Phantom of the Opera [VHS]
by Dario Argento
![Phantom of the Opera [VHS]](/images/Phantom-of-the-Opera-VHS-1578482461-L.jpg)
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Actor: Andrea Di Stefano, Asia Argento, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Julian Sands, Nadia RinaldiDirector: Dario Argento
Writer: Dario Argento
Producer: Aron Sipos
Writer: Edmond Gondinet
Writer: Gaston Leroux
Writer: Giorgina Caspari
Writer: Gérard Brach
Writer: Philippe Gille
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: French (Original Language); Italian (Original Language)
Format: Color, NTSC, Original recording reissued
Running Time: 99 minutes
Release Date: 2000-07-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Allumination
Studio: Allumination
VHS Movie Reviews of Phantom of the Opera [VHS]
Movie Review: The Phantom of Rat Bohemia
Summary: 3 Stars
Good gawd almighty! That was my first reaction once I'd finished watching Italian horror maestro, Dario Argento's version of the oft-filmed "Phantom of the Opera". I think it's safe to say that there's never been another "Phantom" quite like it. It starts out as a sort of twisted variation on the Tarzan legend, with an abandoned baby in a foreign environment being rescued and raised by the resident wildlife. As most people know, with Tarzan it was apes who did the child-rearing. But it may come as something of a surprise to learn that with the Opera Phantom, it's, er, um, rats doing the parenting. At least according to Argento. Which begs any number of questions, none the least of which are: how did the rats nourish and feed the baby, change his diapers, bathe him, teach him to speak English, and play the piano, for crying out loud? Of course, the rats are telepathic, as is the Phantom, so I guess that could explain it. However, that's only the beginning of a film that goes so far over-the-top that I suspect it's still in orbit.
The gore and violence, a staple of most Argento films, are present, but not in the abundance that might be expected; there's a decapitation and a tongue being ripped out, in a grotesque parody of a French kiss, and a few more nasty deaths but, all things considered, it could have been worse. What's not a staple of Argento films is the graphic sex and nudity, (which I'm normally fine with) that includes a bordello scene in which the Phantom's nemesis, Raoul, lies on a chaise lounge, wrapped only in a towel, sucking on a hookah, while surrounded by a phalanx of nightmarish, Fellini-esque characters, all naked and looking like they stopped by the baths enroute to a "Night of the Living Dead" shoot. When a frisky prostitute takes a nose dive beneath Raoul's towel, he's not pleased--he's saving himself for heroine, Christine--and he shoves her away, with no little show of force. There are two vile, yet somehow Disneyesque ratcatchers, who tool around the sewers beneath the opera house in what looks like a modified dune buggy that snatches up rats and...oh, don't ask. At about the time that the Phantom unbuttoned his shirt and let some of the more amorous rats run across his chest and nipples, I started getting bug-eyed. When he got excited and began undoing his pants to allow them access to his manly business, my hair was standing on end. At that moment, I knew that this movie had gone so far over the mark that it wasn't ever coming back. And yet, I found myself hoping that these sex partner-rats weren't the Phantom's mum and dad, because that would be just...eeeeuuuuwwwww. And then, of course, a little voice rose within me and said: they're rats, idiot!
Aside from the rats, there are some pretty good performances, believe it or not. Julian Sands is appropriately weird as the murderous, yet romantic, Phantom of the Opera. I was disturbed that he didn't wear a mask (disfigured or not) but his long, stringy, greasy hair was fairly eerie in itself. As demonstrated in earlier efforts such as "Warlock", Sands is adept at playing haughty, mysterious creeps who are vaguely aristocratic and mostly evil. I think if he had portrayed Lestat in "Interview With the Vampire" (reportedly Anne Rice's original intention), it would have been an entirely different movie; there's a certain sexual ambiguity that Sands projects onscreen that would have been entirely suited to that character (and which Tom Cruise didn't have). Plus he looks good naked. He'd have made a perfect "Dorian Grey", as well. Argento's daughter, Asia, assays the role of Christine, the sopranic understudy who becomes the object of the titular character's affections. Asia Argento doesn't seem to be sleepwalking so much here as she has in other of her father's films. She's a lively and passionate heroine who is confused by the two men vying for her charms. That she beds down with the Phantom on more than one occasion, further muddles the poor girl. These scenes could have had a genuine erotic power (Argento looks good naked, too) and they are well filmed, but I just kept thinking of what the randy Phantom had been up to with the rats in his pants and...oh brother, I just hope he showered before joining Ms. Argento in bed. As rival, Raoul, Andrea di Stefano looks a little like Prince in "Purple Rain" (only with long, stringy hair--what is it with these guys?)--he's brave, but seemingly addled (perhaps by too much toking on the hookah); by the time, he attempts to save the day, he's moving at a snail's pace through the tunnels beneath the Paris Opera House, looking debauched and disheveled and almost as crazed as the Phantom.
Basically a remake (or re-imagining) of Argento's much better "Opera", "Phantom" is a freaky, beautifully filmed head trip that, in spite of its many difficulties and ludicrous plot developments, has a certain queasy charm that will definitely not appeal to some. Dario Argento is an imaginative creative genius who seems incapable of being reigned in, but what would he be otherwise? I sort of like him like this.
Movie Review: Obligatory Opera.
Summary: 3 Stars
Just a quick word. It is my understanding that a contest was held in Italy in which Dario Argento's fans voted for a film which Argento agreed in advance to make. The winning subject was THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
I've seen Argento's PHANTOM just once, and found it unsatisfactory on any number of levels, but my impression at once was that this was the work of an artist working under obligation. It's clear to me that Argento had thoroughly covered this ground with his masterful OPERA (aka TERROR AT THE OPERA), which remains his true "version" or variant of the Haunted-Opera motif.
It seems to me that Argento's usual passion was focused through his resentment of having to go through the motions with a traditional story that was the antithesis of his anarchic sensibility. In revenge he calculatedly trashed the source material with a gleaming eye to giving special offense to mindless Lloyd-Webber Phans, hysterical Michael Crawford idolators and those who have developed an absurdly inflated "literary" veneration for Gaston Leroux's gleefully pot-boiling romantic-thriller.
Argento's iconoclastic choice of satirist Gerard Brach as co-writer demonstrates that the film is intended as an ironic black comedy; an elaborate joke at the expense of his own most rabid cultists.
Ennio Morricone's score, divorced from the film, is another thing entirely. The CD is highly recommended.
Movie Review: This is what happened when Daria left Dario
Summary: 1 Stars
As most Argento fans know, Daria was Dario's partner and collaborator from Deep Red on through Opera. In other words, she helped Dario achieve his great artistic peak that spanned about a decade, and spawned the lead actress of this film, Asia Argento. Well, if Daria can be given shared credit for Dario's greatest successes, perhaps we should blame her absence for this dismal, cheesy atrocity.
I imagine this film would be painful and numbing for any viewer to watch, but it is especially excrutiating for a fan of Argento who has seen the masterpieces of which he is capable. At any rate, I urge everyone to stay far away from this debacle. Watching it is akin to undergoing the sadistic torture that Argento's villains subject their victims to in Dario's other films. You've been warned!
One final note: don't confuse this movie, Phantom of the Opera, with Argento's much different and much better movie, Opera.
Movie Review: The worst Argento ever
Summary: 1 Stars
Admittedly I still haven't seen "The Card Player," which is supposed to be completely rotten -- but I've seen nearly all of Argento's other films, and this is BY FAR the worst. The acting, the script, the 'special' effects -- dear god it is just unfathomably bad. The two leads are godawful in their roles, and the script is no help!Movie Review: Lord of the rats
Summary: 1 Stars
Once upon a time, a baby boy was washed into the Parisian sewers, where he was raised by telepathic rats to become the Phantom of the Opera, a serial killer, rapist and rat fetishist.
Yeah, it sounds ridiculous. It IS ridiculous. And Dario Argento is clearly not even trying to make this gory, schizophrenic "The Phantom of the Opera" work. Instead, he apparently is determined to eradicate any traces of Gaston Leroux's original novel, and load the remaining shreds down with lots of gore, poor scripting, and a romantic lead that really should be eaten alive by rats.
The baby who would later become the Phantom of the Opera was abandoned by his parents, and raised by a bunch of telepathic rats (I wish I were making this up). This doesn't explain how he learned to walk, talk, dress, wear a ghastly wig, play the organ, write music, and decorate his underground lair -- or why the rats would even do this. But it becomes pretty clear early on that Argento just isn't bothering with logic here.
In due time, the Phantom (Julian Sands) hears the songs of the young diva Christine (Asia Argento), he contacts her and they immediately fall into a passionate love/hate affair. No reason, they just do. And the Phantom's passionate, psychotic attachment to Christine leads to more disgusting deaths, as he tries to make the budding diva into a megastar of the opera -- but his increasing murders lead to possible destruction for both ill-inducing lovers...
My mother likes to tell the story of some people she knew in college -- apparently they had some sort of rat fetish, and would have sex while making rat squeaky noises. As far as I know, they never went to the level of rat masturbation/orgy (as the Phantom does at one point) but it did creep out their roommates.
That story was all I could think about while watching this florid, hysterical, illogical mess, which only has a few scattered names and ideas from Leroux's novel. The script is simply a disaster -- a muddled mass of bizarre unanswered questions (Telepathic rats? Flaming traps in the sky?) and glaringly predictable "twists" -- will the pedophile be horribly killed by the Phantom? Do you need to ask?
Even worse: the dialogue. Argento must have been asleep when he wrote this grotesquerie ("Your sweet female smell flows though my veins like the rolling ocean..."). That goopy adolescent stuff is basically when the Phantom says all the time, when he's not calling people fat cows. And Christine basically just yells all the time that she hates/loves/is going to have sex with him. Just make up your mind already.
It must be admitted that Argento has some magnificently opulent sets, and the whole ratcatcher in his rat-killing go-cart is unintentionally hilarious. But the rest of the time, we're treated to very explicit gore for its own sake -- impalements on a chandelier, tongue ripping, etc. And the whole rat thing is presumably meant to make us squirm, but it just made me wonder if Argento has some sort of furry fetish.
The final indignity to this disaster is the casting. It's weird enough to have a maskless, unscarred Phantom, but Sands is stuck with the role of a crazy, bloodthirsty rapist and murderer, who evokes zero pathos. And Asia Argento (yet again) plays a lusty sexpot who obviously can't sing, and spends most of the movie getting hysterical. The rats give good performances, though.
Dario Argento was obviously not even trying to make a good movie in "Phantom of the Opera," and instead piled on everything that could make it fail. Well, it worked -- it's a florid, hysterical, ghastly mess that lacks anything worthwhile.
Summary of Phantom of the Opera [VHS]
Leaden horror costumer that takes its tenuous starting point from the classic Gaston Leroux novel of the same name. The twist in this variation is that the Phantom was raised by telepathic rats in the subterranean caverns beneath the opera house. Thus our feral Phantom (Julian "Ratboy" Sands) develops an obsessive love for up-and-coming diva Christine (Asia Argento), and sets about to seduce her to his dark, rodent existence. Although beautifully photographed, with lots of ornate period detail to catch the eye, this is largely a by-the-numbers supernatural horror story with scant gory set pieces as diversions. Fans of Dario Argento will yell "Rats!" and all else will merely shrug. And why are the rats telepathic, anyway? Screenwriting credits go to Gerard Brach, best known for his many collaborations with Roman Polanski, most notably Repulsion. However, none of his absurd sense of humor comes through in this film, which really needs it. A shame all around. The DVD includes a short interview with the film's star, Julian Sands, as well as a photo gallery, some dispensable making-of clips, spliced together to appear as a featurette (mostly in untranslated Italian) and a very informative article from Fangoria Magazine. --Jim GayFrench Video
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