El fantasma del centro comercial

One of the cornerstones of low-budget cinema is taking a well-known, classic storyline and making a complete bastardization out of it. Phantom of the Mall is no exception to this rule. The screenwriter takes the enduring Phantom of the Opera storyline and moves it into a late '80s shopping mall. However, the "Phantom's" goal now is simply to get revenge upon those responsible for disfiguring his face and murdering his family. The special effects do provide a good chuckle, especially when body parts begin appearing in dishes from the yogurt stand. Pauly Shore has a small role which does not allow him to be as fully obnoxious as one would expect, mostly due to the fact that his fifteen minutes of MTV fame had not yet arrived. If you're looking for a few good laughs at the expense of the actors and special effects crew, check this flick out. Otherwise, keep on looking for something else.

OK, first of all this is pure unadulterated 80's cheese. The shoulder pads are massive, the hair is massiver ( is that a word? ) and the fashions are gross. The plot is ludicrous, Eric's house was burnt down and they built a mall in it's place. So like some homeless ghoul with a vocoder ( you'll know what I mean when you hear his voice ) he haunts the mall. The movie has some great kills a car chase and explosions. There's a bad guy that looks like George Michael from the Faith video. Morgan Fairchild is in it how 80's is that. A few highlights are Eric takes one guy out with a series of roundhouse kicks and he lasso's a guy. The girl in peril has so many dream sequences she may be narcoleptic, each one is accompanied buy the same power ballad. Unfortunately Pauly Shore is in this movie, but he isn't doing that annoying voice that he started doing later in his career. Joy of joys, after the thrilling climax there is a song on the credit sequence about the film. Great fun. I loved it.

This movie was not made for 80s audiences but for future audiences to relive the vibes of the 80s. As a 1980s hyperreal fetish object it is superb. It's why a lot of b-movies from the time have become treasured, but even among a lot of them, the DTVs, the slashers, the Empire films, this is a step up. You start with that Gothic will work no matter what. Every time it cuts from mall settings to the phantom, you are getting cinema. Crawling through air ducts, piecing things through security cameras, these are all details in Gothic noir. Even better that Pauly Shore is there. In recreating a 1980s fetish object directors would certainly put him in their movie, not to say anything of his artistic significance, it is just like palm trees in California.

The camera cannot be cheated. It is a strange facet of cinema that you can go to the ends of the earth, to strain on screen, but then just, mall, gothic, Pauly Shore, the film exists in the simplest way, and works nicely. If I am underselling it to say lower your standards, it is more to have no standards at all and look at it more like an audio-visual National Geographic exhibit of the "mall". I read both essays in the package of the Arrow Video set, and both are focused more on the death of the mall, rather than the film itself, and this concept of the mall, yes it is extremely nostalgic and packed with emotion for an audience. I take more for why this works, the Phantom of the Opera, the Gothic shorthand. Of course it will end with gore, people on fire, the entire mall exploding in glorious fashion. But with the death of the mall, it takes on a double meaning. Gothic always knew the pain the suburbanite, of the 80s/90s kids, our nostalgia, loss and sorrow in great economic change. Gothic knew. This is just one of the films that made a very intellectual association in combining these subject, as we age to become haunted Gothic figures ourselves.

Dont be put off this film by the star rating or the tacky movie title. I collect 80s B- movie classics and i quite enjoyed this movie. Its about a girl who starts a new job in a mall and is still traumatised over the death of her boyfriend(Eric)and evidence keeps on showing up that makes her believe he may still be alive. He protects her when she is in danger, and goes on a murderous rampage. The Fx arent fantastic but the story is quite interesting and the acting is reasonable, (ive seen worse). So if you can find a copy catch it if you can!

My review was written in May 1989 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

Horror movie cliches get a ho-hum airing in "Phantom of the Mall", a sleep-inducing effort which generates camp humor only in its ridiculous final reel, probably too late for most fans.

Mayor of Midwood, California, Morgan Fairchild, inaugurates a new shopping mall, but a masked figure stalking the airshafts starts killing people. His main target is pretty young waitress Kari Whitman, who in her nightmares is convinced the killer is her dead boyfriend Eric.

Rather strained script contrives an additional killer plus a couple of nefarious villains. Visual references to the "Phantom of the Opera" don't come off, and the phantom's makeup job is poor and unscary.

Final reel features some effective stuntwork and breathless pacing, with the deaths and twists sadly coming so fast that it's funny. If only helmer Richard Friedman had turned up the throttle earlier. (Producer Tom Fries is credited with directing additional footage.)

Kari Whitman makes an empathetic heroine, but her flashback sex scenes are poorly shot and use of a nude body double is obvious. Fairchild has little to do until the slambang finale, while rest of the cast is adequate.