robots/monsters/misadventure

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)


I grew up watching The Phantom of the Opera on a VHS tape given to me by my aunt over and over again. I was an early lover of the Universal Monsters and the Phantom was one of the first members of the crew. I like to look back at the movie, because it's just so damned weird. The Phantom is human (spoilers, almost 100 year old movie), but seems like some demonic ghost due to his presentation. It doesn't help that the overall presentation of the movie comes off like some macabre art project, only aided by the quirks created by film making of the time.

Frame rates and low resolution make for unnatural movements performed by ghoulish looking people. The opening title screen of the movie with the ghost floating about over the opera house is scary enough alone. It's funny, this trailer almost seems like a cursed video and not like the advertisement for a big production studio movie. Considering the actual original movie is lost to time and whatever version you can watch now is loosely stitched together from odd clips... it could be a cursed video at this point.

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