One of Brian De Palma’s most atypical films is also one of his best, a riotous horror-comedy-musical which De Palma claims was written as early as 1969 and which certainly existed in script form before the superficially similar The Rocky Horror Show was first staged in London in 1973. It was a box office flop when it first opened (it might have benefitted from opening after the film version of Richard O’Brien’s musical when audiences might have been more in tune with its weirdness) but has since become a firm cult favourite.

The story mixes and matches bits and bobs from Faust as well as from Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera. An uncredited Rod Serling lends his distinctive voice to the opening narration before we meet singer-songwriter Winslow Leach (William Finley) who has been working on an epic musical version of Faust while working for 50s revival band The Juicy Fruits (Archie Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor, and Peter Elbling), the biggest act on Death Records owned by the charismatic and Svengali-like Swan (Paul Williams). When Swan hears Winslow playing his music, he decides that the musical would be the perfect curtain raiser for his new rock venue, The Paradise and has his enforcer Arnold Philbin (George Memmoli, whose character is named for Mary Philbin who played Christine in the 1925 film version of Phantom of the Opera) to steal it. Outraged, Winslow tries to sneak into Swan’s home but is arrested and sent to – where else? Sing Sing. Six months later, he escapes but after trying to destroy the records made of the musical is horribly disfigured by a pressing machine. Stealing a costume from the show, he becomes the Phantom of the Paradise, falling for young singer Phoenix (Jessica Harper) and almost killing The Beach Bums, the Beach Boys-like act that The Juicy Fruits have turned into. Swan offers him the chance to complete his life’s work, rewriting his cantata with Phoenix in the lead. But Swan turns out to be an emissary of the Devil and after signing away his soul finds that Phoenix is to be replaced by preening glam rock prima donna Beef (Gerrit Graham). As opening night approaches, Winslow starts to plan his final revenge on the demonic Swan…

De Palma’s screenplay is a multi-barbed satire taking aim at the fickleness of pop music trends (The Juicy Fruits transform again, into Alice Cooper-like shock rockers The Undead who mutilate their audiences with guitars fashioned in scythes), the venality of the music industry and the sheer absurdity of 70s glam rock. And it strikes most of its intended targets, skewering the wild world of 70s rock in general while often being very funny indeed, any cracks in the narrative being nicely papered over by its sheer verve and unbridled energy. Crucially, the songs are pretty decent too – they many not be quite as memorable as the ones in Rocky Horror but Phantom has the better structured story and doesn’t run out of steam part way through like The Rocky Horror Show.

It’s full of the stylistic tics we’d become used to from De Palma, including camera that swirl through 360°, a Psycho (1960)-inspired shower scene and the use of split screen. None of this is as annoying here as it could be in subsequent films, fitting perfectly with the increasingly mad scenario and the general air of anarchy. He’s never been a particularly subtle or restrained director and for once his more lurid and outrageous tendencies work in the film’s favour.

The cast are excellent. Finley is great fun as the unhinged Winslow but is outgunned by Williams who is surprisingly effective as the manipulative Swan and Harper (in her first feature) who gets some scene-stealing musical numbers and is terrific as the morally ambiguous Phoenix. She succumbs worryingly easily to the lure of fame and gives in to Swan’s advances solely to advance her career, no matter the impact it has on the devastated Winslow, transforming from audience identification figure to ruthless, ladder-climbing opportunist. It was a bold move that works, throwing us off balance as the film careers towards its climax. But the show is well and truly stolen by Graham who is hilarious as the prissy Beef, strutting and arrogant on stage, a demanding diva off it, an “opening night prima donna”. Riffing on the ever-changing public personae of David Bowie, it’s the performance of Graham’s career and his death scene – electrocuted by a neon bolt of lightning hurled by Winslow, is a highlight.

It’s a good-looking film too, not only beautifully shot by cinematographer Larry Pizer but featuring some eye-catching set design from Jack Fisk (whose wife Sissy Spacek acted as his set decorator – she would later take the title role in De Palma’s Carrie (1976)). If the interior of the Paradise seems a little less than lavish, the Faust rock opera features Caligari-inspired stage designs, a backing band handy with the guitar-scythes and a Frankenstein-like birth scene for Beef’s character

The film ran into a number of legal issues, not the least of which was that originally Swan’s record label had been called Swan Song. Unfortunately for De Palma and producer Edward Pressman, Led Zeppelin had just started their own label, also called Swan Song, and legal action forced De Palma to change it to Death Records. As the film had already been completed, this meant some very shaky optical effects covering up the original logo – this is evident in shots of Swan’s office building, but particularly an optical that jitters around alarmingly on the podium from which Dwan delivers a press conference at the airport. But even this somehow feels of a piece wit the film, a moment of extra surrealism in a film that never stops being bonkers from beginning to end.

It has its faults – a bird motif runs through the film but is never really explained or adequately explored and it’s hard to believe that an emotionally charged rock crowd, driven to a frenzy by Beef’s on-stage death, could be so easily placated by Phoenix’s pleasant but decidedly un-rock and roll MOR ballad – but overall, it’s a magnificent film. Silly, funny, thrilling, bitingly satirical and wonderfully acted, the whole thing is a hoot. Even at a remove of four decades, it works – the satire might have been blunted by time but the energy, the songs and the sheer madness of it all remain infectious. De Palma may have gone on to make weightier films that performed better at the box office, but few of his films were as much fun as Phantom of the Paradise.