I knew it was a retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, but it also borrows liberally from Faust and other pieces of horror literature. It tells the story of William Finley as Winslow Leach attempting to liberate his music from the hands of hot-shot music producer Swan played by prolific musician Paul Williams. As Winslow fails, he becomes progressively more disfigured, until finally he's hot a horrific scar on his face and can't sing or speak anymore. Adopting the costume of the Phantom, Winslow launches into a campaign of revenge on Swan, but Swan seduces him into writing music he will use to open his long-awaited club, the Paradise.
I claim to ostensibly understand the 70s cheese horror musical, but the one I like and base that claim on is very easily the most famous example, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. So I'm not an expert by any means. Phantom of the Paradise is a cool movie with a lot of style, great costumes, decent music, and is pretty funny, making it easy to see why it has accumulated such a large cult following since its release. My major criticism of it is that it hops back and forth from serious to silly from scene to scene, and I feel that had it shifted its focus more to either, it would've been a better film. The film also suffers from a fairly atrocious leading lady, Jessica Harper, who can't seem to act for shit, but there's not a whole lot to her character, Phoenix, to work with. And then there's her consistently terrible dancing. Like, Elaine Benes terrible. I found this youtube clip to show you just what I mean. If you want to hear the music you'll have to turn up your speakers, it's mixed very very low.
She dances like that more than once. Getting over it is pretty easy as Phoenix isn't really in the movie that much. She is displaced by Beef, played by Gerrit Graham (perhaps recognizable to some as a recurring Star Trek actor) as the lead singer of the Swan's show. Beef is a fun character, his overblown macho stage persona contrasting his flamboyantly effeminate backstage personality, plus he's always got great costumes.
Fantastic elements crop up slowly through the second act and third acts, although the revelations tended to fall a little short of the earlier implications. Swan seems like a much more powerful villain than he turns out to be, and is defeated with such ease that it's surprising no one managed it before. There are a bundle of plot holes and characters making obviously stupid decisions, but the playful atmosphere of the film makes those drawbacks easy to ignore. It's a fun movie to watch, especially in a theatre with a bunch of people.
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