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If you put every horror-tinged musical on a word map, chances are Phantom of the Opera and The Rocky Horror Picture Show would take up a good amount of the space. Against these cinematic goliaths, no film evokes gothic horror in a fun, freaky, and uncannily prescient way quite like Phantom of the Paradise.

Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise tells a distressingly common music-industry horror story. At the top of the music industry mountain sits Swan (Paul Williams), the world’s leading music producer. Almost all the movement and shaking in the biz came from his meddling and genius, starting with his on-the-nose label, Death Records, and the boy band the Juicy Fruits. But like any mogul, Swan was in search of a new wave—a new sound that could usher in his latest frontier, “the Paradise.” If AI existed in the 70s, you could bet your ass Swan would tap all of life’s water supplies dry just to pump out new songs. Luckily, he doesn’t have to wait for technological advancements to steal music. Swan plagiarizes the old-fashioned way. Enter songwriter Winslow Leach (William Finley).

Leach is a starving artist distilled into a beanpole of a man. Believing he’s finally gotten his lucky break when his sound catches Swan’s attention, Leach makes the star-struck error of a lifetime: he gives Swan his cantata.

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