entertainment
'Phantom
By Greg Lukow
Phantom of the Paradise is a
hip comic book come to life. It ,
is pop, groupie culture at its
best: grotesquely caricatured
and exaggerated, a gawdy,
colorful rock-horror show.
For the record, it is our
F BONANZA EIY TUESDAY I
NEGHT EUB-EYE SPECIAL
1 Served with baked potato 3 ' i v . 1
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I Good wholesome American food ;; x--" I
I at right neighborly prices. 1
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Complete selection of ARP's keyboard
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Fine itaiian Food
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V CLOSED LIOKDAY CLOSED TUESDAY
I This Wednesday is special student night at Valentines party room. All the pizza and ft
pop for only $2.25. Look for details in Wednesday's paper. . U
liilS: J
Sunday Thursday 4pa-CI:dt ' g
Friday 4pia-t2:30 am
x ..Saturday 4pm4Mm
of Paradise comix culture
fourth remake of The Phantom
of the Opera, originally a silent
starring Lon Chaney. But
instead of the secret
underground sewers beneath a
Paris opera house,
writer-director Brian de Palma
has placed his phantom amid
is here
the patch panels and mixing
decks of an ultra-modern
recording studio. The Paradise
is a decadent rock gallery,
constructed by a
millionaire-producer called the
Swan, a mysterious hybrid of
Phil Spector and Citizen Kane.
Th( Phantom's name is
Winslow Leach, a discouraged,
tragic songwriter who has his
face permanently embossed in
a record press. The part is
hammed up nicely by
wide-eyed William Finley, but
the real star of the show is
sinter-composer Paul Williams.
Swan is an appropriite name
for this white-haired, dimpled
urchin who supposedly has
written some fine pop material
that usually ends up being
performed by people like the
Carpenters and Three Dog
Night. People haven't paid
much attention to Williams
before this film and I doubt if
they will afterwards, but his
music does work well here.
When combined with de
Palma's rapid fire pacing and
perfect editing it creates a
rhythmic movie that is nearly a
rock opera in itself.
De Palma is yet another of
those promising young
American directors, his most
notable effort being the
critically acclaimed Sisters, a
minor little horror study that
spent most of its time
knocking around summer
drive-ins.
greg lukow
De Palma has obviously had
fun with Phantom; it is full of
little inside movie jokes. Swan
has a fat, greasy promoter
named Philbin, (after Mary
Philbin, the trembling, curious
heroine who yanked Chaney's
mask off in the original
Phantom), and there is one
scene in which de Palma films a
shot-by-shot recreation of
Hitchcock's shower-knifing
sequence from Psycho.
So far, de Palma's principle
asset is that he is a talented
director who does not appear
ready to jump into the
mainstream of commercial
film-making as some of his
peers, like Coppola, Scorsese
and George -Lucas, have done.
Despite a surface shallowness,
he has spiced up Phantom just
enough so that it is its own
reward, which is more than can
be said for other modem,
camp-horror remakes like Paul
Morrissey's Frankenstein, a
movie we didn't need.
Phantom at its best gives us
a delightfully offbeat laugh at
the glitter'n gold that has
replaced the rock 'n roll in a
slick, hollow culture. It is at its
worst only in those brief
moments when it indulges in
that same spoon-fed culture.
Showcase to feature
experimental films
This semester's Film-makers' Showcase, presented by the
Sheldon Film Theater, will feature Storm De Hirsch, an
experimental film maker who is noted for her unique technical use
of color and visual expression.
Eight of De Hirsch's films, varying from ten to 80 minutes in
length, will be shown at 3 and 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday.
On Tuesday three short films, Third Eye Butterfly, The
Tattooed Man, mi An Experiment in Meditation, will be shown.
Wednesday features a series of shorts, Hudson River Diary, along
with a trilogy of shorts entitled The Color of Ritual, The Color of
Ihought. On Thursday, a feature film, Goodbye in the Mirror, will
be presented. All the films are free.
monday, march 17, 1975
at its bes
Bv David Ware
Brian de Palma's Phantom
of the Paradise, showing at the
Hollywood and Vine Theater,
is an uneven, quirky movie th...
emerges, in spite of its uneven
texture, as curiously impressive
film displaying flashes of
genius and a real love by the
producer and director for the
film's leal subject: Rock n'
Roll.
Taking bits and snatches
from The Phantom of the
Opera, Faust, Vie Picture of
Dorian Gray, and Trilby, de
Palma has fashioned a
nightmarish sparkling image of
the self-destructive twilight
cosmos of rock.
The shining jewels of the
piece, though, are composer
Paul Williams, and new face
Jessica Harper. As Swan, the
shadowy, behind-the-scenes
rockmeister, Williams is
smooth, impossible to ruffle
and innocuously siniste r. The
advertisements read, "He sold
his soul for rock n' roll," and
this is a fair reduction of the
film's theme. He is a
baby-faced immortal serving
the devil and making a profit.
This invocation of the Faust
theme is humorous yet
chillingly effective, especially
so in a flashback showing Swan
being signed up by a devil who
bears his own cute, puggish
face.
As the composer of the
film's score, Williams
re-inforces my earlier opinion
of him as one of the greatest
living pastiche artists. Ilis score
is a loving yet faithful amalgam
of elements lifted from the
past two decades of rock,
mixed with consummate care
and concern.
The real shows topper,
though, is Harper as Phoenix.
Almost unspeakably beautiful,
with a voice to match and an
unconscious fluid dense of
movement, she is superb and
quite possibly worth the price
of admission.
More important than
Harper's transcendent
loveliness or Williams'
craftsmanship is the message
hurled by de Palma in the last
few frames. As Swan and his
nemesis Leach lay dying on the
stage of the Paradise Theater,
with glorified groupis Phoenix
looking on in horror, de Palma
reminds us that there is no
glory, no touching demise for
the stars or the starstruck.
This sobering realisation
provides a measure of salt for,
and toughens the substance of
Phantom of the Paradise,
making it an honest portrait,
without tears, of the
subculture that has grown up
around rock music.
page 12
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