Ready for a Super Soylent Green Day Saturday Night, well, here you go! I never saw "Phantom Of The Paradise" until recently, and the basic reason is that I was never a fan of the schmaltzy pop music of Paul Williams, and that's what I thought it was all about! I was wrong, and I stand corrected, this movie rocks, and as an extra bonus, it even comes with introductory narration by Mr. Twilight Zone himself, Rod Serling!
"Phantom Of The Paradise is a musical, and as bright and snappy as it might look, the funniest thing is that it's not really a comedy, in fact despite some moments of hilarity, it is actually a pretty gruesome horror tale that was both written and directed by Brian De Palma, so what else would you expect? Mr. De Palma hasn't made any movies since 2007, but has written, and is directing a new murder mystery that is coming out next year entitled "Passion." Might be something new to actually look forward to!
So, let's just start at the end, the multi-talented Paul Williams has credits that go on forever, and if writing all the songs for the incredibly bad movie "Ishtar" in 1987 didn't kill his career, maybe he really did sell his soul to the devil! For this role, Paul is Swan, the over the top devious head of Swan Records, and the owner of the ultimate rock palace, The Paradise!
There's a young pianist named Winslow Leach who thinks the world should be his oyster, and his rebellious soul is just about to meet up with, "Did somebody call security?"
This is indeed the last guy in the world whose finger or leg you want to pull. Not only was Winslow Leach forcibly ejected from The Paradise, he now also has drugs planted on him. He was playing around with the wrong people!
Next stop, The Nuthouse!! Speaking of The Nuthouse, he ain't Irish, but today is Tabonga's birthday!
Winslow Leach didn't really die, but he was horribly disfigured, a condition he hides behind this wacky mask!
William Finley met Brian De Palma when they both attended college, and went on to work with Brian on numerous projects that included "The Fury," and "The Black Dahlia!"
Deals are made between the devil and the dead!
The desk that Swan sits at for the auditions looks like a giant 7" 45 record! Hard to believe that millions of people today have no idea what that even is! Harder to believe is that two years before De Palma's "Carrie," Sissy Spacek was the Art Department set dresser for "Phantom Of The Paradise!"
Swan's number one act is The Juicyfruits, a moldable group of guys that morph easily from Doo-Wop to Surf to Death! Left to right are Archie (Eat Or Be Eaten) Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor in his only acting gig, but he did write some of the music for "Midnight Cowboy," and Peter (Disco Beaver From Outer Space) Elbling! In all my meanderings, this is the first time I've been able to reference The Firesign Theatre, and National Lampoon in the same caption!
You gotta love these thee guys, here they are again in their incarnation as The Undeads!
Next up is the fabulous Gerrit Graham as Beef! Gerritt would be irreplaceable in flicks like "Beware! The Blob," "Tunnel Vision," and "TerrorVision!"
How about a little role reversal on the "Psycho" shower scene?
We've been trying to cut back on our photos about a third, but Beef is so animated, I could have easily just shown you 20 shots of him and been done a whole lot sooner!
The supposed so pure and innocent love interest of Winslow is Jessica Harper as Phoenix! You'll remember Jessica from her starring role in "Suspiria" when Zillagord gets around to doing it one of these days! Another one of the weirdest things about "Phantom Of The Paradise" is that if I'm not mistaken, every person I have mentioned so far is still alive and kicking to this day! That's not something that happens too often around here!
When Beef goes down, it's finally time for Phoenix's star to shine, before she is dragged down into the quagmire of despair known as Swan's world!
I told you this wasn't a comedy, and as you can well see for yourself, it's no laughing matter, nor was I kidding!!!
I took a class on the films of Jean Renoir many, many years ago, and if there was one thing I learned, it was that movies don't have to necessarily be just comedy or drama, that they can be like real life, funny one minute and tragic the next. That pretty much sums up this cross between "Faust" and "The Phantom Of The Opera!" Yeah, and no happy ending neither!
For some reason unbeknownst to even ourselves, we have been chosen by some unseen law of nature to review every gorilla movie ever made!! I guess it's just the mystique of the monkey suit! There's really only one thing you need to know about "The Bride and the Beast," and that is that it was written by Ed Wood! There you go, like I said, what else could you possibly need to know?
Just to prove a point, here's some comics gorilla wallpaper I made for you! It gives you a good idea how popular gorillas have been in pop culture over the years!! The music for "The Bride And The Beast" was composed by the great Dungeon Maestro Les Baxter, who did virtually hoards of Poe and Surf films for AIP over the years, one of my favourite's being "Panic In The Year Zero!"
Here's the happy newlyweds! Lance Fuller as big game hunter Dan Fuller, and his blushing bride Charlotte Austin as Laura Carson Fuller! Lance Fuller's first role ever was as a villager in "Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman!" 12 years later he'll have a co-starring role as Brack in the iconic "This Island Earth!" Next up for Lance were Dungeon classics "Voodoo Woman," "She-Creature" and a "Twilight Zone" episode where Lance played a character named Ogram Gatewood! Lance was married to blonde bombshell Joi Lansing for almost three years, and that must have been just enough, because he never got married again! Charlotte was named after her birthplace, Charlotte, North Carolina. She was also in two other primate flicks, "Monkey Business" and "Gorilla At Large!"
Dude's such a big shot, he's even got his own street named after him!
Age old come-on line, "Hey, I've got a monkey down in the basement, wanna see it?"
After a face to face, the gorilla decides to get a little friendlier! He's firm, but never more aggressive than some drunk on Hollywood Boulevard! 
Hell, you can't sleep in 1958, what else are you going to do but get up and have a cigarette! I used to watch my Dad do this all the time!
Lance doesn't seem to have any problems sleeping! There are two things very bothersome about this shot! Number one, they are supposed to be on their honeymoon, and number two, what the Hell is that, a kid's bed? Looks to be about a half a twin!!
The gorilla also couldn't sleep, breaks out of his cage, and decides to pay a little visit to Mrs. Fuller, and he's just a little bit more curious than your normal every day simian! Sniff, Sniff!
Always the party pooper, Lance wakes up and puts a couple of slugs in his pet!
Lance brings in William (Space Patrol, Trauma) Justine as Dr. Carl Reiner to analyze his wife's dreams, and they discover that she was a gorilla in another lifetime. Now that's original Eddie, but considering that the doctor is Carl Reiner, I suppose anything is possible!
Jeez, I almost forgot to include this shot from the negative dream sequence!
"I'll bet she's pretty wild in the sack, eh boy?"
This doesn't look like something you could get away with these days!
The Fuller's head off to the jungle, and the most exciting thing that happens in the whole movie, the deadly poisonous spider stomping sequence!
Fuller's houseboy and guide is Johnny Roth in his only ever appearance on celluloid!
The man in the gorilla suit was a guy by the name of Steve Calvert! Steve was a former bartender that lifted his last name from a certain brand of whiskey! Steve was a gorilla in a number of features that included "Bride Of The Gorilla," "Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla," "The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters" and even the gorilla robot alien in "Target Earth!" 
Steve Calvert eschewed credits, hoping that just maybe the audience would think he was a real gorilla! Looks to me like he was really kicking Lance's ass!
I sure don't remember this part, but then, that's Hollywood!!
