On Halloween 1974, 20th Century Fox released Phantom of the Paradise, a campy musical comedy lampooning the tropes and conventions of the horror genre. Less than a year later, the same studio released The Rocky Horror Picture Show, another campy musical comedy lampooning the tropes and conventions of the horror genre. Both received negative reviews on their initial release, which led to disappointing commercial returns. But where Rocky Horror quickly became a sensation on the midnight movie circuit, Phantom of the Paradise was a box office bomb everywhere except Winnipeg and got swept under the rug of American cinema. Rocky Horror is still playing on the big screen somewhere in the world at any given time, nearly 50 years after its premiere, giving it the longest-running theatrical release in the history of film, while Phantom of the Paradise remains an underappreciated gem.
They’re both great movies that mix their offbeat genre cocktail with the perfect dose of campness, but Rocky Horror had the benefit of arriving after Phantom had already bombed at the box office. Fox learned the right lessons from Phantom’s commercial failure, which allowed Rocky Horror to become a hit. Since Phantom had generated good word-of-mouth in spite of its harsh critical reception, Fox targeted Rocky Horror’s marketing and exhibition at the kind of niche cult audience that would dig its tongue-in-cheek horror satire and ignore the negative reviews. The strategy worked a treat and Rocky Horror, unlike Phantom of the Paradise, became the cornerstone of cult cinema it was destined to be.
De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise script has a much more engaging story than The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The meandering plot of Rocky Horror is a hodgepodge of B-movie clichés, with a young couple arriving at a haunted castle in the middle of the night, a mad scientist playing God to create life, and a UFO detective showing up to save the day. Phantom spins a more original yarn, revolving around a downtrodden artist, motivated by his love for an aspiring singer, fighting back against a slick record executive to have his music heard at a prestigious new concert hall. It doesn’t just have a more compelling, character-driven narrative than Rocky Horror; it also has a more specific satirical target. On the surface, it’s a parody of Phantom of the Opera, but its tale of a musician selling his soul for a record deal reimagines the Faustian legend through the lens of the crooked modern music industry.
But, while Phantom of the Paradise has a stronger script, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has a more memorable soundtrack. From “Dammit Janet” to “The Time Warp,” a lot of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror tracks have become beloved pop hits in their own right. But Rocky Horror’s soundtrack is let down by putting all its best songs in the first half-hour. The movie blasts through “Science Fiction Double Feature,” “Dammit Janet,” “Over at the Frankenstein Place,” “The Time Warp,” and “Sweet Transvestite” in its opening reel, then trudges through less revered numbers like “I Can Make You a Man” and “Planet Hot Dog” for the rest of the runtime. The Rocky Horror soundtrack is a great rock album, with or without its attachment to the film, and Phantom of the Paradise doesn’t have a soundtrack like that. But while Paul Williams’ Phantom music hasn’t made its way onto party playlists outside its connection to the movie, it does complement De Palma’s storytelling and visuals beautifully. The regular reprisals of the “Faust” song serve to musically symbolize Winslow’s transformation into the Phantom.
In the hands of a master like De Palma, Phantom of the Paradise is a better-directed movie than its fellow ghoulish rock opera. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was helmed by Jim Sharman, the director of the original stage show. The movie has some undeniably brilliant camerawork – like the unnerving handheld closeups in the death scenes, capturing the terror in a character’s eyes during their murder – but Sharman is a theater director first and a filmmaker second. He mostly shot the film adaptation of The Rocky Horror Show by pointing a camera at the theatrical staging of the play. The majority of the movie feels like watching a stage musical on a screen. De Palma, on the other hand, is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in the world – especially in the genre space – and Phantom of the Paradise exhibits all his signature stylistic trademarks: split-screens, point-of-view shots, pitch-black humor, and an abundance of Hitchcockian homages (including an even more absurd subversion of Psycho’s infamous shower scene than High Anxiety).
From Susan Sarandon as Janet to Meat Loaf as Eddie, Rocky Horror has more star power than Phantom of the Paradise. It’s narrated by the great Charles Gray, previously seen as Blofeld and later seen as Mycroft Holmes, while Tim Curry gives one of the most iconic performances in movie history as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. But Phantom arguably has stronger acting across the board than Rocky Horror. De Palma mainstay William Finley plays Winslow Leach and his alter ego “The Phantom” as a relatable underdog; a tragic hero turned into a monster in a freak record-pressing accident. In addition to providing the soundtrack (and the Phantom’s singing voice), Paul Williams offers a spot-on portrayal of the sleazy record producer archetype in the villainous role of Swan. In her feature film debut, three years before her career-making turn as Suzy Bannion in Suspiria, underrated scream queen Jessica Harper brought real humanity to Phoenix’s quest for fame.
One of Phantom’s biggest advantages over Rocky Horror is that it knows when to end. Winslow kills Swan, then succumbs to his own mortal stab wound, and finally reconciles with Phoenix before dying – cue the end credits. Rocky Horror, on the other hand, drags its ending out for much, much longer. The movie reaches its natural climax when Frank awakens Rocky in his lab and bludgeons Eddie to death. But then it becomes a sex farce, and then there’s an awkward dinner scene, and then the characters put on a show within the show, and then Frank gets a scenery-chewing death scene (which, admittedly, Curry knocks out of the park, giving this flamboyant “mad scientist” caricature a true look of fear in his eyes during his final moments). Even after Riff Raff and Magenta have revealed that they’re aliens and the entire castle has been launched into space, Brad and Janet sing another number in the smoke that remains.
Like EDtv and The Truman Show, The Wanderers and The Warriors, and The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, Phantom of the Paradise and The Rocky Horror Picture Show will always be connected to one another by their shared subject matter and release window. Interestingly, Rocky Horror’s cinematographer Peter Suschitzky and Phantom’s editor Paul Hirsch worked on The Empire Strikes Back a couple of years later. And in the polarizing sequel to Rocky Horror, Shock Treatment, Phantom’s Jessica Harper took over the role of Janet from Susan Sarandon.
It seems redundant to choose a favorite between Rocky Horror and Phantom of the Paradise, because there’s nothing wrong with liking both. They’re both great rock operas with a pitch-perfect blend of the sinister and the silly, but Phantom is arguably the best-made movie of the two. Not only is Phantom of the Paradise more evenly paced than Rocky Horror; it’s better-directed and better-acted, too (although none of the performances in Phantom are as strong as Tim Curry’s turn in Rocky Horror). It’s great that Phantom of the Paradise has earned a cult following in the years since its disappointing initial release, but it’ll never reach the same cult status as the other campy mid-‘70s horror musical. Much like Winslow himself, Phantom of the Paradise is doomed to eternal damnation, forever remembered as Deep Impact to Rocky Horror’s Armageddon.