THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Somebody took what would have been a poor re-telling of PHANTOM and proved it could be made much, much worse. Believe it or not, they threw in time travel and an immortal Freddy Krueger-esque killer. I thought I was a completist enough to want to see all versions of the semi- classic story, but this was a total and contemptible mess representing the producer's profound and cynical disrespect for his audience. Rating: -3.
To date there have been four movie versions of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. The title role has been played by Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbet Lom, and Maximillian Schell. Now there have been four and a tenth. It is clear that somebody was serious about making a version of the semi-classic story and somebody else was not. Nominally Dwight Little is the director of the new film, though his name is pasted over somebody else's on the posters. So what we get is an exquisitely clumsy cross between a lackluster but traditional telling of the story and an episode of "Freddy's Nightmares."
Christine Daae is an opera singer in modern-day Manhattan who finds an old piece of music by a forgotten composer who was also a serial killer. She decides to use it for an audition for an opera. During her audition she is coshed on the head by a sandbag and suddenly, with no apparent bewilderment, she is an opera singer from the chorus in 1884 London. The story that is then told is just barely recognizable as a version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. A great but unknown composer has made a pact with the Devil that if his music should become immortal he would sell his soul. The Devil adds his own little amendment by gouging pieces out of the composer's face. The Phantom can make himself almost normal, but only by sewing pieces of live flesh into his face--so much for the romance of the mask. The Phantom now lives under the opera house and teaches his Christine, mercilessly torture-killing anyone who gets in his way. He skins two people alive and beheads two others. Meanwhile Christine is bewildered as to why she is able to remember the words to sing to the Phantom's music--not remembering that she learned them in New York. Classic scenes such as the chandelier scene and the unmasking are dispensed with entirely--well, sort of. Later when the story returns to the present it turns more into a traditional supernatural molester story.
I cannot imagine how this film turned into such an unholy mess. Only part of the mess can be explained by saying they had a gory version of the traditional story and well into the shooting they decided they wanted to turn it into a totally different film. That would explain the change of directors. It would also explain the credits "Screenplay by Duke Sandefur, Based on a screenplay by Gerry O'Hara." Somebody must have decided they could not sell Robert Englund as anything but a supernatural, unstoppable killer like his Freddy Krueger. The result is a sort of a PEGGY SUE SINGS FOR THE PHANTOM ON ELM STREET that is a crude hoax that will disappoint Phantom fans, Freddy fans, and everybody in between. I would like to give this film a full -4 but for a little nice opera and a few scenes that were almost an okay adaptation of the story I will give it a -3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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