Dumpster Raccoon: PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974)

Dumpster Raccoon – BACK TO THE BEGINNING 2025

To celebrate SEVEN SPECTACULAR YEARS, Toronto’s acclaimed Dumpster Raccoon Cinema is going BACK TO THE BEGINNING all summer long with a triumphant rescreening of its FIRST THREE FILMS! Join us for the disasterpiece trilogy that started it all and set the delirious tone for all the lunacy that was to come, as we visit three phenomenal, hyper-melodic pop-art sci-fi fantasies – FLASH GORDON (1980), BARBARELLA (1968), and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974)!

SEE the GREATEST ROCK OPERA MUSICAL that NO ONE REMEMBERS (except DAFT PUNK) – featuring some of the BEST POP SONGS EVER WRITTEN by one of the UNSUNG MUSICAL GENIUSES of the 20th CENTURY, by one of CINEMA’S GREATEST FILMMAKERS, and with SETS DRESSED BY…SISSY SPACEK??? OK SURE!!!

Musical genius WINSLOW LEACH (William Finley) has written the work of a lifetime – a cantata telling the story of FAUST – and it is an unmatchable masterpiece. There’s only one problem: he has zero charisma and even less business sense. Enter SWAN (Paul Williams, also the film’s composer and author of every Muppets song you know) – the unbridled, Mephistophelian impresario who has found the perfect voice (Jessica Harper, fresh from the dance academy of SUSPIRIA) and the perfect setting – the custom-built rock palace The Paradise – that will take Winslow’s score to unimaginable heights – and leave Winslow in the gutter along the way. Disfigured, despairing, ruined, and voiceless, Winslow dies – and something terrible replaces him to haunt the Paradise where his opera will debut, and a disaster beyond imagination will occur.

A camp masterpiece that deserves all that ROCKY HORROR got and more, Brian De Palma’s PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE was, like its hero composer, misunderstood and ignored, opening and closing the same week across North America – except in Winnipeg, where it ran uninterrupted for four months, and except for two boys who met at a screening and let the film and its composer shape their aesthetic and sound for decades to come – two boys who became DAFT PUNK. 

See one of the greatest musicals ever made, and one of programmer Anthony Oliveira’s favourite movies of all time – THE PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE!

With SPECIAL LIVE PERFORMANCE, video preshow by host Anthony Oliveira, and cocktails by the Shameful Tiki Room! Sponsored by Bay Street Video!

Part of the Dumpster Raccoon series!

Cast/Crew Info
Director: Brian De Palma | Cast: William Finley, Jessica Harper, George Memmoli, Gerrit Graham, Archie Hahn