Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge

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!

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.

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.

"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.

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.