Coscarelli was born to Italian settlers in Libya and raised in Southern California. Although his family was not connected with the motion picture business, he was fascinated with cameras and filmmaking at an early age. Long before he was old enough to attend film school, his short films, made with the help of neighborhood friends in his hometown of Los Alamitos, California , were winning prizes on television.
At the age of 19, Coscarelli became the youngest director to have a feature film distributed by a major studio when he sold his independently produced drama Jim the World's Greatest, to Universal Pictures. The film was the first collaboration for Coscarelli with actor Lawrence Rory Guy, who went on to achieve horror icon status under the screen name Angus Scrimm.[citation needed] Jim the World's Greatest was an official selection of the USA Film Festival.
Coscarelli is best known for Phantasm, and its sequels. The original Phantasm was a worldwide critical and box-office success and won the Special Jury Prize at the Festival du Cinema Fantastique at Avoriaz, France.

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