The original version of Gaston Leroux's legendary book 'The Phantom Of The Opera' is an awesome monument to the Golden Age of Hollywood starring ""The Man of a Thousand Faces"" Lon Chaney. In the film Chaney is Erik the horribly disfigured Phantom who leads a menacing existence in the catacombs and dungeons beneath the Paris Opera. When Erik falls in love with a beautiful prima donna (Mary Philbin) he kidnaps her and holds her hostage in his lair where he is destined to have a
The original and best version of Gaston Leroux's legendary book The Phantom Of The Opera is an awesome monument to the Golden Age of Hollywood starring ""The Man of a Thousand Faces"" Lon Chaney. In the film Chaney is Erik the horribly disfigured Phantom who leads a menacing existence in the catacombs and dungeons beneath the Paris Opera. When Erik falls in love with a beautiful prima donna (Mary Philbin) he kidnaps her and holds her hostage in his lair where he is destined to have
It's difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatre threesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, and this package is a good way of acquiring them. Of those featuring Lon Chaney, it's the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame that comes across best. Chaney's grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, and Patsy Ruth Miller's Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes and cathedral stunts with aplomb, and there's an atmospheric "posthumous" soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock. 1925's The Phantom of the Opera is slow-moving and uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julian's direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks (or is that camps?) up his range of gestures to the limit, and Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless--with looped extracts of Schubert and Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack. Cut to 1962, and The Carnival of Souls--made in Kansas for under $100,000--is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking (if a tad gauche) as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world and the next, and Gene Moore's organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence. On the DVD: Chiller Theatre is very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged. --Richard Whitehouse
Please Note: The studio has not sealed this disc in shrinkwrapped plastic. Please rest assured you that these discs are new. This early version of The Phantom Of The Opera is regarded by many as the first great horror film and certainly the best of the silent era. Lon Chaney is Erik the horribly disfigured Phantom who leads a menacing existence in the catacombs and dungeons beneath the Paris Opera. When Erik falls in love with a beautiful primadonna he kidnaps her and
From the moment of original release in 1925, The Phantom of the Opera has been considered among the classic movies of all time. The extreme, expressive acting and state of the art character make-up of Lon Chaney, the multitude of cuts, remade endings and restorations, the fantastic sets and filming techniques, all coalesce to create the mysterious aura that will forever fuel this masterpiece. While several versions of Phantom exist, this is perhaps the most unique and relevant to the darkwave...
At the Opera of Paris a mysterious phantom threatens a famous lyric singer Carlotta and thus forces her to give up her role (Marguerite in Faust) for unknown Christine Daae. Christine meets this phantom (a masked man) in the catacombs where he lives. What's his goal? What's his secret?
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