1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die- The Phantom of the Opera

#27- The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry
Directed by: Rupert Julian


Plot Summary: It's a new season for the Paris Opera House, debuting with their production of Faust. At the height of their popularity, management suddenly resigns upon discovering a phantom that occupies opera box #5. The phantom demands that the leading lady surrenders her part over to relatively unknown Christine Daae, in hopes that she can be his musical apprentice. The phantom also hopes that Christine will be his and will stop at nothing until she falls in love with.


When I went through my horror retrospective last month, I realized that I kind of breezed through silent horror films by only covering one, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. So when I knew I'd be covering silent films for a while, I thought I'd take the opportunity to cover a few more silent horror films. One of the more famous silent horror films is The Phantom of the Opera, which is normally known as the first of the Universal Monster Classics (one of the key eras I focused on in my horror retrospective). This film serves as the bridge between two very crucial eras in horror history, so is it worth seeing?

The biggest selling point for the film should be Lon Chaney's performance as Erik, The Phantom of the Opera. Erik's true identity is not revealed for the first half of the movie, adding an element of mystery and suspense to who the phantom is or what he looks like. Known as "The Man of A Thousand Faces," Chaney was able to use practical makeup effects to transform himself into many unique looking characters, with his most famous being Erik. Look at that makeup in the pictures below and tell me that wouldn't be creepy nowadays to see. To imagine that all that is through makeup is a true testament to Chaney's talent.

One of the more visually stunning elements of The Phantom of the Opera is how grand the film looks. There's great focus to detail and production design that helps bring the audience into this world and makes it feel a bit more third-dimensional. There's even a scene where Technicolor is used to accentuate the use of a red costume, which in 1925 could have been considered groundbreaking for film. Marketed as having a cast of over 5,000, even the extras feel like an important part of the film by helping create the look and feel of an actual opera house, making the film a faithful representation of stage productions.

While it is a silent film, The Phantom of the Opera is also labelled a horror film, which begs the question on if it is scary. For me, I wouldn't use the word scary. I'd more or less use eerie or haunting. The music and atmosphere itself is chilling, and Chaney's makeup job was so effective that some viewers fainted at the sight of it in 1925, but I would never rank it up there with other horror films of the time, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It has its following and it scared many when it was first released, but I don't think the horror has aged well.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Like most of the Universal Monster Classics, The Phantom of the Opera has its fair share of horror fan appreciation and following, primarily for Chaney's performance. For all fans of horror, I recommend watching this film at least once.

Comment below to share your thoughts on the movie or to discuss a topic that I left out of my review

The Phantom of the Opera and movie images are copyrighted by Universal Pictures