Tall Man and track down a girl he's been seeing in her dreams called Liz. After the Tall Man murders Reggie's family, he and Mike join forces and track the Tall Man to Perigord, Oregon alongside a friendly hitchhiker called Alchemy, who lives there.

They rescue Liz from the clutches of the Tall Man and inject the villain with acid to melt him down, seemingly killing him for good. After escaping in a hearse, Alchemy is revealed to have become an agent of the Tall Man and attacks Reggie, leaving Liz and Mike trapped in the back where they try to calm each other by saying it's only a dream. However, the Tall Man reveals himself, and proclaims that it is not.

## *Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead*

Reggie recovers and follows the hearse, only for it to explode. On the crash site, Liz is eaten away by the Tall Man's dwarves and Mike is unconscious and about to be taken by him. Reggie protects himself and Mike by threatening to detonate them with a grenade. However, as the Tall Man wants Mike alive, he leaves them alone... for now.

Mike is in a coma for two years, and encounters his brother Jody in a dream, as well as the Tall Man himself. Upon awakening, he is attached by a zombified nurse, whom Reggie fights off. The two return home to resupply, only to find Jody there, now trapped in one of the Tall Man's spheres.

The Tall Man himself arrives and kidnaps Mike, taking him into his domain to convert him. With help from Jody, Reggie later arrives to save him with his new friends Rocky and Tim, and Mike suggests they hide out in the mausoleum in Bolton, suggesting it's the last place he'd look.

There, it's revealed that Mike himself has yellow blood now, and one of the spheres is implanted into his head. In terror, he flees the mausoleum.

## *Phantasm IV: Oblivion*

Mike takes one of the Tall Man's hearses, but he soon appears, taking control of the vehicle, which drives Mike to Death Valley.

There, Mike discovers he has Tall Man-like powers, such as telekinesis and the ability to conjure dimensional forks. He attempts to take his own life, but it's revealed that back in 1979, Mike and Jody attempted to hang the Tall Man, only for Mike to eventually release him.

Mirroring those events, the Tall Man releases Mike, suggesting that his life is the Tall Man's domain. Mike flees into the past, and discovers the Tall Man was once a kindly undertaker named Jebediah Morningside, who invented the dimensional fork as part of his research into life and death. Mike's appearance piques the interest of Morningside, and inspires him to travel through the fork himself later on.

Meanwhile, Mike discovers that Jody is still under the control of the Tall Man, and has been controlling him all along. He is captured by Jody and the Tall Man, who attempt to remove the sphere from his head. Using the tuning fork Reggie gave him, Mike escapes and returns to Death Valley and attempts to use a bomb he constructed to destroy the Tall Man.

Despite its success, another Tall Man appears immediately thereafter and manages to remove the sphere, leaving Mike to die. Reggie promises to come back for him and chases after the Tall Man through the fork.

## *Phantasm V: Ravager*

Reggie finds himself in a mental hospital, with Mike pushing his wheelchair. Disoriented and angry, he demands answers and Mike explains that he's been diagnosed with dementia and tries to keep the older man's mind active by asking him about his adventures. At some point in the story, Reggie realizes Mike has disappeared.

Later, in the war zone dimension, Mike is revealed to be the leader of the resistance and tells Reggie that after the latter went after the Tall Man, he was able to find his way back to civilization and patch himself up before the Tall Man took complete control.

Somehow, the dimensions begin bleeding over and the mental hospital Mike claims to have had visions of his war torn life. He rescues Reggie from the hospital.

Back in the other world, Mike provides Reggie with his four-barrelled shotgun and the two escape in the Barracuda provided by Jody and flee into the desert, aiming to find someplace cold(as it's the Tall Man's weakness). They later pick up Rocky and Chunk as well.

## Characteristics

Mike is a perceptive and inventive individual, who holds family very dear to him after losing his parents. Once Jody disappears, Reggie becomes his closest companion as well as partner in the war against the Tall Man.

He has considerable mechanic skills, repairing cars in *Phantasm* and *Phantasm IV,* and also constructing a smaller sphere all on his own after being imbued with the Tall Man's powers. Like Reggie, he is also an effective soldier, wielding a flame-torch in *Phantasm II* and a rocket launcher in *Phantasm V*.

## Notes

* A. Michael Baldwin is one of the four actors to be seen in each of the five films, though he only appears in archive footage in *Phantasm II*.
* When Don Coscarelli directed *Phantasm II* for Universal, they required at least one working actor to be playing a main character, and forced him to choose between Baldwin and Reggie Bannister. Coscarelli decided to bring back Bannister and recast Mike with James Le Gros. Brad Pitt was also under consideration.
* James Le Gros has fond memories of working on *Phantasm II*, and is remembered positively by Bannister, Scrimm and Coscarelli, but A. Michael Baldwin is known to resent his own forced absence from that film.
* Mike wears colourful clothes in the first two films, but in *Phantasm III*, *Phantasm IV* and a flashback in *Phantasm V*, he wears all-black. In *Phantasm V*, he wears a corduroy suit in the nursery home reality and nondescript rags in the post-apocalyptic realm.
* In *Phantasm II*, Mike's main weapon of choice is a flame-thrower.

## Appearances

* *Phantasm* (1979)
* *Phantasm II* (1988) - Played by James Le Gros
* *Phantasm III: Lord Of The Dead* (1994)
* *Phantasm IV: Oblivion* (1998)
* *Phantasm V: Ravager* (2016)