Phantom of the Paradise

Brian De Palma returns to the incompetence of his earlier films with Phantom of the Paradise, as the movie suffers from a disastrously broad sensibility that’s compounded by underdeveloped characters and an emphasis on bland, forgettable songs. William Finley stars as the title character, a quirky songwriter who becomes hellbent on revenge after he’s left radically disfigured by an evil record tycoon (Paul Williams’ Swan). It is, right from the word go, impossible not to wonder just what De Palma is attempting to accomplish here, as Phantom of the Paradise‘s garish, aggressively over-the-top atmosphere is an immediate hindrance to one’s efforts at embracing the material – with De Palma’s decision to pitch the entire film at the level of a cacophonous wall of noise certainly exacerbating the pervasively unappealing vibe (ie it’s just such a needlessly loud piece of work). De Palma’s punishingly excessive modus operandi is reflected in the film’s myriad of garish attributes, with, especially, Finley’s annoyingly larger-than-life work as the far-from-sympathetic protagonist standing as one of the movie’s most irritating elements. The end result is a hopelessly misguided cult curiosity that’s aged poorly in the years since its 1974 release (to put it mildly), and it’s difficult to envision anyone deriving much pleasure out of this thing in the 21st century.

* out of ****