As the slasher craze was gradually bleeding out at the end of the decade, the 80s saw a couple of outlandish attempts to mould Gaston Leroux’s legendary horror novel, The Phantom Of The Opera, into something more… stabby. Not only did Dario Argento give us the highly sadistic Giallo, Opera, but Robert Englund gave the tortured soul a Freddy Krueger-style make over in Dwight H. Little’s gory rendition. However, possibly the most outlandish attempt to turn the Phantom into a masked murder machine was Phantom Of The Mall: Eric’s Revenge, a film title that certainly sounded like a sequel – but emphatically wasn’t.
Could the guy who brought us Doom Asylum manage to take Leroux’s masterpiece and give it a full, 80s makeover, complete with added gore, bitchin’ fashions and *checks notes* Pauly Shore? I guess it’s time to take a trip to the maul.
A flashy new mall has opened and while Melody and her friend, Suzie, try to score jobs on opening day, the young teen is in to minds about the whole thing. I mean, earning a wage in 1980s America is a totally responsible thing to do, right? But how is she supposed to reconcile the fact that the mall was built over the burnt out ruins of her boyfriend’s old home after he and his family roasted alive while she watched? Still, that was a long time ago and while the trauma of Eric’s highly suspicious death still haunts her, Melody has managed to mostly overcome her demons and is even making goo-goo eyes at hunky reporter, Peter. You go girl!
However, some boyfriends are pretty hard to shake, and Eric proves to be no exception as it turned out that he survived the fiery inferno that consumed his home and his partly char-broiled ass has been lurking within the sewers beneath the mall, plotting revenge while practicing sick martial arts moves and popping into the mall every so often to steal supplies or murder the occasional security guard.
After realising he has a manic prowling his mall after a body ends up in his desk, unscrupulous mall owner Harv Posner does his best Mayor-from-Jaws impression and keeps things quiet as not to harm his future political chances, but after a bit of digging, Melody and Peter realise that Eric’s “death” may not have been the freak accident they once thought (no durr). However, while the crispy Eric his having a whale of a time avenging his own death, he’s also a couple of cans short of a six pack and has a deep, obsessive need to get Melody back even though she has moved on and he could win a Two-Face lookalike competition hands down. Brace yourself, becausecas the tag line says: prices aren’t the only things that are going to be slashed.
While fans of the original story – or even that bloody musical – will no doubt be horrified what Richard Friedman has done to a beloved classic, smearing a shit-load of valley girl schtick over a gothic masterpiece proves to be weirdly endearing in a goofy, throwback kind of way. That’s not to say that Eric’s Revenge is some sort of forgotten masterpiece – holy shit, far from it – but for such a silly idea, the filmmakers actually try to make it stand out. For a start, the shifting of the tale from an opera house to a mall proves to be a something of a good fit, with Eric’s motives and practices merging stunningly well – be it him crafting a classic Phantom mask from the face of a mannequin, or lurking in a subterranean lair, listening to Stan Bush cassettes as he pines for his unobtainable love. While an argument could be made that the sheer mallability of Leroux book is what makes this possible, credit has to go to the filmmakers who just simply could have phoned this shit in. Another nice touch is that Phantom Of The Mall was filmed in the exact same shopping centre where they filmed that other consumerist camp classic, Chopping Mall, and it would no doubt make a perfect double bill for those who like their 80s baked cinematic trash.
Now, I’m not saying that Phantom Of The Mall is a hidden treasure trove of excellence. The direction is simplistic and that acting is barely one step above what you’d normally get from an episode of Saved By The Bell, but that’s not the kind of things a movie like this is selling. For example, where else would you find a fledgling Pauly Shore doing his usual gormless act at the frozen yoghurt stand, or Morgan Fairchild herself as the typically glamorous mayor – and if you’re attuned to its silly wavelength, even it’s bad points (of which there are admittedly many) prove to be a source of amusement.
For a start, Die Hard wishes it had this much air vent footage, as Eric scampers around behind the scenes like that season of Community where Chang lived in the crawl spaces of the college and during the frenetic finale, the movie tries to sell you on the concept of a store that sells flamethrowers that are fully fuelled and ready to go; but as absurd as large portions of the film are, the kills are inventive but not as spectacular as you’d hope. They’re still fun – you can’t witness the sight of a vengeful Eric gorilla pressing Fairchild above his head like the Ultimate Warrior before launching her out of a window like a lawn dart; a moment where he sends a cobra up a pipe to attack a man’s goolies whole on the toilet without cracking a big, goofy smile – but for a film so goofy, a lot of the gore is obscure by murky cinematography or weird blocking.
Still, Derek Rydell’s Eric Matthews proves to be a fun also-ran to the slasher titans of the decade and while Freddy, Jason and Michael may be big stars and all, could they pull off a perfect reverse spin kick? Okay, so maybe having the fighting abilities of Patrick Swayze from Road House may not be as cool as being able to murder people in their dreams and Eric’s choice to accentuate his Phantom mask with a baseball cap and varsity jacket is hardly as striking as a red and green stripped sweater or a hockey mask, but as B-list slashers go, Eric’s not bad at all.
As the film ends and the filmmaker’s choose to close it out, with an end credit theme tune from Orange County punk band, The Vandals which contain the lyrics: “Is there a Phantom of the mall, folks around you ask? Is he the Phantom of the mall, or just some retard in a broken hockey mask?”, you get the feel that somehow, for all its camp crapness, Eric’s Revenge has aged far better than it had any right to. However, thanks to a cult love of cheesy movies, and OPs like Stranger Things and It keeping that fictional memory of the 80s alive, you may be laughing at Phantom Of The Mall, but it’s probably getting way more love now than it did in 1988.
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