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Between The Girl Can't Help It and Tommy, Brian De Palma "dreams a bit of style," as the tune goes. Leroux adjusted to the acidic Seventies, also Goethe and Wilde and Poe, all grist to the mill of Death Records. The music mogul (Paul Williams) is the hipster-Mabuse behind the one-way mirror, he steals the "rock cantata" from the earnest songwriter (William Finley) whose visage is sizzled off in a record press. In leather jumpsuit and metallic mask he prowls "the ultimate rock palace," electronic filters take care of his mangled voice. A contract unites the opponents, one's tragic love is another's facile conquest, the ingénue (Jessica Harper) has no qualms about being corrupted. "The karma's so thick around here, you need an Aqua-Lung to breathe." The artist swindled and deformed is the fear of a radical filmmaker facing mainstream compromise, all too aware of how easily transgression can be packaged and sold to a public with increasingly sadistic appetites. History of music, history of cinema—doo-wop nostalgia onto beach-bum inanity onto glam-rock morbidity, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari onto Touch of Evil onto The Manchurian Candidate. The prima donna is a glittery strutter who takes a plunger to the kisser in the Psycho shower and earns the loudest applause when being electrocuted on stage, a rollicking caricature by Gerrit Graham. "You better get yourself a castrato, 'cause this is a little out of my range." Corrosive anger and ecstatic imagination, monstrous erudition and freakish wit, De Palma's expressionism. The private world of close-circuit video, the ultimate spectacle of murder on live TV. "That's entertainment!" The orgiastic finale is already Carrie, with an audience too caught up in the euphoria of the show to realize the blood is real. Cinematography by Larry Pizer. With George Memmoli, Archie Hahn, Jeffrey Comanor, and Peter Elbling.
--- Fernando F. Croce |