The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Star Rating- 2
Length of Film- 93 minutes
Director- Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney
Cast- Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis, & Snitz Edwards
Additional Information- Silent film, Black and white film with 2 strip technicolor






If anyone has seen Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, you'll appreciate how accurate Mr. Webber was to this 1925 film. During the masked ball, where The phantom shows up dressed as Edgar Allan Poe's Red death, you will see a brief technicolor sequence.

It has the chandelier dropping, and the official unmasking. Yet, in this film, the phantom is not deformed on one side of his face, it's his whole face. It's not terrifying. They made the reveal very "dramatic", even though it really wasn't.

I grew up watching horror movies where the faces scared the buh-jesus out of me.

The Exorcist (1973)

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! So scary. Not...

The thing that peeved me the most about this movie was when they were in the Phantom's lair, he'd kidnapped Christine, and her lover was trying to rescue her. The phantom had the trip alarm and the noise doesn't match the statuesque bird moving his mouth.

I won't lie, this wasn't an easy movie to watch, it being in black and white and it being a silent film, but the scenery was impressive, and the technicolor scene. If I was in the theater in 1925 and I saw the masquerade scene, I would've been blown away.