SUSPIRIA 1977
Crimson Dreamscapes: Dancing Through the Witch’s Labyrinth in Suspiria
Trying to write a quick tribute to Suspiria is a bit like stepping into one of its crazy hallways—full of twists, insanely vivid colors that scream at you, and a bit of Giallo mystery. It’s not the kind of movie you can just dip your toes into; you have to jump right into the madness and music. So hang tight with me, because I’m not just writing about Suspiria; I’m figuring it out as I go, moving with the rhythm and the wild energy of Argento’s phantasmagorical film. There’s a lot more to say, and I’ll be back with the full story soon.
Suspiria isn’t a film you watch so much as experience, a feverish ballet – literally – spun from light, sound, and nightmare logic under the spell of Dario Argento’s hypnotic visual style. Here, the very first step Jessica Harper’s Suzy takes into Freiburg is like the opening of Pandora’s box: rain thrashing, Argento’s camera carving through the night, Goblin’s score thundering like a ritual heartbeat.
Argento, steeped in the legacy of Italian maestros like Mario Bava, inherited a vivid visual language in which mystery and color weave together to tell stories that are as much about mood as they are about plot. This influence has rippled through generations of directors.
Argento, himself a master of the lurid and the uncanny, crafts a world where every corridor seems to pulse with secrets and every color, eyeblinding reds, bruised purples, and cavernous blues, threatens to bleed off the screen and into your psyche.
The journey opens with Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), an American dance student, arriving in Germany to attend the prestigious Tanz Akademie. From the moment she exits the airport, she is thrust into elemental chaos: howling wind, relentless rain, and a cab ride through a vacant city, watching along the way, the deep woods that feel more Grimm Brothers than real geography.
Joan Bennett cuts an unforgettable figure in Suspiria as Madame Blanc, blending old Hollywood glamour with a distinctly sinister poise. Her style is the essence of controlled elegance, with her sharp cheekbones, expressive eyes always a little too perceptive, and coiffed hair that signals both refinement and authority. Swathed in richly tailored clothing, she commands the academy’s ornate halls with every crisp gesture, her elegance (as always with Bennett) bordering on the imperious.
Bennett’s look is at once inviting and forbidding, a living relic from a more opulent era, but one whose friendliness flickers with calculation. Her performance glides between maternal concern and icy detachment, often flashing a sly, enigmatic smile that leaves you guessing about her true intentions. Each line she delivers is carefully weighted, her voice smooth and cultured, but always tinged with the threat of power just beneath the surface. You can’t help but sense that she’s someone you should never dare to cross, and if you did, it would be nothing short of perilous. In Suspiria, Joan Bennett’s Madame Blanc becomes the embodiment of decadent authority, coolly charismatic, meticulously styled, and exuding an air of mystery that deepens the film’s fairy-tale menace. She is the calm at the center of Argento’s storm of color and chaos, her presence lending gravity and intrigue to every scene she dominates and haunts.
Alida Valli casts a formidable shadow in Suspiria as Miss Tanner, the school’s head instructor. She is a figure both striking and austere, commanding every room with her severe poise and bracing authority. The flash of those white teeth of hers, that cruel smile, like a silent threat, razor-edged and unforgiving; a warning that beneath that smile lies the danger of being torn apart. Valli’s sharp, sculpted features are amplified by a crisp blazer, a tightly wound updo, and a gaze that mixes strict discipline with a flicker of almost gleeful intimidation, giving her a presence that’s at once iconic and unsettling. While others in Argento’s labyrinthine academy exude baroque elegance, Miss Tanner feels like living iron: upright posture, crisp movements, and a voice that slices through chaos as she drills the students with military resolve. Her style is meticulously restrained, no-nonsense, tailored, almost androgynous, elevating discipline to an art form. Valli definitely imbues Tanner with an air of controlled menace, as her eyes flash with a crazed intensity that hints at both sinister delight and unwavering commitment to the school’s mysterious order. Rather than mere villainy, her performance is textured with a sense of pride and sadistic glee, suggesting someone who relishes her role as both guardian and enforcer of the academy’s secrets. In the vibrant expressionistic nightmare and distorted reality of Argento’s world, Miss Tanner becomes the embodiment of institutional power turned menacing, her elegant but icy demeanor injecting every encounter with a theatrical tension. Through Valli’s singular screen presence, Miss Tanner lingers in the memory: a warden with immaculate posture, a sardonic smile, and a chillingly cheerful devotion to the rules of a haunted house that devours its own.
The walls of the academy are not just backgrounds but breathing entities, dizzying with their ornate Art Nouveau curves and impossible stains of red and green, an architecture of unease that cinematographer Luciano Tovoli molds into a living, predatory organism. Luciano Tovoli, the renowned cinematographer who shot Suspiria, has a distinguished filmography spanning decades and many acclaimed titles. Notable films he has worked on include: his acclaimed collaboration with Michaelangelo Antonioni for The Passenger 1975, recognized for its striking and contemplative visuals, and he shot Bread and Chocolate 1974. He also shot Tenebrae 1982 for Dario Argento, which features the clean, modernist look that distinguished Italian Giallo thrillers of this era. He’s worked with director Barbet Schroeder on his Reversal of Fortune 1990 and again with Schroeder on Single White Female 1992, a film that is recognized as a defining erotic and psychological thriller of the early ’90s, notable for its intense character study and unsettling portrayal of identity theft. What sets it apart is how it ushered in the shift of stalking narratives where a woman stalks another woman, breaking away from the more typical male-on-female dark pursuit narratives and expanding the cinematic conversation around obsession and psychological breakdown.
Argento’s genius lies in his orchestration of set piece after set piece. Crafting dreamlike, baroque tableaux that captivate with haunting beauty and unsettle with profound intensity, Argento’s imagery transcends storytelling to immerse us all in a fable-like nightmare that digs into primal fears and subconscious myths.
The opening is a vivid illustration of modern horror: Suzy glimpses Pat Hingle, a terrified student, fleeing the Tanz Akademie after discovering the sinister secrets hidden within the school. She runs off into the storm-soaked night, through the woods, her words lost in the thunder. Right from the start, Suzy seems like a child awakened within a nightmarish bedtime story. Pat seeks refuge at a friend’s apartment in town, and is then ambushed and gruesomely murdered by a shadowy figure, stabbed multiple times by the gloved killer, and has her head forced through a stained-glass sunburst, which is a visual aria of stylized violence. Each frame is painted in hues so intense they threaten to combust. She is ultimately hanged by a cord wrapped around her neck when her body crashes through the stained-glass ceiling.
Argento’s violence isn’t merely shocking; it’s seductive, choreographed with the same relish and precision as the dance themes in his film.
Within the secret story of Suspiria, the witches are part of a legendary trio known as The Three Mothers (“Le Tre Madri” in Italian), a mythic concept woven through Dario Argento’s trilogy: Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), and Mother of Tears (2007). Each “Mother” is an immensely powerful, ancient witch, and together, they’re referred to as the Three Mothers both within the films’ lore and by fans and critics. Their mythic names and roles are: Mater Suspiriorum (Mother of Sighs): The central antagonist of the original Suspiria, she is revealed to be Helena Markos, the founder of the Tanz Akademie in Freiburg. She is the oldest and wisest of the three, known as “The Black Queen.”
Mater Tenebrarum (Mother of Darkness): Introduced more broadly in Inferno 1980, (which I warn cat lovers, there are horrible scenes of cruelty and harm to cats), she is the youngest and most cruel of the sisters, ruling from New York. Mater Lachrymarum (Mother of Tears): The most beautiful and powerful, her story is primarily explored in Mother of Tears 2007, and she rules from Rome. Only Mater Suspiriorum (Helena Markos) is directly featured in the original Suspiria, but all three concepts and mythic names are confirmed in the sequels and expanded lore. The mythology itself draws inspiration from Thomas De Quincey’s essay “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,” which describes three personified sorrows: Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum, and Mater Tenebrarum.
Harper’s Suzy is both ingénue and steely survivor, a softness that never slips into passivity. She floats through the phantasmagoric school, eyes wide to every bizarre ritual: the strict Madame Blanc, the cryptic Miss Tanner, and a staff who tiptoe between elegance and menace. Each morning brings new dissonance: Suzy collapsing, strange maggots raining from the ceiling, friends disappearing, reality itself warping with each step down the Technicolor labyrinth.
No moment is wasted: Daniel, the blind pianist, banished after his service dog attacks the wicked little Albert, Madame Blanc’s nephew, meets his doom in the deserted plaza. In a chilling twist, Daniel’s dog, seemingly possessed by an evil force connected to the witches’ coven, attacks and kills Daniel himself by ripping his throat out. Here, Argento lingers, the empty square, the dog’s sudden frenzy, the swooping camera mimicking unseen evil. Goblin’s electronic sorcery ratchets up the tension, their music both a prophecy and a curse. It’s more than an accompaniment; it slithers, it chants, it pounds, embedding itself into the film’s DNA to the point where you half-suspect Goblin’s spells are as powerful as those cast by the school’s unseen Mothers from Hell.
Colors here are incantations, with Argento and Tovoli turning every scene into a painting: the swimming pool’s cerulean glow; the saturated reds of the academy’s secret chambers.
When Suzy’s friend Sara tries to escape, pursued through tilted corridors and pools of color, the sequence becomes a waking nightmare, her breath echoing, her shape obscured by shadows, her death as bizarre and baroque as anything Argento ever filmed. Sara’s death scene in Suspiria is a tense and haunting sequence that unfolds with mounting dread. After uncovering suspicious notes left by Pat (the first victim), Sara tries to investigate the academy’s dark secrets, but her efforts are cut short. While fleeing through the school, she is chased by an unseen assailant and eventually cornered in the attic. Attempting to escape, Sara climbs through a small window only to fall into a pit filled with razor wire like coiled metal snakes, which entangle her. Helpless and trapped, she is then mercilessly slain by the attacker, who slashes her throat, leaving her to bleed out and die.
Later, Suzy discovers Sara’s disfigured corpse hiding inside a room beneath the academy. In a chilling, supernatural moment, the coven reanimates Sara’s corpse to attack Suzy, heightening the horror before the climax. Sara’s death, both brutal and symbolic, underscores the relentless and mystic danger lurking within the Tanz Akademie.
The dance academy is filled with an eerie assortment of odd characters. Franca Scagnetti (credited as Cook) stands squat and unyielding—a sinister figure whose cold gaze sharpens with secret malice, as if she’s waiting to poison the soup with nothing more than a single, venomous stare. The intimidating giant Pavlos’s mute presence, along with his strange, false teeth, makes his lurching and gaze feel both menacing and mysterious, hinting at the dark secrets hidden within the academy. Pavlos often watches Suzy with a fixed, unsettling intensity that hints at his threatening nature beneath his silent exterior.
Gradually, Suzy uncovers the truth: the school is a coven for witches, presided over by Helena Markos—a name whispered with reverence and fear. The climax becomes a delirium, reality distortion as Suzy, drugged into near-paralysis by the staff’s daily milk, resists, discovers Markos’s lair, and confronts the invisible High Priestess.
Suzy unlocks the cryptic puzzle to enter Helena Markos’s hidden chamber by recalling a whispered clue about “three irises” and a secret key. She turns a blue iris painted on a mural in Madame Blanc’s office, which triggers a hidden door to open, revealing a narrow, shadowed passage. Following it cautiously, Suzy discovers the secret room where the school’s dark heart beats—the lair of Helena Markos. The chamber is dimly lit, filled with eerie symbols, and suffused with an atmosphere of oppressive dread. As Suzy approaches, she hears the uncanny, labored breathing behind a curtain and sees the silhouette of Markos, setting the stage for their chilling confrontation.
This unsettling sound signals the presence of Helena Markos, the academy’s sinister founder. When Suzy moves the curtain, she only sees the surreal dark silhouette, who then taunts her with an invisible, ghostly, malevolent presence. The silhouette, flickering in and out of view amid flashes of lightning, conveys a haunting and intangible terror. Markos’s figure looms ominously, a spectral force.
Suzy vanquishes Helena Markos by stabbing her through the neck with a broken glass quill from a decorative peacock. As lightning flashes, Markos’s invisible silhouette becomes visible in its full decrepit form, writhing in pain before succumbing to death. The final confrontation is an assault of light and screaming color, a peacock feather of death, a knife, a corpse, a storm swelling as the old world burns behind her. Suzy flees, free and forever changed, stepping out into rain-slicked freedom as Goblin’s music rises, leaving us breathless. Argento’s direction is a dance itself: precise, theatrical, yet wild-eyed. He’s supported by a cast that breathes enigmatic life into every turn.
Harper is extraordinary, her porcelain delicacy offset by flashes of will and defiance, always the emotional center as the world tilts further into fairy-tale terror. The supporting players, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett, and Udo Kier (widely regarded as a cult star), playing Dr. Frank Mandel, an occult expert and former psychiatrist, with an epic, Gothic presence and impressive stature, their performances carry an arch and knowing intensity.
Suspiria’s impact is indelible, driving a stake into the polite restraint of earlier Gothic horror and giving birth to a new baroque, aggressively sensual cinema. Here, horror isn’t something to be shied from, but something to bask in like a pool of warm blood, every color turned up, every note from Goblin’s synths pierces your skin, every image vibrating on the edge of delirium. Argento gives us a world where beauty is dangerous, magic is real, and dread is a velvet ribbon threading through every glowing frame. The result is alchemy—pure, terrifying, and absolutely spellbinding alchemy.
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE 1974
I’ll be pairing Phantom of the Paradise with Suspiria at the Last Drive-In because both masterpieces feel like dropping a velvet curtain over the world and stepping into a dreamscape where every shadow aches and every song and score is a spell. For me, it won’t just be a Jessica Harper double feature, though that’s tribute enough—it’s a communion, a secret gathering at the crossroads where haunted melody and midnight terror conspire. These films mark out the borders of my own artistic landscape as a singer/songwriter: I grew up worshipping at the altar of classic horror, chasing the elegant ghosts of Universal and the shadowplays of RKO’s Val Lewton, but later the odyssey of these twin wonders, gripped me with their Gothic spectacle each held aloft by Harper’s quiet, otherworldly presence.
Phantom of the Paradise isn’t just a film—it’s an Operatic fever, a burst of electric longing, where Paul Williams’s music wraps around you like a glorious shroud and refuses to let go. The first time I heard Jessica Harper’s voice, pure, aching, luminous, I felt something inside me unspool. Here was a film that wasn’t afraid to pour agony into glamour, to turn every heartbreak into a power chord, every glittered costume into a confession. As a singer-songwriter, that kind of alchemy stopped me in my tracks: the old monsters and haunted mansions I loved still remain, yet now crisscrossing with the music that shaped who I am. Back-to-back, these two films are a conversation between pain and beauty, dread and desire. Phantom spins its web with rock Opera bravado, dazzling and sharp and wild, while Suspiria coils its magic in silent corridors and enigmatic colors, yet Harper is the silken thread that binds them, whispering that real transformation often lives in the quietest parts of our longing.
For anyone who’s ever sought solace in music or found themselves entranced by the glow of a haunted screen, this double feature is a rite of passage. It’s a testament to the possibility that horror can be beautiful, and that the right song—or the right scream—can carry you all the way home, as the night deepens outside. So don’t leave your seats, the stage is set at The Last Drive In for an upcoming feature.
Wings of Glam and Ruin: Spiraling Into Phantom of the Paradise:
Phantom of the Paradise 1974 is a delirious Faustian mosaic, electric hallucination conjured by Brian De Palma—a rock Opera stitched from fragments of Faust, Phantom of the Opera, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but utterly singular in style and tone. From the first moments, the film vibrates with energy, each scene sculpted by De Palma’s restless camera and the introspective and melodic songwriter Paul Williams’s mercurial score. The soundtrack of Phantom of the Paradise is a diverse, stylized musical journey crafted by Williams, blending genres from ’50s rock ‘n’ roll to glam-rock, quirky surf-rock, and lush, tragic, mournful ballads, cabaret style, and dark blues. Each song acts as a vivid character piece that drives the film’s dramatic color.
Phantom of the Paradise creates an absurd and wildly entertaining world with a glam-rock twist on the Phantom of the Opera mythology, where every heartbeat of the film and its characters syncs to music and desire, where innocence is torn to shreds by machinery, and where every costume is a mask hiding wounds and fading dreams. You feel that haunting ache beneath all the spectacle of evocative, wounded glamour.
The film is an utter masterpiece, combining Gothic fantasy-horror with caustic satire and some of the most beautiful, vivid cinematography by Larry Pizer, marked by a vivid contrast between rich, deep shadows offstage and vibrant, saturated colors onstage, creating a dynamic visual world that pulses with energy and mood. He skillfully uses chiaroscuro lighting, striking color palettes, and inventive camera angles, like low-angle shots and fish-eye lenses, to emphasize the film’s operatic, surreal, and sometimes grotesque atmosphere, conveying a neon-70s aesthetic fused with eerie thriller style. Phantom of the Paradise is a nihilistic satire of music and commodification that functions as a cautionary tale about corruption and fame, not to mention a biting indictment of the music industry.
The song, Old Souls, lingers with me, Jessica Harper’s voice unraveling memory and longing like silk in twilight, each note a gentle ache, the song haunting my heart as if it were stitched from pieces of my own dreams and regrets. Every time I hear Old Souls, it’s like Jessica Harper is singing straight through the wiring of my own heart, her voice soft enough to stop the world. It’s a lullaby—wistful, haunted, timeless.
I’ve always been drawn to Paul Williams. And, it’s not just me. He is iconic. A beloved and well respected songwriter, his work is bittersweet, possessing that beautiful loser pathos, a quality that brought both warmth and a heart breaking melancholy to songs like We’ve Only Just Begun, and Rainy Days and Mondays (Roger Nichols wrote the music and Williams penned the lyrics ) which was a major hit for the Carpenters in 1971. Those exquisite lyrics that the gentle radiance and intimate tone of Karen Carpenter’s voice breathed velvet warmth and quiet ache into and made the music sigh with life and longing. Talk about singing straight through the wiring of your heart, broken or otherwise.
Williams also wrote Rainbow Connection for the Muppets and co-wrote several songs for the 1976 film A Star Is Born, most notably conjuring the lyrics to Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born) with Barbra Streisand, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. That song, through Streisand’s transcendent voice, simply slays me every time I hear it.
Paul Williams’s songs didn’t just ride the wave of the 1970s; they pressed their thumb right on its pulse. The guy’s music could make you feel seen, whether you were belting out the hooks alone in your car or humming along softly in the kitchen. His music doesn’t just tug at my heart; it rips it wide open, drags every raw, aching piece out into the light, and leaves me drowning in a flood of pain and longing. Williams’s magic was his sensitivity. His introspective, emotionally rich lyrics and unforgettable melodies not only shaped the spirit and sound of that era but also proved that true artistry and vulnerability could rise to the top of the charts.
Jessica Harper’s striking yet approachable: large, expressive eyes, delicate features, and a softness that evokes both innocence and a kind of classic, fairy-tale beauty can’t be overstated. Her acting style is naturalistic and quietly magnetic, a quality that has made her a cult favorite and a memorable presence in some of the most visually arresting films of the 1970s and ’80s. Critics and fans alike have noted her “regular-girl charm” and “wide-eyed girl-next-door appearance,” which lend her a relatable vulnerability, but beneath that surface lies a subtle strength and intelligence that grounds even the most surreal stories. Harper’s performances are marked by a gentle, almost minimalist approach. She conveys emotion through nuanced facial expressions and body language rather than melodrama, making her reactions feel authentic even in the most bizarre circumstances.
Phantom of the Paradise fuses both these dynamic elements — Paul Williams’s raw, heartbreaking songwriting with Jessica Harper’s haunting, luminous presence and voice to tell a story where music and madness collide in a dark, unforgettable swirl.
Wings and bird imagery run right through Phantom of the Paradise, from Swan to Phoenix, the names alone make it clear this story is all about transformation, flight, and the kind of rebirth you can only find when you’re caught between the stage lights and the shadows.
The bird imagery pops up everywhere in the Phantom’s sharp, owl-like or falcon-esque mask, signifying his transformation into something both predatory and spectral. Phoenix rocks her feathered jacket onstage, and Beef (Gerrit Graham), the glam-rock singer, struts around with this crazy, rooster-inspired tail. Even Swan can’t resist, showing up in bird-print shirts now and then. It’s like every character gets swept up in this strange, swirling world of transformation and flight. Bird symbolism is further etched into the branding of Death Records, Swan’s label, which uses a dead songbird as its logo. This morbid twist foreshadows the toxic machinery of Swan’s empire, a place where beauty and music (and the birds they evoke) are ultimately doomed.
This obsession with wings and birds is not only a surface style but also an allegory: the three central characters, Winslow (the Phantom), Swan, and Phoenix, are all undone by their ambition, a nod to the myth of Icarus and the dangers of flying too close to the sun. The bird imagery reinforces themes of transformation, aspiration, and doomed flight, the fate that awaits anyone seduced by the Paradise.
The bold, colorful, and flamboyant costumes were designed by Rosanna Norton, who collaborated closely with actor William Finley to create the Phantom’s iconic owl-like mask and futuristic bondage-inspired costume featuring leather and buckles. The costumes transform the cast into living avatars of decadence, corruption, and longing.
These costumes fly between glam rock spectacle and Gothic excess, glittering and unsettling, woven with equal threads. The Phantom himself wearing that black leather bondage suit and a silver owl-falcon mask that fuses S&M futurism with plague-doctor hauntings, transforming him into a night creature both tragic and threatening.
The stage of the Paradise is a riot of visual invention, with feathered jackets, sequins, and outlandish glam make-up turning every performer into a baroque icon or a fallen idol. Phoenix’s feather-trimmed stagewear conjures mythic rebirth, like her legendary creature, who rises from the ashes. While Beef’s over-the-top glam looks verge on self-parody, it is a shimmering, hyperreal display of doomed ambition. Even Swan’s entourage, in Death Records tees and serpent brooches, shimmer like phantoms of stardom flickering at the edge of nightmare.
These costumes are not just threads and sequins but theatrical masks, dazzling shells concealing wounds, desires, and monstrous metamorphoses. Each look is a living metaphor, shimmering on the edge of excess and collapse, a fantasy world of identity creation and playful sensuality, where everyone is both masquerader and sacrifices. Norton’s work on the film marked an early point in her career; she later became known for her Oscar-nominated designs for Tron and has also worked on notable films such as Carrie, Airplane!, Gremlins II, The Flintstones, and Casper.
Distilled to its heart, Phantom of the Paradise is about a songwriter named Winslow who gets his music—and his life—stolen by a ruthless producer named Swan (Paul Williams). Winslow’s quest for justice turns him into the Phantom, haunting Swan’s theater and trying to protect Phoenix, his muse and the singer he believes should be a star.
We step into the story through Winslow Leach, a shy, passionate composer. His music, an epic cantata on Faustian themes, sets the stage, catching the ear of the elusive impresario, Swan. Swan is all shadow and myth, a string-puller so rarely glimpsed that his very presence warps the air of the Paradise, the club he’s about to open. Winslow’s music is stolen; he’s discarded, then railroaded into prison. All the while, the world is set aflame by pop churn: bands like the Juicy Fruits, doomed to surf Swan’s rises and falls, shift through styles like borrowed clothes, a funhouse mirror of the music industry. These bands rapidly and superficially adopt different musical styles without genuine originality or identity, which satirically reflects how the music industry often pushes for constant restless trends and commercialization rather than authentic artistry.
Winslow’s transformation into the Phantom isn’t just a plot twist. His transformation is a horrific incident of grotesquerie, a brutal, nightmarish twisting of flesh and fate that shatters his humanity and forges the monstrous Phantom. Spun out of pain and twisted luck. He’s desperate to get his music back from Swan, but instead, he’s framed and left broken. The moment everything changes comes when Winslow tries to sneak into Swan’s record factory by night, hoping to sabotage the place and steal back his own voice. But fate is cruel: he gets caught in a machine, and a record press slams down on his face, mangling him, leaving him half-blind, half-mad, and voiceless.
The record press scene where Winslow’s face is crushed is such a stark display of cinematic brutality in its unflinching physicality and excruciatingly explicit violence. The relentless mechanical precision, the sudden eruption of chaos, and how visceral it is — the shattering of flesh, the erasure of identity, converge to create a moment of raw shock, with its graphic realities of bodily harm. For me, this sequence stands out as one of the film’s most unyielding bursts of horror and a testament to both De Palma’s willingness to startle us and the genre’s ability to disturb us on a profoundly gut level.
He stumbles out, wounded and desperate, and disappears into the darkness, only to be reborn in the shadows of the Paradise theater. Now, part man, part myth, he cobbles together a cape and that fierce, birdlike mask to hide his ruined face. The pain, the betrayal, and that desperate longing for justice all fuse together, transforming him from Winslow Leach, the hopeful songwriter, into the Phantom, a haunted, vengeful presence stalking the catacombs of Swan’s empire, his music echoing his heartbreak for all to hear.
De Palma, always the gleeful magician, crafts scenes that zigzag between the grotesque and the ecstatic. Winslow’s escape from prison is a cascade of humiliation and violence, including brutal dental surgery straight from the Inquisition. His final transformation comes at the cost of his very face, pressed and mangled in an industrial accident at Swan’s record factory. Bloodied and mute, Winslow emerges as the Phantom, donning a silver owl mask and a cape, stalking the Paradise’s labyrinthine backstage world. De Palma wields split screens and lurid lighting not just as tricks, but as an invitation: step inside the dream, the nightmare, the fantasia.
Every moment hums with Paul Williams’s music, a chameleonic parade that skewers and celebrates pop. Tracks leap from the doo-wop pastiche “Goodbye, Eddie, Goodbye” to sun-bleached surf (“Upholstery”), to the swaggering, camp anthem “Somebody Super Like You,” and finally to shattering ballads like “Faust” and “Old Souls.” The soundtrack, perhaps some of Williams’s finest work, is not just background, but oxygen. It colors every frame, ricocheting between cynicism and William’s signature sentiment, longing, never more so than in “Old Souls,” where hope shimmers just out of reach.
Phoenix, played by Jessica Harper, in her first major film role, is the wounded angel at the film’s heart. Harper brings an uncanny blend of fragility and determination: her voice is crystalline, real, and achingly full of hope. As Phoenix, she navigates De Palma’s minefield with wide-eyed grace and steely resolve, her performances so psychologically charged you almost flinch. Her audition, murmured quietly to herself, is the film’s first truly honest moment, a voice that fills the room without ever straining. Phoenix’s journey is both a meditation on the cost of innocence in the machinery of spectacle and a showcase for Harper’s subtle, haunting charisma. Her music, particularly “Special to Me” and “Old Souls”, acts as both balm and spell, the beating heart beneath the film’s satirical skin.
The plot’s wild pirouettes propel us from scene to scene: Winslow, now Phantom, attempts sabotage with dynamite; Beef, the preening glam rocker, gets a death by electric guitar in a scene as absurd as it is operatic; Phoenix is snatched from innocence for the Paradise’s main stage. At every turn, De Palma punctuates the grotesque with slapstick, gore with grandeur, his camera always in motion, split screens fracturing reality like a disco ball.
The film crescendos with Swan’s ultimate betrayal. Phoenix, lauded as the Paradise’s star, is seduced and corrupted, just as Winslow feared. In a surreal finale, contracts written in blood—literally—bind Phantom and Swan to each other’s destruction. The Paradise becomes a true carnival of ruin: musical hits, murders, fame, and death all tangled up together as Paul Williams’s songs turn from ecstasy to requiem. Winslow’s and Swan’s fates play out on stage under the glare of spotlights, fantasy and reality collapsing together, a masquerade ball drenched in spilled secrets.
De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise is both a love letter and a poison pen to the music industry, a tale of masks and betrayals where the most beautiful voices are always at risk of being silenced or stolen. It’s a work of wild invention, brimming with satirical bite and genuine sorrow. The film leaves you dazed, reeling in the memory of lights, sounds, and sins, wondering if you’ve survived the spectacle!
