[31 Days of Horror Part V: A New Beginning] Day 3 – The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

Director: Dwight H. Little

Cast: Robert Englund, Jill Schoelen, Alex Hyde-White, Bill Nighy, Terence Harvey

Screenplay: Duke Sandefur

93 mins. Rated R.

 

I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally get a copy of The Phantom of the Opera in my hands. This film is widely available, but I’ve never brought myself to actually watch it for some reason until my colleague Marc lent it to me. I was so excited to finally see Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nightworld) portray the Phantom. Boy, was I wrong.

Christine Day (Jill Schoelen, The Stepfather, When a Stranger Calls Back) is an opera singer living in Manhattan who has just found a rather unique piece of music to sing at her upcoming audition. She discovers that the writer of the piece, Erik Destler (Englund), was likely responsible for numerous slayings a hundred years earlier, but she decides to sing the piece anyway. At the audition, she is accidentally knocked unconscious by a falling sandbag and awakens to find herself in London in 1885. Now, Christine is stuck in 1885 being followed by a mysterious admirer, and the body count is growing.

I wanted to love this movie, and I was so disappointed. First of all, you cannot call your film a modern retelling of The Phantom of the Opera if almost the entire film takes place in the 1800s. I wanted a Phantom set in the 1980s. This film seemed very promising at the beginning only to veer off into a direction we’ve kind of seen before.

Robert Englund performs well at Erik even if he isn’t given nearly as much to do. I think the work he had done playing Freddy Krueger prepared him to be under layers of makeup and still show off his chops. I wasn’t all that impressed with the rest of the cast and I didn’t feel like any of them were given the ability to shine due to the fluff that fills the film.

Another thing too that kind of takes us into potential spoilery territory: there’s a sequence after the climax of the film that doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t do anything to push the narrative forward, it left a bad taste in my mouth (even after a disappointing 90 minutes), and overall just ended the film on a sour note.

The Phantom of the Opera is a rather large disappointment. This film just could have been so much more and I really pined for it, but as soon as the audience is introduced to this time-travel element, the film goes absolutely nowhere. It’s truly frustrating especially after the inspired decision to use Englund in the lead. This is one adaptation that will not earn any love.

 

2/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

 

For my review of Dwight H. Little’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, click here.

 

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