Phantom of the Paradise in '70s Horror and Sci-Fi Forum

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Phantom of the Paradise

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ak.prismiqunoffici...		#141	[-]
Jul 13 10 8:08 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Swan may or may not have had talent, but was certainly "successful" before making his supernatural pact. We know this because Rod Serling tells us in the opening voiceover that he "wrote and produced his first gold record at 14"; he's obviously considerably older than that by the time he gets in the bathtub to end it all. And, he's recording his planned suicide for the "Swan Archives" because he is, at least in his own mind, "the greatest showman of [his] time". I think we have to deduce from all this that he had a considerable degree of success already, but that his vanity and fear of aging was preventing him from enjoying it. The Phantom didn't "fight the deal"; it looks like you may have forgotten some of the plot elements, which is great: you get to enjoy it again and be surprised! I won't ruin it for you!
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Grant		#142	[-]
Jul 13 10 9:15 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Plus, his shoulder-length hair in that "20-year-old" locket photo would have been pretty out of place. Not as fantastic as color videotape, but pretty strange. But as you say, "alternate universe." I always kind of wonder if that woman with the locket is put into the scene to make you think she might play a "pivotal" part in the end of the story. Like the Estelle Winwood character in that Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jameson."
thebrainfollower		#143	[-]
Jul 13 10 9:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Gotta contradict you there Grant. The tape does indeed age. "This image will age in your place" or something like that is what the devil tells him. And Swan's watching of the scene later, with his disgust at how his voice and face have altered are clear.
BobRoss		#144	[-]
Jul 13 10 9:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Grant wrote: Plus, his shoulder-length hair in that "20-year-old" locket photo would have been pretty out of place. Not as fantastic as color videotape, but pretty strange. But as you say, "alternate universe." I always kind of wonder if that woman with the locket is put into the scene to make you think she might play a "pivotal" part in the end of the story. Like the Estelle Winwood character in that Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jameson." I remember reading somewhere that that woman's voice was overdubbed by Betty Buckley.
davlghry		#145	[-]
Jul 13 10 10:06 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sid Terror wrote: I have ta fess up to you all. Two things always bugged me about that scene... "Saturday, November 19th, 1953... Today I have decided to kill myself..." (There was no "Rock And Roll" music in 1953 that the general public would have known about yet) When did rock and roll become established? I realize it's probably a blurry line.
TServo4		#146	[-]
Jul 13 10 10:29 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The first mainstream R&R record (charting to #1), which is ultimately considered the marking point between the incunabula of R&R and the point where it was a mainstream success, was Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock," released in April, 1954, and which itself was a cover of a song by Sonny Dae and His Knights, which was recorded a year before. Other contenders are listed on Wikipedia's entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/w...rst_rock_and_roll_record There are definitely some "suspension of disbelief" moments in the movie. J. Theakston Capitol Theatre, Rome, NY
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#147	[-]
Jul 13 10 10:53 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	BobRoss wrote: I remember reading somewhere that that woman's voice was overdubbed by Betty Buckley. Maybe on my site? :-) She also overdubbed one of the orgy girls, the one who lisps, "I'm shaving it for Shwan!" SPOILERS AHEAD, MATIES: How the tape ages is a tricky little issue. This whole Dorian Grey plotline was still very much under development up through (and beyond) the last rewrites, which is part of why the scene with Betty Lou (Swan's girlfriend from Back in the Day) seems so abrupt and out-of-nowhere. (And, it's just before a reel change, if you see the film theatrically on 35mm, so it's invariably chewed all to crap for that reason as well, which tends to accentuate its nonsensicalness.) The only way I can make sense of the aging-on-tape thing is that tapes (and pictures) taken of Swan show his true age at the time the tape or picture was taken. So in the tape of him in the bathtub, he still looks young, even when he's watching it 20 years later. But if you saw his face in the tapes of him signing the contracts with Winslow or Phoenix, it would look horrible; that's why his voice is so distorted on those tapes, and on the monitor's recording of him saying, "An assassination, live on television, coast to coast? That's entertainment!" This is the true sound of his voice, or what it would sound like, but for his paranormal pact. We never see his face on the tapes of his contracts with Phoenix and Winslow, but we watch him as HE sees his face on those tapes, and he doesn't look happy about it. Presumably, all the stuff about how nobody's allowed to photograph Swan is because, if someone did, the world would see his true form. This doesn't quite jibe with, "so this tape gets old, instead of me?" I write it off to last-minute panicky rewriting. And, when his mask is ripped off in the end, we're not seeing his face as it would look in photographs; we're seeing him melting, like the tapes he is bound to, which are perishing in the fire set by the Phantom.
Grant		#148	[-]
Jul 14 10 8:34 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Speaking of "genre" actresses (but in a different way), the movie also has in a small part Robin Mattsen, who much later hit it big in soap operas, and eventually played a really strange semi-comical character called Janet (nicknamed "Janet from another planet"). Maybe she wasn't "Phantom of the Paradise" strange, but still, maybe when Mattsen played the part she fell back on her experience with the movie to some degree.
Dr Acula		#149	[-]
Jul 14 10 8:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Does anybody know why Meet the Devil isn't on the soundtrack? And if it's just the short thing from the film, or if there is a longer version? I didn't see this addressed on the Swan Archives, but I'm sure it's in there, lurking.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbgEvepjo8Q
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#150	[-]
Jul 14 10 9:06 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	All there is of Meet the Devil is that one verse that you hear in the film; it was only written to be long enough to cover Winslow's little walk to the Swanage. That is, it is not an excerpt of some longer, never-heard song. It presumably was left off the soundtrack album because it was considered too short and trivial to merit inclusion.
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ak.prismiqunoffici...		#151	[-]
Jul 14 10 9:47 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sid Terror wrote: The scene of Winslow putting up the banner was shot in retakes, I'm fairly certain. At a completely different location. Yep. Winslow putting up the banner was shot in front of the Majestic Theater, in Dallas (whose interior was used for the Paradise.) The footage of the Juicy Fruits performance taking place within (as well as Winslow's performance of Faust) was shot earlier in the shoot at Dallas' Phantasmagoria Club (later called Allison Wonderland), which I think is now a hardware store.
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#152	[-]
Jul 14 10 11:57 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sid Terror wrote: On my end I'll try and get ahold of Colin Cameron for an answer, since he was in on those recording sessions. Together we'll find the answer. Actually, I think Colin did not play on those sessions. He appears onscreen miming along on the bass with the prerecorded music in Goodbye Eddie and Upholstery, and Special to Me, but I don't think he actually played on the soundtrack. The credits on the soundtrack list three bass players, none of whom are Colin! The soundtrack was definitely recorded at Sound Labs (so say the album credits), but I am still pretty certain that TONTO was at Electric Lady. Incidentally -- the guys who play the musicians behind the Undead are a completely different crew from the ones playing the musicians in the rest of the film. Gerrit G. asserts that the guys in the band refused to play the Undead's band because they thought the costumes were too ... uh.... feminine, but Munson tells me a completely different story: that the musicians didn't want to go to Dallas to film at all, as they were concerned that they'd miss Christmas at home in L.A. ... so, to get them out there, they were promised they'd be home before Christmas, and when filming went on longer than planned, they were allowed to go back home as agreed, which is why they don't appear in those scenes. Reading between the lines, I suspect De Palma or Pressman probably fed Gerrit a total line about the musicans' "distaste for the clothes" because if he had been told the truth he would've demanded to be allowed to go home for Christmas too. Because the "real" musicians went home abruptly, the guys playing (that is, pretending to play) in the "band" in the Undead and Life at Last sequence were local Dallas musicians who got called in at the last minute. Joe Harris was the keyboard player extra, and he brought in his friend Scott Miller to pretend to play the guitar... Scott was given a cassette with the music the night before, so that he could do a better job of appearing to play it.
BobRoss		#153	[-]
Jul 15 10 1:05 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm curious about that score playing in the last scene. It's such a great piece of music and it's great how it just kind of bleeds into 'The Hell of It'. I remember buying the soundtrack back in the day hoping it was on there and being really disappointed that it wasn't. There's just something about the combination of that score and dramatic visuals that went along with it that still manages to put a lump in my throat when I watch the movie. It just perfectly encompasses the inherent tragedy of the story.
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#154	[-]
Jul 15 10 10:15 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	BobRoss wrote: I'm curious about that score playing in the last scene. It's such a great piece of music and it's great how it just kind of bleeds into 'The Hell of It'. I remember buying the soundtrack back in the day hoping it was on there and being really disappointed that it wasn't. There's just something about the combination of that score and dramatic visuals that went along with it that still manages to put a lump in my throat when I watch the movie. It just perfectly encompasses the inherent tragedy of the story. Bob, More people have asked me about this than anything else (except "where can I get a helmet?") That final wedding jam that bleeds into The Hell of It was created by Paul Williams, working with the same session musicians who played on the rest of the soundtrack, and who worked with him generally during that period of time. Of it, Williams told me: "That last cue is mostly me ... I spent an afternoon and evening working the cue that runs thru the wedding and includes the 'hopefully haunting' piano piece as Winslow crawls to his death .. I think I went in with Mike Melvoin or Craig Doerge.. .. might have been Dave Garland ... or Lincoln Mayorca . . A great piano player for sure .. and had them play stuff on the cue .. The theme that comes in as Winslow crawls to his death is actually me. I wrote the one finger death piano and it's actually me playing .. which I almost never do . .... Tom Scott may have been the player doing the horn stuff although that could be Dave Garland too. It's the only place in the picture where I jumped into the scoring . It felt like it needed to be a piece that reflected, choreographed, maybe helped to instigate the insanity that errupts when the audience become an active element in the destructive ballet. I love the piano theme that I played and always wait for it when I watch the film . . and purposely mixed it very high. Tipton's score is wonderful. It has that 'melodrama meets classic' element that works perfectly I think. I'm sure his music is heavily in the mix of that last cue too. I just kept overdubbing sounds til I got the insanity level up to Phantom standards."
Gram Owens		#155	[-]
Jul 28 10 8:16 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	PHANTOM is one of my all-time favorites. It's the first De Palma film I ever saw, and led me to seek out all of the director's work. Thanks to PHANTOM, I've seen every De Palma film (he's my favorite director), including two of his most obscure works, MURDER A LA MOD and DIONYSUS IN '69. Like most of my favorite horrors, I caught PHANTOM on a Saturday afternoon creature features program in the mid-80s (I was born in '77, so didn't get to see any of these in the theatre); the TV guide listed something called PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE at 4 PM, and I was immediately hooked; I've been a monster/horror fan forever. Although I never read an issue of Famous Monsters until the 90s, I was raised on various "classics of the horror film"-type books, found at the library. It was in these books that I was introduced to the Chaneys, Lugosi, Karloff, Cushing, Lee, Price, etc. The first videotape I ever rented? The 1925 version of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. I was lucky to catch most of the Universal and Paramount horrors on my PBS station, but many of the Universal classics also ran Saturdays on creature features. So anything with PHANTOM in the title was more than enough to grab my attention. I can honestly say PHANTOM was an eye-opening experience; from its fantastic opening to the tragic climax, my eyes were glued to the screen; the film, more than any other I had seen up to that point, taught me to appreciate the director. Prior to this, I never really noticed who directed what; yeah, I read about James Whale and Tod Browning, but at the time their names weren't as "exciting" as Boris Karloff or Vincent Price. That all changed with PARADISE. I began reading up on the people behind the camera, and found them as interesting (if not moreso) than the actors. POTP taught me to appreciate film, and because of it, I'd say it's been the most influential movie in my life. From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it -- Groucho Marx
Gojira		#156	[-]
Apr 5 12 11:27 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Terrific movie - I love it! and got a static burn tryin to kiss jessica harper!
Grant		#157	[-]
Apr 8 12 11:03 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	There's a promo for the movie that's narrated by Wolfman Jack. Were there ever any plans for him to be IN the movie, at least in a voice-over? Since I usually pick on celebrity cameos, at least when the people play THEMSELVES, I don't think it's exactly a loss that this movie didn't have any musical ones. Though something like a Wolfman Jack VOICE-OVER (announcing the opening of the Paradise on the radio, or whatever) wouldn't have been a bad thing.
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#158	[-]
Apr 8 12 11:27 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	No plans that I'm aware of to have Wolfman Jack appear in the film in any way...which I think is a good thing. But there WERE musical cameos: at the auditions at Swan's big gold desk. For example, the singing cowboy is Keith Allison, who played bass and wrote songs for Paul Revere and the Raiders from 1968 to 1975.
Koukol 5		#159	[-]
Apr 8 12 1:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	When will this film come out on BD in North America?
ak.prismiqunoffici...		#160	[-]
Apr 8 12 3:09 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	No release announcement has been made, but the French Blu-Ray plays the movie fine on North American Blu-Ray players. (You just can't watch the extras, unless your player is PAL compatible.)
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