Director Brian De Palma offer’s up a colourful variation on The Phantom of the Opera in this outrageous Faustian parody of the 70’s rock scene. Paul Williams stars (and also acts as the films composer) as Swan an outlandish record producer who after hearing the latest composition from struggling composer Winslow Leach (William Finley), conspires to steal the piece for the opening of his latest nightclub, the Paradise. Leach catches on to Swans dastardly plan and breaks into Swans Death Records studio in order to destroy the pirated copies of his work. Unfortunately a horrible accident with the vinyl press leaves Leach grossly disfigured, thus transforming him into the Phantom of the Paradise. This masked spook then decides to exact his own brand of revenge, determined to ruin Swans latest glam rock show. Intitialy ignored and misunderstood on it’s first release, Phantom of the Paradise went on to aquire a loyal cult following, who laped up the skewered mix of horror, glam rock and music industry parody. Cast includes: Jessica Harper, George Memmoli, Gerritt Graham.
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
316586
Language
English
Audience classification
MA
Subject categories
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Fame
Feature films → Feature films - United States
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Fame
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
VHS; Access Print (Section 1)