"PHANTOM" HAUNTS IMAGINATION

          In a Paris opera house built over Medieval torture chambers and dungeons a mysterious figure with "eyes like holes in a grinning skull" necessitates the theater's sale.
          Meanwhile, there's a prima donna whom the mysterious figure dislikes, and would have replaced with his own choice for the upcoming performance of Faust, a protégé who has never seen him named Christine.
          "From hidden places beyond the walls, a melodious voice, like the voice of an angel" instructs Christine--a Svengali-like figure before Svengali was filmed. This mysterious maestro interests Christine, and she promises him--or rather his voice through the walls--that when he finally appears, she will be waiting...
          However, what she does not realize is that the opera ghost with a face like a grinning skull and the hidden singing coach are in fact one and the same--the Phantom. What no one realizes until perhaps too late: the Phantom is a convict named Erik, a master of the black arts who has returned from the infamous penal colony across the Atlantic known as Devil's Island. And the only reasonable explanation for the Phantom's skeletal face ("His nose--there is no nose!") is that he contracted leprosy during his imprisonment.
          Directed by Rupert Julian and starring the Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) is the story of an egregious criminal justice system, superficiality run rampant, and a whopping case of ingratitude.
          How else can one see it? Erik helps Christine with her career. She accepts his help, and assures her affection, until she sees his face, at which point she treats him like he's a monster. And the only way she sees his face is by tearing off his mask, from behind, even after he clearly warned her not to.
          Then there's Raoul, some little bit of nothing who has no musical taste, no fire in the belly, and wants to take Christine away from the opera career she loves. Entirely because of Erik she lands the job of her dreams. But when she sees that his face isn't lovely enough for her, suddenly she sings a different tune.
          No other version of Gaston Leroux's novel compares. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical starring Gerard Butler, despite the great music, particularly fails by turning the Phantom into a pretty boy instead of a proper leper with a gondola-load of style and dash. Butler is to the Phantom what Twilight is to vampires. That's the real horror.
          The 1943 version with Claude Rains is decent, but not comparable with the Chaney original; the 1989 offering starring Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund (in spite of a poor start) provides a distant second-best.
          The atmospheric silent masterpiece freely available on YouTube.


THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
Starring Lon Chaney,
Mary Philbin,
Norman Kerry,
Arthur Edmund Carewe,
Gibson Gowland
Directed by Rupert Julian
Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux
Runtime 93 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE