Paul Williams (who also wrote the score) plays Swan, the eccentric and ever-youthful head of Death Records, who has pledged to contract new souls for his satanic master.
Swan’s earthly instincts lead him to pirate a new rock cantata written by a naive, talented singer-songwriter named Winslow Leach (William Finley) and use it to open his 24-hour rock palace, The Paradise.
After being framed by Swan and sent to prison, a vengeful Leach gets his head caught in a record-pressing machine and lives on as a masked, voiceless disfigurement, terrorising The Paradise and covertly supervising the career of Phoenix (Jessica Harper), a girl singer he adores.
Swan eventually manipulates him into a new Faustian contract specifying that the rock cantata can only be sung by Phoenix, but betrays the Phantom by hiring a flamboyant glam-rocker named Beef (Gerrit Graham) instead.
The climactic orgy of massacre and mayhem (televised coast to coast) as Leach brings an act of final revenge to purge his soul is pure De Palma and a portent of what was to come in such extreme De Palma films as Dressed to Kill(1980) and Scarface(1983).
Supposedly a rock version of Phantom of the Opera, this film was really more a satirical fusion of elements of Faust, Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
It was all too much for sniffy critics when it came out, and cinemagoers stayed away. But in the spirit of all cult classics, a different, more lasting kind of success followed that crashing box-office failure.
An entire Phantom-worshipping town in Winnipeg, Manitoba, gathered for a ‘Phantompalooza’ in the early 2000s, even earning it a starring role in a documentary called Phantom of Winnipeg.
Phantom/Winslow Leach William Finley
Swan
Paul Williams Phoenix
Jessica Harper Beef
Gerrit Graham Philbin
George Memmoli
Director
Brian De Palma
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After being framed by Swan and sent to prison, a vengeful Leach gets his head caught in a record-pressing machine and lives on as a masked, voiceless disfigurement, terrorising The Paradise and covertly supervising the career of Phoenix (Jessica Harper), a girl singer he adores.
Phantom/Winslow Leach
