Phantom was a financial disaster, partly because it mocked the very audience it seemed aimed at, partly because it skewered the chilly nihilism of America in the mid-70s. But a small minority – most famously Pauline Kael in a lengthy New Yorker review – saw the energy, inventiveness and wit behind its scattergun technique. It gradually gained a cult following, initially in late-night double bills paired with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Young Frankenstein.

Brian De Palma's "Phantom of the Paradise" is a very busy movie.Among other things it attempts to be a put-on of "Faust," "The Phantom of the Opera," "The Picture of Dorian Gray," rock music, the rock music industry, rock music movies and horror movies.The problem is that since all of these things, with the possible exception of "Faust" (and I'm not really sure about "Faust"), already contain elements of self-parody, there isn't much that the outside parodist can do to make the parody seem funnier or more, absurd than the originals already are....Almost redeeming the movie is the rock score, by Mr. Williams, and the comic orchestrations that trace the evolution of rock from the duck-tailed, surfing nineteen-fifties and sixties to the seventies and the triumphant emergence of androgyny....Almost any A.I.P. "Beach" picture or Vincent Price horror film, being the real thing, is funnier.

Brian De Palma's glam rock version of the famous 'Phantom of the Opera' story stars singer-songwriter Paul Williams as Swan, a music business tycoon who steals the work of talented composer Winslow Leach (William Finley), along with his girlfriend Phoenix (Jessica Harper). Leach plans to get revenge, but his plans soon go horribly wrong and he ends up with a terrible facial disfigurement. Assuming a mask to hide his injuries and his identity, Leach's next move is to sign a pact with a Swan to write a rock opera version of 'Faust'.