La vengeance d'Eric

A new mall is opening in the San Fernando Valley, but it has dubious beginnings, which might explain the mysterious psycho lurking its nether regions (Derek Rydall). Morgan Fairchild plays the mayor while Jonathan Goldsmith is on hand as the greedy mall owner; Pauly Shore appears as an employee and Rob Estes a reporter.

"Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge" (1989) takes the milieu of "Chopping Mall" (1986) and inserts the Phantom of the Opera story with bits of De Palma's "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974). It's comic booky 80's horror with almost a (cheesy) superhero approach, although things turn insane in the last act.

Kari Whitman is a highlight on the feminine front as protagonist Melody while Kimber Sissons is on hand as statuesque Suzie. Of course, Morgan is her usual striking self.

The film runs 1 hour, 31 minutes, and was shot at Promenade Mall in Woodland Hills (also used in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High") and Sherman Oaks Galleria with studio stuff done in Valencia, all in the Los Angeles area.

GRADE: B-/C+

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.

Though I suppose it would be well possible to make a better movie about a shopping mall version of the Phantom of the opera, to the best of my knowledge no one ever has. Unless you count "Gremlins 2: The New Batch", on account of the fact that it featured a Phantom themed Gremlin. I don't count this though, so let's move on. Not only is "P.O.M" (as I shall now call it) the best movie ever to place the Phantom in a mall, but it is also the greatest (IE: only tolerable) Polly Shore movie ever made. This movie being made in 1988 before Polly Shore was famous enough to be allowed to act like Polly Shore in a film. Another nice touch is the fact that the front doors of the Mall are labelled "Mall Entrance." Really I though they were the entrance to something other than the building they're attached to like the magical world Narnia or something. Anyway the real draw of this film is it awesome musical theme. It's reminiscent of a better day when almost all movies had a rock'n song about their plot at the end, under Hollywood's "well it worked for Ghostbusters" policy. The song boldly dares to use such controversial terms as "Boobs" and "Retard". Point being if your not doing something productive to uplift the human spirt (which if you're reading my review on "The Phantom of the Mall" you and I both know you aren't) rent and watch this hidden jewel of cinema and make Mr. Polly "The Free World's Punching Bag" Shore a couple pennies richer. Go ahead, I dare ya!

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.

"Phantom of the Mall" follows a young teenage girl whose boyfriend died in a house fire. A year later, property developers erect a shopping mall on the land. Soon after, a series of murders begin, as a shadowy figure seems to stalk the mall-goers, hiding in its labyrinthine air ducts.

While this late-'80s quasi-slasher is a low-stakes viewing experience, that doesn't mean it isn't a lot of fun. For many, there will be a big nostalgia factor due to the period fashions, and the overall atmosphere of the shopping mall at its cultural peak.

The story here is (needless to say) adapted from "The Phantom of the Opera," and the screenplay is riddled with silly dialogue and a pace that is often rambling. However, if you can abandon all pretenses, "Phantom of the Mall" is a lot of fun, full of great gags, a handful of bonkers (and reasonably gory) slashings, and a dramatic mall-tastic finale. The performances here are not great, but they are functional given the material, and there are a number of familiar faces, including Morgan Fairchild as the town mayor, and Pauly Shore as an eccentric frozen yogurt shop clerk.

Overall, this is a fun, frivolous late-'80s slasher flick that is perhaps more amusing as a time capsule than as a horror movie; however, even despite its clunkier elements, it remains an amusing and over-the-top rehash of a classic story. 6/10.