Well, I told myself I was going to do better about the blog in October and now we’re a week in and I still have yet to release a blog. I’m not even sure particularly why, just a hard time finding motivation or figuring out what to even talk about. Not that that’s any of your problem anyways but that’s besides the fact. I decided I’d talk about ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, something I’ve certainly never discussed on the blog in the past. Hell, I’ve hardly talked about the Universal Monsters in general, but I have mentioned them at least in the past. The Phantom almost feels like the cousin of the Monsters family, he’s still in it, but he’s sort of one in his own as well. The other Monsters (Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, Wolf Man, etc.) are strictly seen as in the horror vein though and play strictly within horror troupes that they helped establish, but The Phantom leans a lot more into the tragic romance side of things. Not that Frankenstein’s Monster and some of the others weren’t also tragic, but The Phantom is a much more polished and romantic human character that’s only treated like a ghost or an entity by those that attend the opera but is actually ironically just a scarred human the whole time.
I chose to most specifically talk about the 1925 and 1943 versions because they’re still some of the most iconic versions and they’re the originals, but this is one of those stories that’s been adapted and loosely adapted a plentiful number of times both in film and in theater productions. There’s the cult-classic rock-opera version of the story released in the 70s that takes place in a club instead of an opera called ‘Phantom of the Paradise’, the late 80s slasher-like version with Robert Englund as The Phantom, the 2004 almost strictly romance version starring Gerard Butler as The Phantom, a lengthy theater production on Broadway, and I’m sure others but those are the most notable at least. Then, of course the classic versions I’m discussing tonight that stars Lon Chaney (25) and Claude Rains (43) in the titular role. I still have a hard time putting anyone over Mr. Lon Chaney, the OG Phantom himself, and that’s saying something because that was a silent film that predated everything in the Universal Monsters universe. I mean I like old classic films, especially in the horror space, but the original Phantom of the Opera is still one of the oldest films I have ever seen. Only predated by ‘Nosferatu’ from 1922 and ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ from 1921, but for a film to literally be over 100 years old now and still be interesting and captivating to me in 2026 is a feat in itself and a lot of that has to do with the physical performance and terror that Lon Chaney brings to the screen as The Phantom. His initial reveal to Christine of his true face under the mask is one of the most iconic shots in film history and it entirely relies on the facial expression and body movements of Chaney to pull it off.
The 1943 version starring Claude Rains is still really well-done, but it just feels a little bit unnecessary in a way since we just got The Phantom’s story told less than 20 years before that, but I also understand why they did it. Universal was releasing all their classic monster films at that point in time and they’d touched on basically all of them by the 40s aside from The Phantom so they came back around to him. Plus, in the 18 years since the last Phantom film at that point, films had become more polished. They had dialogue, and scores, and the quality was a bit less grainy, and Universal had the money, so I guess they figured why not make a more modernized version of the story with the new innovations in film at the time. The original Phantom of the Opera film with Lon Chaney felt like a trial run of sorts for the film studio at the time to see what they could do and create when adapting horror/tragedy from a novel to the screen before rolling out all the classic Universal Monster films which started coming out 6 years later with the release of ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ in 1931. The Phantom of the Opera was the newest of the 3 of those novels and probably the least famous of the 3 as well, but it was the 1st one brought to the big screen which seems head-scratching until you realize that filmmakers were likely using it as a test before committing to something like a Dracula or Frankenstein and boy did it work.
Basically, what I’m getting at is that if you like horror as a film genre, maybe you have to thank Lon Chaney for that. Kidding, but only kind of. He played multiple dark and spooky characters in the silent film era and was one of the first and only ones really doing that at the time, and certainly the only one committing to a level you could see pour out onto the screen in the way it did with him. The likes of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and even his son Lon Chaney Jr. at least got to show off their chops in the dialogue and score-driven era of film as well unlike Lon who died right before the breaking of that barrier. That almost makes the legend of him even more significant in a way though. If Chaney hadn’t made horror work for early film audiences, we may have never gotten the big Universal Monsters franchise that basically kickstarted horror as a film genre and if we never got that then who knows where horror would really be today in film. At the least it would certainly be on a different trajectory. Interesting if you really dive into it like that. Overall, I’d say that the stories in these 2 specific adaptations are very similar obviously because they’re being adapted from the same novel with not many liberties taken by either, but the differences come in the look and the style in which each actor plays The Phantom.
I’d have to give the look of the mask pretty easily to the 1943 version with Claude Rains, it was an actual mask and really added to the look and character of The Phantom as opposed to the porcelain upper face and sheet covering his mouth that Chaney had in 25. The actual face makeup and style of the character overall though I’d give to Chaney and the 1925 version. His face as The Phantom is still scary and unsettling to this day and the way he moves and the expressions, he makes make him actually look like a monster. Rains just had some thick makeup up around his eye and looked like a pissed-off middle aged man. No hate, I still like that version, I’m just saying. That’ll do it for this one though folks! You can find both these versions available for free on streaming through the month of October so check them out if you feel inclined to do so!
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