The Phantom of Hollywood

The famed MGM back lot is home to a million memories of movies gone by. It's also secret home to a masked killer who goes on the rampage when the lot is threatened with redevelopment.

Inspired by the Phantom of the Opera, this is an interesting thriller that melds the sinister with moviemaking nostalgia. You sort of feel sorry for the phantom who is trying to stop the backlots from being torn down. Well-photographed and located, the phantom of Hollywood is atmospheric, fun and boasts a tour de force performance from Jack Cassidy.

Trite story of "phantom" who lives on the back lot at a Hollywood movie studio (MGM actually) in a cave. He gets nasty when the studio sells off the acreage and starts destroying the old sets.

TV movie with a few name stars has Peter Lawford as the studio head, Broderick Crawford and John Ireland as cops, Peter Haskell as the studio PR guy, Jackie Coogan as a film editor, Jack Cassidy as a photo archive guy, and Skye Aubrey as Lawford's daughter.

Cameo appearances by Regis Toomey as a guard, Billy Halop as an engineer, and Kent Taylor and Corinne Calvet as the "premiere" add nothing to the story.

The 70-year-old phantom, racing around the lost makes no sense. When they start to bulldoze the sets, the fall down like the cardboard and plywood they are. The real sets might have been only facades, but they were built out of real building materials. It's almost funny to hear the sound effects as the cardboard sets fall down.

The most interesting part of the movie is the use of movie clips. We see some real special effects from SAN FRANCISCO, Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, Jaen Harlow and Marie Dressler in DINNER AT EIGHT, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, Greta Garbo and John Barrymore in GRAND HOTEL, Mickey Rooney in YOUNG TOM EDISON, and clips from THE WIZARD OF OZ and the silent version of BEN-HUR (complete with roaring crowds!). There are passing mentions of John Gilbert and Joan Crawford.

The acting is terrible and the make-up is even worse. Hard to believe they spent money on re-mastering this for a DVD release when so many real classic films are sitting on shelves in archives.

The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Worldwide Studio has fallen on some hard times so a decision is to made to sell its back lot to some developers, which will bring in some much needed cash but at the same time it would take away from historic nature. This doesn't sit well with a mysterious figure who starts murdering people on the lot.

This here is basically a remake of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with the main interest being that "Worldwide Studio" is actually MGM. Yes, MGM is the back lot that is used here and some of the most interesting moments happen early on when we see how some of the sets currently look and then we get a clip of the movie that they were once featured in. We get some pretty fascinating scenes doing this and there's another section where some of the MGM classics like SAN FRANCISCO, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY and GRAND HOTEL are paid tribute to.

As far as the rest of the film goes, it's a pretty routine murder-mystery but at the same time there's a nice cast that helps keep the film moving even if its 74-minute running time seems a bit longer. I actually really liked the look of the killer as well as his choice of weapon. They really did seem like a costume from the 1930s and as I said we also get a nice cast. Jack Cassidy, Jackie Coogan, Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Peter Lawford and Kent Taylor are all fun to watch here and certainly add to the entertainment.

There have been so many remakes and ripoffs of "The Phantom of the Opera" that they all tend to blend together, though the made-for-TV "The Phantom of Hollywood" carries the distinction of showing us the end of an era taking place as we watch. It follows the original story fairly closely, but translates it to a Hollywood movie studio that is on the verge of selling off its backlot property to developers, since nobody uses the ramshackle sets anymore. The studio in question is called "Worldwide," but it is really MGM. It was filmed at MGM, it utilizes old film clips from MGM classic movies, its music score is peppered with classic songs from MGM films, and there's even a reference to Andy Hardy's house on the backlot, "Andy Hardy" being a long-running MGM series. Why they didn't call it MGM and be done with it is anyone's guess. As for the plot, a mysterious hooded figure living under the backlot desperately fights against its destruction, because it is his home. Who he is, and why he is hiding, is all part of the mystery. "The Phantom of Hollywood" is not a spoof, though it has its humorous and ironic moments, and a few standard clichés found in all films set in a movie studio, such as the ubiquitous shot of exotically dressed extras wandering around in between the soundstages, and the fact that none of the film executives ever seem to do any actual work. There is also an in-joke in making leading lady Skye Aubrey the daughter of the studio head, since Aubrey herself was the daughter of James Aubrey, the head of CBS, which aired the picture. It features a good cast of veterans, including Peter Lawford, Jackie Coogan, Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Corinne Calvet, Regis Toomey, Kent Taylor, and even former Dead End Kid Billy Hallop in a bit. Peter Haskell is the nominal hero and Jack Cassidy, in heavy makeup, plays the mysterious studio historian...could he be the masked killer? Well, not really; the mystery goes a little deeper than that. While it has its creepy moments, the film isn't all that scary. The real horror is watching the old, very recognizable MGM backlot sets being bulldozed to the ground on camera. By this point in time nothing could have saved them, but for film buffs, it's a bit like watching a snuff film. But that is the whole point of "The Phantom of Hollywood"...that era of movie-making was by that point as obsolete as a silent film.

This is, frankly, a rather awful movie.

Despite that, however, it is (as some other commenters have noted) a very interesting piece for anyone who enjoys old movie history or wants to learn a little bit more about it. The shots of MGM's back lots and the clips from a plethora of classic movies are nostalgia-provoking even in the layman, and it's hard to avoid a little tug at your heartstrings when the sets are destroyed at the end of the film.

Beware, however, to those who are looking for a Phantom of the Opera retread: this will likely disappoint you. Very few of Leroux's original ideas survive, since the Phantom here is a vehicle to show the destruction of old Hollywood rather than a story point unto himself. There's no love story and no examination of social morals, and the things that do carry over are mostly reworked to suit the new purpose of the film.

That said, the dialogue is terrible, the action cartoonish and in some cases outlandishly unrealistic, and the plotting slipshod. It's not Plan 9, but it's definitely not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're a die-hard Phantom of the Opera fan, feel free to add it to your collection (though it's extremely hard to find nowadays), but the real reason to watch this film is to reflect on the milestones of the film industry and to watch the last moments of a bit of movie-making history before its destruction. Even if the writers borrowed Leroux's framework for their story, it is all about Hollywood and its legacy.