Phantom of the Paradise

Los Angeles: Twentieth Century-Fox, 1974. Eight vintage color lobby cards from the 1974 film.

One of the greatest and most garish rock musicals ever made, imposing a wild, psychedelic pop veneer on the "Phantom of the Opera" and Faust stories and updating them to the present-day of 1970s mega-record-label-dominated culture. Written and directed by De Palma at the beginning of his "classic" period of the 1970s and 1980s, on the heels of "Sisters" (1973).

Singer Paul Williams is unforgettably, ambitiously nasty as Swan, the head of an evil conglomerate that ruins the life of young Winslow (William Finley), with a teeth-clenching opening narration by Rod Serling.

Twentieth Century-Fox bought the film for two million dollars (the largest sum ever paid by the company for an independent film), but failed to properly market it, and the film did not reach a large audience. "Phantom" did please the critics, however, notably Pauline Kael, who called the film "a new Guignol, in a modern idiom, out of the Guignol of the past."

Shot on location in Beverly Hills, California, and Dallas, Texas.

14 x 11 inches. Near Fine.

[Book #148219]