In 1974, Brian De Palma released Phantom of the Paradise. It’s a difficult movie to classify. It’s been classified as a horror/musical or a rock musical comedy horror film. The studio didn’t know how to market it so the advertising was minimal. In most places, it came out, and quietly closed quickly.
Except in Winnipeg.
In Winnipeg, it ran for 18 weeks at the Garrick Theatre. It continued to run off and on through 1976 for a total of 62 weeks. The soundtrack album sales, in Winnipeg alone, were 20,000 and this pushed the album to a Gold Record status in Canada.
The movie was rated as PG or Parental Guidance – which meant that you were supposed to get your parent’s approval to see it if you were underage. But, back then, that didn’t mean much at the ticket office. The next rating up, PA or Parental Accompaniment would have meant that you would need a parent with you if you were underage.
This was also the time when they would not empty the theatre between showings. The idea was that, if you came late, you could stay through the next showing to catch the part that you missed. This also meant that you could stay for repeat showings with one ticket.
I was too young when it came out and I didn’t catch it in the theatre like many others here did. I did see it for the first time on late night TV when it appeared and I certainly had friends whose older siblings had the album. When I was much older, I got the CD, and later the DVD. It was a film that my young daughter watched several times at a probably inappropriate age, along with Tank Girl. She liked the music in both of them.
Even though the movie did not do well traditionally elsewhere, it had it’s influences on many other things – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the KISS/Alice Cooper makeup, Darth Vader’s outfit, as well as Guillermo del Toro, and Daft Punk.
It has also had a few celebrations up here where they have played the show on the movie screen, as well as bringing up some of the cast. Because of this, this is now the movie that I have most seen in the theater – with 4 viewings.
They just had the 50th anniversary, and brought up much of the cast that was still alive. In addition, they ran a documentary, Phantom of Winnipeg, the night before the celebration, and had Kevin Smith there to answer questions. It seems the director of the documentary is a very good friend of his and he came up to support him.
For more info, you can also check out this site – with more of the history, or even the wiki.
