Weekly Film Rec: Phantom of the Paradise

A few weeks ago, I was at my girlfriend's parents house for dinner (with my girlfriend, of course) and her dad asked if I'd ever seen this film, Phantom of the Paradise. Not only had I never seen it, but I'd never heard of it. He explained that it was Phantom of the Opera sort of thing but his strongest memory was that of a man having his face smooshed in a record press. That sounded like it would be exactly the sort of thing I'd enjoy, so a week later, I added it to my Netflix queue (a week later because I'd forgotten the name of the film and had to ask at the next dinner).

My expectation for the film based upon the brief and fortuitously vague was some combination of William Castle meets Hammer horror. My first surprise came in adding it to my queue. Brian de Palma directed this!? Between Sisters and Carrie no less? How had I not heard of this film? With this knowledge, everything I thought to expect from Phantom of the Paradise flew out the window (except I still knew someone's head got smooshed in the record press, but even that defied my expectation).

I'm not going to give up too much information here except to say the film blew me away. It's nothing what I expected for de Palma (for whom I have mixed feelings) and everything I expected. There are the obvious film homages (or blatant recreations) and split-screens one comes to expect from him, but also a bizarre sense of humor and a general sense of "What the hell am I watching?" It would make a great companion with either Forbidden Zone or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (though I find the former infinitely more tolerable at this point).

Perhaps most surprising is how great the music is! You see this dumpy-looking puffball of a man with atrocious, long hair in the film known as Swan. He really is quite ridiculous. Well... he's played by Paul Williams, with whom many of the older readers are probably familiar, but I was not. It turns out this absurd munchkin of a man is an incredibly talented songwriter. It was only after the film that I discovered he wrote "(Just an) Old Fashioned Love Song," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "We've Only Just Begun," the theme to Loveboat, and "The Rainbow Connection' ("THE RAINBOW CONNECTION!"). On top of that... on TOP of that... he did the music for The Muppet Christmas Carol! Clearly, this man should have been on my radar years earlier for his association with The Muppets alone!

So anyway, this man wrote an absolutely fantastic and diverse collection of songs for Phantom of the Paradise that was rightfully nominated for an Oscar. All-in-all, this film just has to be seen. No amount of talking can do it justice. I didn't know it at the time, but my girlfriend's dad sold it perfectly. Get the audience sucked in with the head-smooshing and surprise them with the rest.