Arrow Video: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Arrow Films

Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera has had so many varying iterations on stage, film and literature ever since it was first published…why not move the story to a shopping mall?  Of all the unusual ideas for reimagining the legendary tale of a beautiful young singer who becomes the fixation of a disfigured musical genius living in hiding from society, leave it to recurring 80s slasher horror director Richard Friedman for the job.  Best known for such fare as Death Mask, Scared Stiff and Doom Asylum, Friedman strips the story of all musical context, moves it to the same shopping mall from Commando as the setting, places it in a contemporary time-period and created with Arrow Video’s new limited edition one of the goofier and more peculiar slasher horror mashups in cinematic memory.

 
After Eric Matthews (Derek Rydall) and Melody Austin’s (Kari Whitman) high school romance is cut short when he dies in a fire in his own home, Melody takes up work at the Midwood Mall attempting to move on from the tragedy and immerse herself in her friends’ lives.  Unbeknownst to her, it turns out the mall was built atop the site of Eric’s former home and within the subterranean tunnels and airducts of the mall lurks a disfigured man intent on having his vengeance upon crooked mall developers who may or may not have played a part in his deformity.  All the while Melody and local reporter Peter Baldwin (Rob Estes) join forces to try and determine whether or not the dead bodies piling up about the mall are in fact being committed by Eric Matthews.

 
Shot in the Promenade Mall which has become a recurring staple for movies over the years and featuring Dawn of the Dead legend Ken Foree as a security guard, Morgan Fairchild and a then-unknown Pauly Shore, Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge is every bit as unhinged of a transposition of Leroux’s immortal tale into an unlikely setting as there has ever been.  Overtly cheesy with some enjoyably gory death scenes and an unwanted image of Pauly Shore’s behind in one fleeting aside, part of what gives Phantom of the Mall its kooky charm is the mixture of disparate elements that shouldn’t go together.  Like for instance the culprit behind all the murders just so happens to be a karate expert and wants to kill pretty much everyone he comes into contact with. 
 
Visually the film has the feel of a made-for-television production that got bumped up to a theatrical release but the cinematography by Harry Mathias is mostly fine.  Soundtrack-wise the score by Stacy Widelitz is your usual synth horror score which also adds to the produced-for-home-video feel the picture has.  Effects wise the deaths are delightfully gory including an escalator death that will make people think twice about ascending one in the future.  Acting-wise it’s mostly fine though the character actor most at home in this is Ken Foree, back in a shopping mall all over again.  Derek Rydall and Rob Estes do most of the heavy lifting in what becomes a quasi-triangular romance involving Kari Whitman’s character, but no one is watching this for the acting qualities, let’s be real here.

 
While not particularly scary or suspenseful, Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge does indeed have a one-of-a-kind charm to it and it is kind of amazing this actually went into movie theaters at one point.  As it stands now, like The Prey or Edge of the Axe before it, the film is something of a relic made in an era when anything was fair game to the slasher horror premise and you didn’t need a ton of money to serve up blood and guts thrills and chills.  Given this is by a veteran craftsman of this kind of low budget 80s slasher horror fare, those keen on this sort of thing (I know I am) should know what they’re getting into by the mouthful of a movie title alone.  If you’re looking for scares you won’t find them here but if you’re here to have fun there’s more than enough to go around.

--Andrew Kotwicki