Songwriter, Winslow, is double crossed by the worlds hottest record producer, Swan, then badly scarred and presumed killed while attempting to get revenge. Returning as a masked 'Phantom' to ruin Swan's new club / theatre, Winslow sets about making sure no one but Phoenix (Jessica Harper), will ever sing the music that Swan has stolen from him.
It's not long though, before he is tempted into making a deal with Swan, and signing a contract that will cost him far more than he bargained for, as there is more to Swan than the world knows...
Phantom of The Opera, meets Faust, Rocky Horror style (and there's another classic of English literature in there for good measure too, but to name it would be to give a spoiler) in a 70's rock musical satire of the music industry.
This film is so insane it's difficult to judge it in terms of 'good' and 'bad'; Phantom of the Paradise seems to exist in a place where these, already subjective, terms have little meaning.
Although it came a year after Rocky Horror's stage début it pre-dates the move, and feels like a close relative of both it, and it's 'follow up' Shock Treatment; The latter perhaps not surprising, given that Harper (on fine form here) would go on to play Shock Treatment's Janet Weiss-Majors.
From the on-stage 'creation' scene to the record-company controlled prisons where twiddly winks sets are produced, from the metal teeth to "Beef" the 'Hunky' lead singer who is neither a hunk, nor good at singing, from the synthesiser voice-box to the incompetently composited shots of thing that just didn't need to be faked, throw in some awful musical numbers and worse lip-sync and everything in this film should render it unwatchable... yet doesn't!
Had the music been better (only one or two songs can really be classed as being any good) I would have loved the shit out of this movie, as it is I'm STILL going to order you to go out and watch it, just because its so... well, I'm not sure what it is, but what ever it is it is SO that thing!
That said, the complaint about the songs' quality may just be me - Paul Williams received an Acadany Award nomination for 'best original song score' for this very film.
I never normally do this, but I know many of you won't track this down, and you really should see at least the show-within-a-movie's two-song 'creation scene'... so here it is:
Trailer:
I generally hate movies like this. At the very best I have to be in the right mood to watch them. I don't know why. I just never really enjoyed surrealism which is how I see these kind of things. I hated Repo and although I've been to see Rocky Horror, I'm not even a fan of that movie.
ReplyDeleteI should point out that all of the songs are there for a reason. This is a musical like "Hedwig" is a musical, not like "Greese" is.
DeleteNo one bursts unexpectedly into song and dance for no reason.
That said there are plenty of elements that err on the side of surreal, but nothing on the scope of, say, Rubber".