"Actor: István Bubik"

• The Phantom Of The Opera | DVD | (29/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Dario Argento's 1998 Phantom of the Opera is about as far from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical version as it's possible to get. Grand Guignol isn't in it as he ransacks Gaston Leroux's poignant original for all its darkest elements and slathers them in gore. This phantom is no masked stranger, his scars sensationally exposed in the last reel. Instead he is Julian Sands in vampirical mode, an enigmatic wraith with extraordinary, literally mordant, powers, raised by rats in the sewer beneath the Paris Opera. Above ground, the authentically drawn twittering and jealous world of the opera house falls unsuspecting prey to his machinations. As his quest to turn sweet-voiced Christina (Argento's daughter Asia) into a prima donna gathers pace, so the horribly mutilated bodies mount up, meeting their demise in increasingly bloody ways. Sands generates an erotic charge verging on the kinky. His ratty friends share more than the festering food on his table. Somehow, the tragic romance at the heart of the tale survives this boisterous treatment and the overall effect is curiously stylish, marred only by a poorly dubbed soundtrack. A cult movie in the making; definitely one to enjoy after a good night out at the pub.--Piers Ford