Seven great alternative musicals
Ahead of the UK release of La La Land, Damien Chazelle's effervescent musical extravaganza paying homage to classic song and dance films, we suggest seven offbeat musicals that challenge the form and push at the edges of this beloved genre
Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
Dir. Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma blends The Phantom of the Opera, Faust and The Picture of Dorian Gray to form this barmy rock’n’roll opera of insanity. William Finley is winning as our tragic hero, a maimed musician tricked into pouring his soul into a cantata based on the story of Faust for sleazy svengali Swan, brilliantly played by Paul Williams.
Williams, who wrote the tunes for other ace musicals The Muppet Movie and Bugsy Malone, is also on composer duty, and he comes up with a wide array of songs poking fun at the music industry. Of all the deranged musical acts who show up on Swan's stage, the most inspired is Gerrit Graham as Beef, a camp glam rock star who deserves his own movie.
Nashville (1975)
Dir. Robert Altman
Country'n'western music and shady political maneuverings collide in Robert Altman’s thrilling state of the nation address that’s lightly disguised as an epic comedy musical. This loose-limbed jigsaw movie features two dozen principle characters – singing divas, wannabes, groupies, journalists – who come together during a concert in the Tennessee state capital while a political campaign plays out in the background, and each player (even those actors who can’t sing) has a song in their heart.
All that Jazz (1979)
Dir. Bob Fosse
Bob Fosse's autobiographical fever dream of a movie riffs on Fellini’s 8 ½ to tell the story of a manic musical director who’s perhaps pushing his body too hard when he starts having visions of Death. As you’d expect with a Fosse picture, the choreography is dazzling, but just as frenetic and expressionistic is his editing, which is often audaciously satirical and darkly hilarious. At one point the musical director (Rob Scheider)’s heart bypass operation is spliced with a meeting with his scurrilous producers, who are planning mutiny.
One from the Heart (1982)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
After the brutality of Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola channeled his romantic side with this gritty and sexy study of love that’s one of the great visual ecstasies of the 80s – and one of cinema’s great financial follies. Using head-spinning and fourth-wall-smashing theatrical techniques, Coppola tells the story of a bored couple falling out of love and into the arms of others, and then back in love again with their original partner.
The story is humdrum but the style is out of this world. Coppola’s camera spins and twirls, the elaborate Las Vegas set looks more expensive than the real thing and on the soundtrack we have the smoky duet of Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle acting as cigarette-stained and whisky-soaked choruses: 'Looks like you spent the night in a trench, and tell me / How long you been combing your hair with a wrench?' Like the other post-New Hollywood follies of Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar, the film’s spiralling cost and disastrous box-office crippled its director’s career. And like those films, it’s now clear that One from the Heart is a masterpiece.
Streets of Fire (1984)
Dir. Walter Hill
Action maestro Walter Hill creates a glorious dollop of pulp fiction here by splicing America’s two most garish periods of popular culture – the 50s and the 80s – to create a neon-drenched universe that suggests a Wild West version of American Graffiti shot using the film grammar of MTV. Every line-reading is heightened, every edit is breakneck, every music cue is dialled up to 11. Both Bonnie Tyler and Meatloaf must cry themselves to sleep each night wishing Jim Steinman had written Nowhere Fast, Streets of Fire's rollocking opening number, for them instead.
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Dir. Frank Oz
Frank Oz’s take on the Broadway musical based on Roger Corman's scuzzy original is a delight. A never-better Rick Moranis stars as a mild-mannered flower shop attendant who becomes a slave to a carnivorous plant that demands to be fed – and it’s not Miracle-Gro it’s after, but a steady supply of human flesh. The singing is nothing to write home about but the songs are great. Best of all is a hilarious Steve Martin as a sadistic dentist hooked on his own supply of laughing gas.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Dir. Edgar Wright
It’s a slacker comedy, it’s a hipster romance, it’s a gamer punch-em-up, it’s a wild comic book movie and, yes, Scott Pilgrim is also a musical. Our titular hero (Michael Cera) is the bass player for Sex Bob-Omb, whose songs, including their opening standard We Are Sex Bob-Omb, come courtesy of Beck; Broken Social Scene, Cornelius, Dan the Automator and Kid Koala provide tunes for some of the film’s other fictional bands.
When Scott’s not playing bass in Sex Bob-Omb, he’s trying to win the affection of a rollerblading delivery girl with a colourful past, which includes seven evil exes whom Scott has to vanquish. These battles themselves feel like MGM dance numbers... but with more punching.
One from the Heart screens 22, 24 and 25 Jan at HOME, Manchester – tickets here
At the 24 Jan screening, The Skinny will introduce the film – please come and join us for this wonderful but overlooked movie, and a drink in the bar after the screening