Review: The Phantom of the Opera

Opening night of the cheesy new musical Saint Joan ends in shock horror as a murdered body appears before the stage, leaving arrogant composer Michael Gough none-too-pleased, and the show’s leading lady quitting. Producer Edward de Souza suggests Heather Sears as a replacement. However, a masked Phantom (Herbert Lom) haunts the theatre and has plans to kidnap Sears so that she will perform for him, and him alone. Thorley Walters turns up as theatre manager Lattimer, Patrick Troughton is the seedy Rat Catcher, Michael Ripper and Miles Malleson have bit roles as cabbies.

 

Unless you count Dario Argento’s somewhat similarly derived 1987 film “Opera”, I consider this 1962 Hammer version of the Gaston Leroux novel to be the best screen version I’ve seen. Aside from Argento’s dreadful 1998 official version (not to be confused with the aforementioned 1987 film), I’ve enjoyed all of the adaptations I’ve seen to some degree. Whether it be the Lon Chaney, Robert England, Charles Dance, or Gerard Butler musical version, none had really stood out from the pack as being the definitive version of the story. This version from director Terence Fisher (“The Horror of Dracula”, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”) wins it by a nose for me. I was immediately struck by the creepy music score by Edwin Astley (“Devil Girl From Mars”, “Alias John Preston”), which really sets the right tone. There’s a great, creepy use of sound throughout, with even some effective jump scares which don’t come off as annoying or lazy. I don’t often think of Hammer films as genuinely scary so much as atmospheric, but here’s one I actually do think qualifies as scary. I also love the Phantom’s mask in this one, it almost looks like Leatherface’s skin mask in a way. Interestingly it was quickly put together out of cloth, tape, string, and paint.

 

Keeping Herbert Lom in the shadows early on is good for multiple reasons, but particularly because it allows you to focus on his deep voice, which was always his best asset as an actor. Lom may not be as iconic in the part as say Michael Crawford on stage, but he’s definitely the right fit for the part and gives an excellent, typically brooding performance. He gives us a mixture of cultured, tortured, sinister, authoritative, eccentric, and maddened. You even get to see the Phantom in flashbacks pre-mask, which is interesting. The one downside to having Lom offscreen so much is that it means that the character itself isn’t front and centre all that often which is a bit of an issue. Thankfully, Lom is supported by a mostly excellent cast of familiar faces, one of whom even steals the film from underneath him. That scene-stealer would be veteran character actor Michael Gough, having a whale of a time playing a slimy, arrogant prick in one of his finest hours on screen. We also get solid work by Edward de Souza and a slightly wasted Thorley Walters, as well as vivid bit parts for an eccentric Miles Malleson and especially Patrick Troughton and the requisite Michael Ripper. The one sore spot in the cast is leading lady Heather Sears, who is a bit dull and charisma-deprived.

 

It’s interesting that the Phantom has someone else do his killing and kidnapping here, but one supposes if he didn’t, the Phantom would get more screen time. So it’s a bit of a double-edged sword that screenwriter Anthony Hinds (“Captain Clegg”, “Rasputin – The Mad Monk”, “Scars of Dracula”) has given us there. I wasn’t as bothered at Hinds’ lack of emphasis on the romantic here as being a Hammer film I expected horror to come first anyway. The film works as is for me rather well in that regard. Some may be displeased at the change from Paris to a rather second-rate London theatre, but to me that actually works in the film’s favour too. The production being staged is rather cheesy, making Gough’s egotistical slimeball even more amusing.

 

Hammer really seemed to be trying hard on this project, and I think it’s among their most underrated horror films. A co-production with Universal Studios, it appears to be one of the more expensive Hammer films as well, and the money goes to good use. It’s a lavish, gorgeous-looking film. While one could carp that we don’t get enough time with the title character, this is a vivid, well-mounted, and actually genuinely scary version of the classic tale. Herbert Lom is well-cast, Michael Gough runs away with the whole thing. A flop that saw its director fall out of favour with the company for a couple of years, I consider it a must-see Hammer outing.

 

Rating: B-