Leaden horror costumer that takes its tenuous starting point from the classic Gaston Leroux novel of the same name. The twist in this variation is that the Phantom was raised by telepathic rats in the subterranean caverns beneath the opera house. Thus our feral Phantom (Julian "Ratboy" Sands) develops an obsessive love for up-and-coming diva Christine (Asia Argento), and sets about to seduce her to his dark, rodent existence. Although beautifully photographed, with lots of ornate period detail to catch the eye, this is largely a by-the-numbers supernatural horror story with scant gory set pieces as diversions. Fans of Dario Argento will yell "Rats!" and all else will merely shrug. And why are the rats telepathic, anyway? Screenwriting credits go to Gerard Brach, best known for his many collaborations with Roman Polanski, most notably Repulsion. However, none of his absurd sense of humor comes through in this film, which really needs it. A shame all around. The DVD includes a short interview with the film's star, Julian Sands, as well as a photo gallery, some dispensable making-of clips, spliced together to appear as a featurette (mostly in untranslated Italian) and a very informative article from Fangoria Magazine. --Jim Gay
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Obligatory Opera. Comment: Just a quick word. It is my understanding that a contest was held in Italy in which Dario Argento's fans voted for a film which Argento agreed in advance to make. The winning subject was THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
I've seen Argento's PHANTOM just once, and found it unsatisfactory on any number of levels, but my impression at once was that this was the work of an artist working under obligation. It's clear to me that Argento had thoroughly covered this ground with his masterful OPERA (aka TERROR AT THE OPERA), which remains his true "version" or variant of the Haunted-Opera motif.
It seems to me that Argento's usual passion was focused through his resentment of having to go through the motions with a traditional story that was the antithesis of his anarchic sensibility. In revenge he calculatedly trashed the source material with a gleaming eye to giving special offense to mindless Lloyd-Webber Phans, hysterical Michael Crawford idolators and those who have developed an absurdly inflated "literary" veneration for Gaston Leroux's gleefully pot-boiling romantic-thriller.
Argento's iconoclastic choice of satirist Gerard Brach as co-writer demonstrates that the film is intended as an ironic black comedy; an elaborate joke at the expense of his own most rabid cultists.
Ennio Morricone's score, divorced from the film, is another thing entirely. The CD is highly recommended. Customer Rating: Summary: This is what happened when Daria left Dario Comment: As most Argento fans know, Daria was Dario's partner and collaborator from Deep Red on through Opera. In other words, she helped Dario achieve his great artistic peak that spanned about a decade, and spawned the lead actress of this film, Asia Argento. Well, if Daria can be given shared credit for Dario's greatest successes, perhaps we should blame her absence for this dismal, cheesy atrocity.
I imagine this film would be painful and numbing for any viewer to watch, but it is especially excrutiating for a fan of Argento who has seen the masterpieces of which he is capable. At any rate, I urge everyone to stay far away from this debacle. Watching it is akin to undergoing the sadistic torture that Argento's villains subject their victims to in Dario's other films. You've been warned!
One final note: don't confuse this movie, Phantom of the Opera, with Argento's much different and much better movie, Opera. Customer Rating: Summary: The worst Argento ever Comment: Admittedly I still haven't seen "The Card Player," which is supposed to be completely rotten -- but I've seen nearly all of Argento's other films, and this is BY FAR the worst. The acting, the script, the 'special' effects -- dear god it is just unfathomably bad. The two leads are godawful in their roles, and the script is no help! Customer Rating: Summary: Lord of the rats Comment: Once upon a time, a baby boy was washed into the Parisian sewers, where he was raised by telepathic rats to become the Phantom of the Opera, a serial killer, rapist and rat fetishist.
Yeah, it sounds ridiculous. It IS ridiculous. And Dario Argento is clearly not even trying to make this gory, schizophrenic "The Phantom of the Opera" work. Instead, he apparently is determined to eradicate any traces of Gaston Leroux's original novel, and load the remaining shreds down with lots of gore, poor scripting, and a romantic lead that really should be eaten alive by rats.
The baby who would later become the Phantom of the Opera was abandoned by his parents, and raised by a bunch of telepathic rats (I wish I were making this up). This doesn't explain how he learned to walk, talk, dress, wear a ghastly wig, play the organ, write music, and decorate his underground lair -- or why the rats would even do this. But it becomes pretty clear early on that Argento just isn't bothering with logic here.
In due time, the Phantom (Julian Sands) hears the songs of the young diva Christine (Asia Argento), he contacts her and they immediately fall into a passionate love/hate affair. No reason, they just do. And the Phantom's passionate, psychotic attachment to Christine leads to more disgusting deaths, as he tries to make the budding diva into a megastar of the opera -- but his increasing murders lead to possible destruction for both ill-inducing lovers...
My mother likes to tell the story of some people she knew in college -- apparently they had some sort of rat fetish, and would have sex while making rat squeaky noises. As far as I know, they never went to the level of rat masturbation/orgy (as the Phantom does at one point) but it did creep out their roommates.
That story was all I could think about while watching this florid, hysterical, illogical mess, which only has a few scattered names and ideas from Leroux's novel. The script is simply a disaster -- a muddled mass of bizarre unanswered questions (Telepathic rats? Flaming traps in the sky?) and glaringly predictable "twists" -- will the pedophile be horribly killed by the Phantom? Do you need to ask?
Even worse: the dialogue. Argento must have been asleep when he wrote this grotesquerie ("Your sweet female smell flows though my veins like the rolling ocean..."). That goopy adolescent stuff is basically when the Phantom says all the time, when he's not calling people fat cows. And Christine basically just yells all the time that she hates/loves/is going to have sex with him. Just make up your mind already.
It must be admitted that Argento has some magnificently opulent sets, and the whole ratcatcher in his rat-killing go-cart is unintentionally hilarious. But the rest of the time, we're treated to very explicit gore for its own sake -- impalements on a chandelier, tongue ripping, etc. And the whole rat thing is presumably meant to make us squirm, but it just made me wonder if Argento has some sort of furry fetish.
The final indignity to this disaster is the casting. It's weird enough to have a maskless, unscarred Phantom, but Sands is stuck with the role of a crazy, bloodthirsty rapist and murderer, who evokes zero pathos. And Asia Argento (yet again) plays a lusty sexpot who obviously can't sing, and spends most of the movie getting hysterical. The rats give good performances, though.
Dario Argento was obviously not even trying to make a good movie in "Phantom of the Opera," and instead piled on everything that could make it fail. Well, it worked -- it's a florid, hysterical, ghastly mess that lacks anything worthwhile. Customer Rating: Summary: Tragically Beautiful Comment: Now I might not be the typical Phantom phanatic, but I thought this was the second best Phantom of the Opera movie I've ever seen (the first is the version with Robert Englund). Yes, better than the 2004 musical, I never really liked that version. I know the Phantom in this movie does not wear a mask, he does not have a facial deformity, but he is the Phantom all the same.
This movie is graphic in its violence and...other things, but being a horror movie fan I found that the bloody murders were not overdone and were, in fact, very interesting. The entire plot of the movie was interesting, really. The beginning reminded me of Batman Returns. But hey, if a baby can be dumped in the sewer and raised by penguins, why can't he be dumped in a sewer and raised by rats?
The whole movie brought conflicting emotions, but I always felt so sorry for the poor Phantom. When Christine betrays him for Raoul in this movie it's so heart-breaking, and by the movie's end I was crying. Even if you don't like the rest of the movie so much, watch it for the ending! It was so tragically beautiful. I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone that can appreciate a tragic (horror-flavored) romance.
![The Phantom of the Opera [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HEJCWV4ML._SL160_.jpg)
