...filters highbrow influences through colored 1970s strobe lights.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 29, 2024

Brian De Palma’s 1974 pastiche is a near-psychedelic experience built not on freaky visual effects but on pure passion and unadulterated artistry.

| Mar 29, 2024

The film is admittedly ragged, but it works as a satire of the rock operas so popular during the period.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 21, 2024

A stylized and silly rock opera anchored by a number of delightful performances and catchy music.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 22, 2023

De Palma has mixed too many of his styles in Phantom of the Paradise, but this is still a movie to be seen and heard.

| Jun 27, 2023

A crazy, savage film -- iconoclastic and truly liberating.

| Jun 27, 2023

De Palma, who can't tell a plain story, does something that a couple of generations of student and underground filmmakers have been trying to do and nobody else has ever brought off. He creates a new Guignol, in a modern idiom.

| Jun 27, 2023

I watched with delight and surprise, never bored and increasingly amazed at the brilliance and originality of what I was seeing. I was very sorry when it was over and long to see it again.

| Jun 27, 2023

So much works so well in this film that it's a crime Paul Williams's music is so dull.

| Jun 27, 2023

Stylishly produced and directed by Brian De Palma, the film combines the legend of Faust, Phantom of the Opera and the Picture of Dorian Grey for an outrageous film with a great rock score by Paul Williams.

| Jun 27, 2023

Phantom of the Paradise misfires a good half of the time, if not more. And there is entirely too much music. But De Palma's miscalculations don't carry the day. The overall Grand-Guignol-with-bells merriness does.

| Jun 27, 2023

For the most part this one is a delight, from Williams' sophisticated musical parodies to the shadowy, hazy cinematography to the culmination of horror-rock's false violence.

| Jun 27, 2023

Phantom of the Paradise is worth your attention as a possible milestone in the evolution of contemporary movie musicals. I say "possible" because it might also be another dead end.

| Jun 27, 2023

At movie's end it has become obvious that today's phantom and cohorts had a heck of lot more fun than those who joined to do the Lon Chaney bit at the opera. No offense, opera lovers.

| Jun 27, 2023

De Palma's movie doesn't always work as fast, alert screen fun -- but it does boast more irresistible assets than most other movies, namely the kinky performances of Wiliams, Ms. Harper and Gerrit Graham.

| Jun 27, 2023

It seems amazing that a film conceived and developed with such sophisticated filmic artistry could indulge in so much broad, even coarse humor. But there's no denying that Phantom of the Paradise is a visual triumph with much exciting music.

| Jun 27, 2023

What's up on the screen is childish; it has meaning only because it points to something else. To put it another way, joking about the rock music scene is treacherous, because the rock music scene itself is a joke.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 27, 2023

A gorgeously funny movie that successfully manages to combine a satire of the disparate worlds of rock music and horror films.

| Jun 27, 2023

Rock still may not be my cup of tea, but Phantom of the Paradise proves that a good film is a good film, regardless of the music.

| Jun 27, 2023

The sound may be heavy, the performances groovy but Phantom of the Paradise is not "at the top of the charts" with this critic. I was rather numbed by it and felt it was more of a treatment than a Halloween treat.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 27, 2023