The movie that Edgar Wright thought did glam rock better than ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’
From the moment that those disembodied lips appear on the screen and perform ‘Science Fiction/Double Feature’, you know you’re in for a cinematic experience unlike anything else. The Rocky Horror Picture Show then descends into pure camp brilliance as Tim Curry steals the show as the suspender-clad, corseted Dr Frank-N-Furter.
Yet, Edgar Wright thinks that as far as glam rock horror comedies go, there’s one that’s way better than The Rocky Horror Picture Show, an opinion that is sure to ruffle some feathers; Jim Sharman’s movie is so beloved that it seems criminal to criticise. Perhaps if Wright attended a fancy-dress screening of the classic musical, where he could belt out ‘Sweet Transvestite’ to his heart’s content and do ‘The Time Warp’ with a crowd of heavily made-up musical theatre obsessives, then he’d have a newfound appreciation for the film.
However, at the moment, the Shaun of the Dead director is adamant that the film actually sags mid-way, explaining, “I always kind of felt like Rocky Horror Picture Show had like a great first half and then completely loses it in the second half.”
Instead, he much prefers Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise, a campy satirical look at the 1970s rock scene, complete with outfits that even someone like David Bowie couldn’t dream up. It’s one of Wright’s favourite movies, and he boldly claimed, “I always thought it was much, much better but less famous than Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
While Phantom of the Paradise isn’t exactly an underground film, it’s much less well-loved than other De Palma hits, like Carrie, Scarface, or Mission: Impossible, and when it comes to glam rock musicals, The Rocky Horror Picture Show always seems to be declared the greatest, not only for its musical performances but for the influence its costumes had on punk, too.
You’ll have to do a lot more than that to convince Wright that it’s better than Phantom of the Paradise, though. Discussing his love for the movie, he called it a “really atypical De Palma film because it’s a rock opera and, you know, a ’70s music satire. Paul Williams, who plays Swan, a kind of Phil Spectre-ish kind of Svengali, wrote all the songs in the film, and there’s some amazing ones, particularly the end credit song, which is called ‘The Hell of It’. I think I saw this first on TV in the UK, and I taped it off the TV, and I would play ‘The Hell of It’ over and over again until the tracking wore out on my VHS.”
It seems like nothing can deter Wright from his all-consuming love of De Palma’s underrated camp musical, which is admittedly not something that many people were expecting from the director when it was released in 1974, just one year before The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For the Baby Driver filmmaker, Phantom of the Paradise is “an absolutely incredible film”, arguably capturing the glam rock zeitgeist with more satire and social commentary. It’s not got the genius of ‘Sweet Transvestite’ to show for it, though.
