Remastered CD reissue.
12-page CD booklet with liner notes by Daniel Schweiger.
Limited Edition of 1000 units.

In collaboration with Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation, Music Box Records proudly follows their IFMCA award-winning release of Bernard Herrmann’s 1976 Oscar-nominated score for Obsession by now going back to his collaboration, one that relaunched his career as well as boldly announcing a new Master of Suspense. Almost forgotten when editor Paul Hirsch was inspired to use Psycho as temporary music, the resulting collaboration between him, filmmaker Brian De Palma and Herrmann showed just how much diabolically inventive energy was left to his talent with 1973’s Sisters.

Weathering the storm that the legendarily combustible musician brought to this tale of an innocent model and her possession by a seemingly dead twin (both played by Margot Kidder). The result of Herrmann’s outraged inspiration was one of his great, theme-filled scores. Particularly striking as it brought a new Moog electronic sensibility to join with his symphonic swings between romance and terror, Sisters once again brought the composer into the Hollywood eye while joltingly announcing the arrival of a stylistically fresh, homage-filled auteur of modern suspense cinema.

With Sisters’ complete scoring session elements proving lost after an exhaustive search in collaboration with the Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation, Music Box Records has painstakingly remastered the original CD edition to reprise its original album program with a knife-striking, bell-ringing orchestral malice that no mad doctor can rend asunder. Extensive liner notes by Daniel Schweiger (Obsession) features a new interview with Paul Hirsch on the turbulent scoring process with Bernard Herrmann that brought an iconically thrilling legend back to Hollywood life. The CD release is limited to 1000 units.

Mary-Ann Vaillancourt was 10 years old when the film premiered. She remembers coming to the now-defunct Garrick Theatre with friends to watch it.

"I stayed for two shows," she said. "And I did it again the next weekend. And I did it every weekend that I was allowed to come out."

Vaillancourt was one of the hundreds of people who showed up for the latest "Phantompalooza," a local event that, this year, marked the film's 50th anniversary.

Craig Wallace, a member of the Phantom 50th committee, said the two planned screenings of a restored version of the film sold out in a day and a half. A matinee, also featuring a Q&A with cast members, was added to meet the demand.

"Winnipeg has brought a lot of people from other provinces here, and they see what we see," said Dean Hunter, singer with Phantom tribute band Swanage, who's also on the committee.

"They might be from all over the world, but they love this movie as much as we do. And we just like to share it with them."

The celebration brought back a lot of memories for fans who attended the matinee Saturday.

Betty Moroz, from Garson, Man., was 14 when she first watched it.

"I thought it was kind of freaky back then," she said, but it stuck with her.

"It's very powerful, very moving. The music, the love and, what you would do for love. Anything for love."

"I have two copies at home," said Stephanie Starr, who came to the screening with her family.

"We love it. We've seen the movies many times before. And of course, you got to get the merchandise, right? I got a couple of buttons."

For other Winnipeggers like Tom Glenewinkel, the matinee was the first time they've actually seen the film.

"Everybody knows all the words to everything," Glenewinkel said. "It was just a great movie to watch, and just to be part of the experience of everybody enjoying it and getting into it."

Vaillancourt brought a C.D. of the movie's soundtrack to the matinee and newspaper clippings about the film she kept with her over the years. V She hoped to meet Paul Williams — star and composer in the film — who decades ago replied to her fan letter. V "'Dear Mary-Ann, thank you for your letter telling me how much you enjoyed Phantom.… P.S. I think I've only seen the movie about four times myself,'" Vaillancourt read, saying that at that point she'd seen the film about 10 times already.

"He made my whole day and my whole summer," she added. "The music is still phenomenal now, and I still listen to it if I want to just be able to sing along, every single word."

Fargeat has always gravitated towards a smorgasbord of different genres, including “action, Westerns, horror, body horror, sci-fi, fantasy”. The filmmaker tells me that she adored “everything that allowed me to go outside of reality and be in a world where the rules were different and were a great window to creative, often crazy imaginations. It goes from the first Star Wars trilogy to the movies from [David] Cronenberg, which had a big impact on me.” She also cites Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop and the surrealism of David Lynch: “They all played specific roles at different ages of my life, building my imagination and my way of envisioning the world.”

Growing up in France, Fargeat recalls feeling “quite bored” and that everyday life was “inadequate”; the entertaining adventures and “sense of rebellion” in genre films provoked “strong emotions, whether it was fear, passion, thrill… I was feeling alive.” Dark comedy played a large role in her cinematic coming-of-age as well, particularly the silent satire of Charlie Chaplin. “It’s really two legs that I have with me,” she says. “The more genre, imaginative one, and the more satirical comedy—which is also something that creates strong emotions.”

In The Substance, satire converges with body-horror to metaphorically metamorphosize into its own beast. Fargeat lists Cronenberg’s The Fly as a definite inspiration for the literal metamorphosis featured in her film, as well as the enduring imagery of the blood tsunami pouring out of the elevator in The Shining, and, of course, the climactic prom scene from Carrie. (While the filmmaker admits that she hasn’t yet seen Society, it’s now on her watchlist since so many people have mentioned it after witnessing her penchant for grotesquely organic practical effects).

“All those movies, filmmakers have seen the work of other filmmakers who’ve digested what they’ve seen and what other filmmakers did,” Fargeat says. “I love the fact that there is some kind of common creativity somewhere that each one redigests in its own way, with its own world and its own theme. I truly believe that we are, in the end, the result of what we watch, what we read, what we’re exposed to, and all of this lives with us… We are growing ourselves, feeding ourselves from all those influences, whether they are conscious or unconscious.”

"I JUST GOT CAUGHT UP IN THE VIBE THAT IS BRIAN DE PALMA"

A great read over at Bloody Disgusting: "The Phantom Lives: An Oral History of ‘Phantom of the Paradise’" - including these nice bits from Paul Williams:

I had become friends with Liza Minelli. Liza was going up to Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe to play Harrah’s for a month. And she said “I want you to open for me.” I’m doing two shows a night with nothing to do during the day and I’m writing the songs. I had my road band with me. And my road band is the one that played on the Phantom soundtrack, on Bugsy Malone. We became so close that I’d walk in and start singing something and they’re playing chords behind me. And I could walk in and go “Okay, we’re doing a Beach Boys thing. Bum-ba-ba-da-bum… Upholstery.” And all of a sudden, it’s sounding like a Beach Boys record.

Because we were fans of the music that we were satirizing – certainly all of us knew it well enough to recreate it. I had never written anything like “Somebody Super Like You” or “Life at Last”. But I just became a member of a rock and roll band. I became a member of a metal glam band. And the script is the bible. And the script was very fluid and it was developing along the way, and I just got caught up in the vibe that is Brian De Palma. Something happened and it came out of me musically.

It was so much fun, as you can imagine. And Brian seemed to embrace this total, very uncharacteristic for him sentimental side. I remember putting this little piano thing in when Bill is dying. And Brian said “Oh my god. There won’t be a dry eye in the house.” And my side of it is “And let’s show a really good closeup of the face in the record press.” It’s like we traded personalities during the shoot.

There's another very nice tidbit from Paul Williams included in Laurent Bouzereau's latest book, The De Palma Decade:

Larry Pizer was the great cinematographer on the film, but Ronnie Taylor, who became an Academy Award-winning DP with Gandhi [1982], was the camera operator. He did that amazing handheld shot from the point of view of the Phantom, which starts outside the Paradise, goes backstage, up the stairs, and ends inside the wardrobe storage room where he selects his leather outfit, finds the one-eyed mask, and puts it on, literally, over the lens of the camera. This was done in one shot before the Steadicam [existed], and it is spectacular.