Saw Phantom of the Paradise (thanks, Lea!) It was a very messy musical. Loosely based on Phantom of the Opera, it has a struggling composer who is abused by an evil music mogul. In response, he becomes a twisted but sympathetic Marilyn Manson and takes on the evil mogul, John Denver. The film is crazy and campy, one moment a gay guy is outrageously mugging and hamming it up, the next moment a lanky ghoul is screaming in a robotic voice. Very strange, almost abrasive, best enjoyed as a sort of wild ride. Very operatic in its simplicity of motivation and convolution of plot, very theatrical too. There is a theme of birds which doesn't really go anywhere (although it does imply things will work out for a certain character.) It has the trappings of class which it flaps about as great gaudy set dressing to the central spectacle.
It's very pulpy and fun though, don't get me wrong. It's a screaming mess, but not a snotty mess like the Troma films often are (this is not a Troma film, btw. It's a De Palma.) There are scenes that seem custom-designed for airbrushed murals, plastered across buildings. There's a German expressionist song at one point that's just amazing. It's huge and as a result kind of grand but unwieldy. It has some 70s ickyness too. The gay guy is just an "outrageous" symbol of the excess of musicians and women are kind of treated as sex objects throughout (I believe the anti-feminist backlash was fully underway at this point.) Then again the central female rebels against this but then-again-then-again later succumbs to the devilish charm of John Denver.
So this film hit me in a pretty sweet spot. It's not a great or brilliant film, but it's fun and strange and would be good at a party. It's a film that knows very well how ridiculous it is and plays that ridiculousness to the pompous hilt. Not a comedy, but ridiculous none-the-less.
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