30 Day Movie Challenge: Day 20- Phantom Of The Paradise (1974)

When you think of musicals what is the first thing that comes to mind? For me, it's the image of Grease or Moulin Rouge, La La Land, and so many more. They are basically movies that involve a lot of singing inside of it where the music is a part of the dialogue and today's challenge was to watch a musical. After seeing the trailer while watching Bud The Chud a month ago, I knew the musical I wanted to check out was 1974's Phantom Of The Paradise which was written and directed by Brian De Palma (Raising Cain).  The film stars William Finley (The Funhouse) as Winslow, a naive musician who has written a sonata entitled Faust that has the potential to be the next big thing. When he gets screwed out of the deal by a record label, he will stop at nothing to make sure that the production of it does not go off smoothly. The film also stars Paul Williams (Battle for the Planet of the Apes) as Swan, Jessica Harper (Shock Treatment) as Phoenix, Gerrit Graham (C.H.U.D. II: Bud The Chud) as Beef, George Memmoli (Mean Streets) as Philbin, Archie Hahn (Small Soldiers),  Jeffrey Comanor, and Peter Elbling (Some Kind Of Wonderful) as The Juicy Fruits/The Beach Bums/The Undead, Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) as introductory narrator, Janus Blythe (The Hills Have Eyes) as a groupie, and Cheryl Smith (Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural) as a groupie.

So apparently when this film came out in 1974, it was a complete and utter flop that saw an early exit out of cinemas, but it was one of those films that would achieve cult status later on. I can see at first why people may have been hesitant about the film, but once you click play you actually can't keep your eyes off of it. I thought it was actually a pretty good film that some cues from past stories like Phantom Of The Opera, Faust, and The Picture Of Dorian Gray and mashed them up nicely into a rock musical. One of the elements I liked is while Winslow was writing this musical about Faust, little did he realize that he was actually living the story. While it was the 70's and while there was some cheesiness to it, the film actually was very well done with some great acting from just about everyone. I thought some of the costumes were a little cheesy, but I think they absolutely nailed it because it was just fun to watch. As long as a film is fun to watch, I can deal with whatever era it may have come from and this was the 70's which meant a lot of whacked out crap was happening hence this film. The soundtrack is actually really good even though some of the tracks could have had a little bit of a harder edge. With all of that being said, I definitely think this is a film worth checking out with a great imagery, costumes, music, and so much more. So, I am going to give the film an B for a final grade.