***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring William Finley, Paul Williams, George Memmoli, Gerritt Graham, and Jessica Harper
Directed & written by Brian De Palma, loosely inspired by “The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux, with words and music by Paul Williams
1974
92 min PG
“Phantom of the Paradise” is precisely the kind of movie that people who don’t know anything about the movies will say is bad. When you read the next sentence, you’ll either feel threatened by how deviant and abnormal it sounds, or you’ll smack your lips with delight over the prospect of seeing something so bizarre. “Phantom” is a glam rock musical that combines “Phantom of the Opera” with “Faust,” satirizes the pop music industry, and lovingly parodies Hammer horror movies—and, icing on the cake, it’s directed by no less than Brian De-fucking-Palma (“Blow Out,” “Sisters,” “Scarface,” “The Untouchables”). Who are you to resist? The result is a garish and phantasmagoric explosion of camp, a half-forgotten cheese masterpiece of the ‘70s with all the stops pulled out. Because De Palma is aboard, bringing along his editor Paul Hirsch and production designer Jack Fisk, “Phantom of the Paradise” has value beyond its camp appeal, and is actually good filmmaking, something that can’t always be said for other cult favorites.
The last fifteen minutes—which is one of those “Manchurian Candidate” racing-to-catch-the-sniper-in-the-public-gathering flying finishes—is as brilliantly choreographed and edited as anything De Palma has done. A shot’s fired, the villain panics, the Phantom swoops down on a rope, the girl is in danger, and all the while the crowd screams and dances, mistaking it for part of the show. But the best shot is also one of the simplest: the Phantom charges down a thin corridor, his huge cape billowing behind him, his footsteps loud, and we charge after him with a hand-held camera and a wide angle lens.
The biggest surprise of the end is that, even though “Phantom” never asks us to care about any of its characters, damned if I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, hoping that the Phantom would save the girl and finally give that Satanic record producer his comeuppance. There’s a theory that you’re more likely to care about characters if a movie doesn’t ask you to. As evidence, I submit my reaction to “Phantom of the Paradise” in comparison to my indifference toward recent musicals like “Moulin Rouge!” and “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera.” Maybe it’s easier to side with a Phantom who’s been sent unjustly to prison, his teeth pulled out, his head crushed in a record-printer, and has to talk through a machine. It also helps that he looks like an hilarious junior Darth Vader in his black jumpsuit, maroon cape, and silver helmet. He’s played by William Finley, who was the hunchback in “Sisters.” Like everyone else, he plays everything completely straight; that’s the only way to handle high camp. He also sings his own songs and does some good silent acting because, when you’re running around in a huge cape with no teeth, words just can’t do you justice.
The short and slimy record producer who steals the pre-Phantom’s rock opera of “Faust” and leads to his disfigurement is known only as Swan. He’s played by musician Paul Williams, who was a regular on “The Muppet Show” (everything I learn about this movie keeps getting better and better). Indeed, if you listen closely, some of the death metal in “Phantom” has the energetic gooberishness of Muppet music. Swan is president of the unsubtly titled Death Records, with its defunct canary logo. He is ominously off-camera for the first 15 minutes of the film and mentioned reverentially like some kind of god. When he finally does appear—about 5 foot 2, with a golden mullet, and shaped like a troll—he finds that the pre-Phantom has sneaked into his orgy room at the Swanage. At this point he looks at one of this thugs and gives a brilliant reading of the line “get this fag out of here.”
It’s only in the last half of the movie that we find out how appropriate the silly-creepy Vincent Price organ music that accompanies Swan is. He wears sunglasses in every scene save one, which is a flashback to when his youthful suicide attempt is interrupted by a strange visitor in the mirror. Swan has dreamed up the Paradise, which is De Palma’s version of the Paris Opera House. It’s part rock arena, part recording studio, and part palace, with secret passages and mirror doors aplenty.
Paul Williams also wrote the songs for “Phantom of the Paradise,” which are about as good as anything else from the glam rock era. Between The Doors and The Clash I’m kind of a black hole, but Williams’ “Faust” isn’t bad in its overscored, oversized way. The song over the end credits—“The Hell of It”—is actually pretty catchy. “Phantom” pokes fun at the pop music business with a light-hand: the record producer has no soul, the three different bands we see are all the same band in disguise, death onstage is good for business, no one cares what lyrics mean, Swan can call up any number of different musical genres to sing the exact same song, etc. There’s also a huge, hulking queen named Beef (Gerritt Graham) brought in to sing the Phantom’s opera, despite the Phantom’s preference for Phoenix (Jessica Harper).
In interviews, Brian De Palma is always soft-spoken and articulate, and usually has to fight off an embarrassed little smirk whenever he discusses his own films. He and editor Hirsch have a lot of fun with jump-cuts in “Phantom” and compose the climax so that we’re always bouncing among the central action, the gyrating back-up dancers, and the throbbing masses. But De Palma also gets to utilize his beloved split screen and, as always, once per movie, he gets in a few really good, really long tracking shots. He also stuffs in an allusion to “Touch of Evil” that is so unlikely and unexpected that we can’t help but laugh.
Even if no one’s singing, most of De Palma’s movies are, at the core, musical comedies: figures and/or cameras are choreographed with music to produce laughter from the audience, either at deadpan humor, or at the simple delight of a complex trick being pulled off. Think of the train station shoot-out in “The Untouchables:” Kevin Costner runs out of bullets just in time for Andy Garcia to throw him another gun, a second before Garcia slides across the marble floor, catching a baby carriage with his legs, and is still able to shoot a gangster through the head. It’s a breathtaking sequence, but we laugh because it’s such an absurd juxtaposition, and because laughter is the best way to applaud a Rube Goldberg device successfully executed. “Phantom of the Paradise” is just more obviously a musical comedy.
Finished Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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