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Milton Dammers, also called Special Agent Milton Dammers, is the secondary antagonist of the 1996 comedy/horror movie The Frighteners.

Dammers is an eccentric FBI agent who has a vendetta against Frank Bannister. He is a former undercover agent known for his work with cults and occult activities which caused him to sustain massive mutilations and driven him to the brink of madness.

He was portrayed by Jeffrey Combs, who also portrayed Herbert West in the Reanimator film series, The Scarecrow and Doctor Moon in the DC Animated Series, John Nichols in Criminal Minds, Rat King in the 2013 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, Brunt and Weyoun in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Shepard Lambrick in Would You Rather, Kite Man in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Dr. Vannacutt in House on Haunted Hill, Gyrus Krinkle in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, and Shran in Star Trek: Enterprise.

Biography[]

After Frank Bannister begins fortelling murders committed by a ghost resembling the Grim Reaper, he is a suspect, even from Sheriff Walt Perry, who is usually patient with Frank. Perry calls in FBI agent Milton Dammers. Highly paranoid, obsessive, and disturbed from years of undercover work, Dammers is convinced that Frank is psychically responsible for the killings. Frank is captured and detained after the town's newspaper editor-in-chief Magda Rees-Jones is killed, as she has previously published articles attacking him.

Lucy investigates the murders and becomes a target of the Grim Reaper. She is attacked while visiting Frank in jail, but they escape with the help of Cyrus and Stuart, who are both dissolved in the process. Frank wants to commit suicide to stop the Grim Reaper. Lucy helps Frank have a near-death experience by putting him into hypothermia and using barbiturates to stop his heart. Dammers abducts Lucy, revealing that he had been a victim of Charles Manson and his "family" in 1969.

In his ghostly form, Frank confronts the Grim Reaper and discovers that he is the ghost of Johnny Bartlett, a psychiatric hospital orderly who killed twelve people about thirty-two years earlier, before being captured, convicted, and executed. Patricia Bradley, then a teenager, was accused as his accomplice, although she escaped the death penalty due to her underage status. Lucy resuscitates Frank and they visit Patricia. Unknown to them, Patricia is still in love with Bartlett and on friendly, homicidal terms with Bartlett's ghost. Lucy and Frank trap Bartlett's spirit in his urn, which Patricia has kept. The pair make for the chapel of the now-abandoned psychiatric hospital hoping to send Bartlett's ghost to Hell.

Patricia and Dammers chase them through the ruins. Dammers throws the ashes away, releasing Bartlett's ghost again. Before Milton gets a chance to kill Frank, Patricia fatally blasted Milton's head to smithereens.

Sometime later, the morose-looking ghost of Dammers is riding around in the sheriff's car in disgrace, doomed to wander the Earth. Both Frank and Lucy spot him, remarking on his upset expression.

Personality[]

Danvers is extremely eccentric, insufferable and unhinged thanks to spending years enduring the effects of undercover work in cults. It's heavily implied that although he's well aware enough to function still as an agent, that he did not get deprogrammed from the brainwashing effects of his undercover work. Prompting him to revert back to said conditioning whenever he's distressed. He is also known to be incredibly narcissistic. Projecting his own insecurities onto his theories about Frank Bannister. As well as being obsessed with having psychic powers of his own. As shown when Frank's Ghost moves his car away from him, he initially assumes he's moving it with his own mind.

Trivia[]

• Director Peter Jackson opted to cast Jeffrey Combs as Dammers because he was a fan of the actor's work in Re-Animator.
• Dammers has a bad fear of women screaming at him.