BEFORE: From a genetic freak to a deformed one, both characters like to conduct experiments - one in a lab, and the other with musical casting ones at the Paris Opera House. Both characters live with little contact with the outside world, and both are motivated by the fairer sex. Am I reaching?
Linking actors from "The Fly II" is going to be tough, but here goes - Lee Richardson was also in "Brubaker" with Robert Redford, who was also in "Little Fauss and Big Halsey" with Noah Beery, Jr., who happened to be in the 1941 film "Tanks a Million" with Norman Kerry, who plays Raoul in tonight's film. So there.
THE PLOT: A mad, disfigured composer seeks love with a lovely young opera singer.
AFTER: I've seen the Broadway production once, and again done by a high-school cast, plus I watched the 2004 film version with Gerard Butler. So I doubt I'll find anything new in the story tonight, this is purely a follow-up for the sake of being a completist.
It's significant to note the date of this film, 1925 - that predates "Dracula", "Frankenstein", "The Wolf Man" AND "The Invisible Man". So this really kicked off Universal's parade of movie monsters, and served as the high watermark for the career of Lon Chaney.
It's also interesting to note what elements of the story were dropped from future incarnations of the story - Andrew Lloyd Webber was right to jettison Raoul's brother and Carlotta's mother - really, they serve no purpose in the story, and they're both not missed.
Future versions also portray the Phantom as a mainly attractive fellow, except for a few scars. Chaney's Phantom is a true fright, he looks like Voldemort in the middle of electro-shock therapy. I got chills when Christine ripped his mask off, and I've seen that bit dozens of times.
The ending was a little rough as well - the Phantom doesn't fare so well in this one. In the Webber version he's left alone in his underground lair, but in this one he's quite graphically beaten by a mob and tossed into the drink. Sorry, spoiler alert.
I watched a restored version, with constant music throughout (sometimes warranted by the scene, sometimes incidental) and while it wasn't completely colorized, every scene change was punctuated by a change in tint - so the underground scenes were tinted purple, the stage performances were pink, etc. Slightly more interesting than watching black and white.
But it still seems a bit futile to portray operatic performances in a silent film - audiences couldn't hear the singers, so how did they know whether Christine was better than Carlotta? Maybe this is what motivated them to add sound to the pictures, and then to invent color.
RATING: 3 out of 10 trapdoors.
SPOOK-O-METER: another 3 out of 10.
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