Indulge me on a brief trip down memory lane to recount the story of how I came across this film. I'm about 7 years old. I have just watched and "fallen in love" with The Phantom of the Opera mini-series starring Charles Dance. Around the same time but after watching the mini-series, my grandparents had exposed me and my sisters to the music of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's beautiful musical "The Phantom of the Opera". Lucky for me and my sisters, my parents noticed our interest in most things related to "The Phantom of the Opera" and encouraged it. Within the same year of all of that happening, we took a trip to the local video rental store (not Blockbuster) and saw a film listed as The Phantom of the Opera. After excitedly begging our parents to rent it, our parents quickly give in probably because they were being supportive of our love of "The Phantom". Unfortunately they weren't familiar with who Robert Englund was and what specific role that he was famous for. Boy were we shocked and horrified shortly after starting to watch this movie. For some unknown reason, our parents let us watch this movie all the way through despite the material and subject.
This picture is a slightly different take on the classic "Phantom of the Opera" story. It starts in "modern day" New York City. Christine Day (played by Jill Schoelen) is eagerly preparing for an audition for the "next big thing" in theatre. After finding a haunting, beautiful piece of music written by a man named Erik Destler back in the mid to late 1800s. During the audition, Christine is knocked unconscious by a falling sandbag. When she comes to Christine has been transported back in time to 1880s London. She's still Christine Day but she's an understudy to the diva of the London opera house La Carlotta (played by Stephanie Lawrence).
Like the original story, unusual happenings and accidents have been plaguing the latest production of Faust. A mysterious creature known as the Phantom of the Opera (played by Robert Englund) is blamed for the incidents. Just like in the original novel, the Phantom seems to be obsessed with Christine. In this version, the Phantom is named Erik Destler and he literally made a deal with the devil to have immortality through his music. Unfortunately the devil tricked Erik by cursing him with hideous perpetual wounds on his face that the Phantom covers up with human skin. In this version, Christine's lover is named Richard (played by Alex Hyde-White) and apart from the name difference he is essentially Raoul from the original novel.
Just as in the original novel, Christine must choose between her beloved Richard and the horrifying Erik. This version features more literal supernatural aspects as opposed to many of the other versions. This is also the most graphic, gory version of any of the Phantom pictures.
For years afterwards I was haunted by this version both because I was really too young to watch that kind of film and because the deaths were very disturbing at the time. Rewatching the movie as an adult was quite an experience for me. On the one hand many of the special effects haven't stood the test of time. Still the scenes where Erik is sewing on and cutting the human skin from his face are pretty intense if only in concept. The acting for this movie was pretty good considering it's a horror movie Robert Englund is his usual wonderful self in this movie adding his own special darkness to the Phantom.
This movie is worth watching if you are curious but I wouldn't recommend it for younger audiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment