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 [show more]
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Italian horror-meister Dario Argento presents his own unique take on Gaston Leroux's classic tale. Here the phantom - played by Julian Sands - is not the victim of a facial disfigurement, but rather an orphan who was abandoned in the sewers beneath the Paris Opera and who has grown into adulthood with only the rats for friends (so it's kind of 'Tarzan of the Opera'). Fiercely protective of his subterranean home, the Phantom murders anyone who poses a threat to him or his rodent friends, leaving a trail of bodies behind which soon transmutes into legend. But a greater threat appears on the horizon when he glimpses the beautiful young opera singer Christine Daae (Asia Argento) and vows to win her heart.
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