the plot: Superstar record producer Swan (Williams) is looking for a new hit and he finds it in the music of composer Winslow Leach (Finley). Winslow is hard at work on a rock opera version of “Faust,” and Swan is convinced it’s just the music he needs to open up his new rock club, The Paradise. And so Swan does what any big-time record producer would do: he steals Winslow’s rock opera and has the composer sent to jail on bogus drug charges. While in jail, Winslow hears Swan’s version of his music on the radio. Enraged, he breaks out of jail and tries to sabotage Swan’s record label. But Winslow is horribly disfigured by a record press, and so he takes to haunting The Paradise. He falls in love with Phoenix (Harper), an enchanting young singer who both Swan and Winslow believe should sing the opera. Winslow sells his soul to Swan so that Phoenix can sing, but Swan has other plans. He seduces, then fires Phoenix and selects glam-rock reject Beef (Graham) to perform “Faust,” and Winslow swears vengeance.

why it’s good: Sometimes, too much is precisely enough, and that’s the case with “Phantom of the Paradise,” an awesomely excessive, over-the-top musical satire that stacks a thick layer of cheese on top of allusions, homages and critiques of pop entertainment. “Phantom” starts out with a voiceover intro by “Twilight Zone” maestro Rod Serling, and the pop culture sediment just piles up from there. Along with a twisty meta-fictional update of “Faust,” De Palma works in his own take on “The Phantom of the Opera” and even “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” as well as nods to Hitchcock, Welles, Phil Spector and just about everything else. But “Phantom” never feels like it’s rehashing anything. It’s bright and gaudy and earnest, with just enough jabs at pop music and celebrity culture to give all the cheese a bit of bite. And oh, there’s plenty of cheese to go around, from Winslow’s phantom costume (a Darth Vader-esque outfit that predates “Star Wars” by three years) to the crappy 1950s-style band The Juicy Fruits, who manage to turn up in all of Swan’s productions. Frequent De Palma collaborator and genre flick mainstay Gerrit Graham strikes just the right note as a fey, drug-addled, pseudo-Bowie, and Finley and Williams have great fun with their roles. Williams also wrote all the film’s original music, and it’s pretty damn catchy. “Phantom” sputters out a bit at the end, with too many characters concluding their infernal contracts all at once. But De Palma—and Swan, for that matter—probably wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

why you should own it: If you’re a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” fan, you’ll probably dig “Phantom.” The movie was a box office flop when it first came out, and despite its cult following, Fox’s DVD is sadly without extras. If you must have more “Phantom,” check out swanarchives.org, an obsessively exhaustive compendium of all things “Phantom.”