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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Information Exchange  |  Movie Reviews  |  THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) « previous next »
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Author Topic: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)  (Read 2318 times)
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« on: October 10, 2007, 12:58:01 AM »

The plot is simple: Phantom meets diva, Phantom abducts diva, Phantom loses diva when he is beaten senseless by an angry mob of vigilantes and dumped in the river.  This silent film is fast paced and easy to follow, and always worth watching when Lon Chaney is onscreen, both for his famous living-skull makeup and his subtle performance.  There are some nice Gothic visuals, as when the Phantom carries the abducted Christine down into the Parisian catacombs on horseback, and a real sense of pulp menace in the Phantom’s underground lair, with its pipe organ, the coffin Chaney sleeps in to remind him of death, and the abandoned torture chamber next door.       

Still, it’s hard to rate PHANTOM as a true classic.  There’s none of the dreamlike magic, beauty and visual storytelling of the classic silent fantasy films—CALIGARI, METROPOLIS and NOSFERATU.  PHANTOM feels like a Hollywood blockbuster from a bygone era, with cardboard characters, gimmicks and a short-sighted ending literally changed to please test audiences.  Chaney’s deformed Phantom is played like a supervillain who can either heat or flood the chambers of his subterranean hideout as needed.  The pathos in his character, the central theme of Gaston Leroux’s novel, goes deliberately untapped.  There’s no real explanation for why Christine initially falls so easily under his spell; she just seems happy the mysterious “Master” is helping her career, and doesn’t seem to care that his methods include dropping chandeliers on her rivals.  Her boyfriend Raoul has no character whatsoever, and who can guess why he’s so crazy for her. 

Since there are no characters to root for and no real plot twists, there’s not much to carry the movie but spectacle.  The scene where Christine rips away the Phantom’s mask and reveals his face for the first time is still effective today.  That scene alone probably explains why the movie has lodged itself in the pop culture subconscious for so long. 

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8zkYCEOUJY

Other crowd-pleasing touches include some of the earliest uses of color in film, in a brief scene where the Phantom appears dressed in glorious red and wearing a skull mask (not tinting, but an early version of Technicolor).  These scenes, and Chaney’s makeup, wowed audiences in the 20s, in the same way Speilberg’s dinosaurs did in the 90s.       

For all its faults, the movie’s still an important part of film history and remains reasonably entertaining and watchable, especially in the last reel that takes place entirely in the Phantom’s lair.

Three slimes out of five.  It’s in the public domain so it’s available from the Internet archive: http://www.archive.org/details/ThePhantomoftheOpera (though I watched the “Horror Classics” 50 pack version).

Lesson learned: “Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my abominable ugliness!” is a pick-up line with a low probability of success. 
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I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...
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