Counting down the days to my birthday,I decided that I would watch a double bill. Picking The Evil Dead 3 as the second flick. I took a look at the remaining works of auteur Dario Argento I had left to watch. Initially just finding the "workprint cut" of Trauma and his "live Opera" Macbeth, I spotted that I had never seen his Phantom adaptation,which led to me booking a ticket for the opera.
View on the film:
Going historical for the first time since the very interesting, 1973 non-Horror/non-Giallo The Five Days of Milan, co-writer/(with Gérard Brach & Giorgina Caspari) director Dario Argento reunites with Opera's cinematographer Ronnie Taylor (who also worked on Phantom adaptations Popcorn and Phantom of the Paradise) aim for an epic Gothic Horror,complete with a magnificent Opera house and winding catacombs. Working on a healthy budget,Argento (who throws sex scenes between the Phantom and his own daughter in to up the sleaze factor!)becomes unsteady in reaching the grandiose ambitions,as the stylisation of camera moves is pulled to focusing on rubbery gore effects, and the lighting is dimmed to the point of the impressive locations being covered in pitch darkness.
Whilst losing the directing ambitions he had shown in Opera,the screenplay by Argento/Brach and Caspari brings to the front one of Argento main themes across his work,via the parental (and sexual!) love the Phantom has for the rats that raised him.
Following the path in his directing,the writers appear undecided over what direction to take this loose adaptation, where the would-be sweeping romance between Phantom and Christine lacks any feeling of passion,and the bonkers, rat catcher surges into Gothic Horror (that would be the main element in Argento's next historical Horror: Dracula)are clipped before they become fitted into the mask of the movie. Joined by a sultry Asia Argento as Christine, Julian Sands tries to give the Phantom a brooding, Dracula-style allure,but fails due to Sands being extremely timed in digging his rat fangs in,and lifting the curtain on the phantom of the opera
View on the film:
Going historical for the first time since the very interesting, 1973 non-Horror/non-Giallo The Five Days of Milan, co-writer/(with Gérard Brach & Giorgina Caspari) director Dario Argento reunites with Opera's cinematographer Ronnie Taylor (who also worked on Phantom adaptations Popcorn and Phantom of the Paradise) aim for an epic Gothic Horror,complete with a magnificent Opera house and winding catacombs. Working on a healthy budget,Argento (who throws sex scenes between the Phantom and his own daughter in to up the sleaze factor!)becomes unsteady in reaching the grandiose ambitions,as the stylisation of camera moves is pulled to focusing on rubbery gore effects, and the lighting is dimmed to the point of the impressive locations being covered in pitch darkness.
Whilst losing the directing ambitions he had shown in Opera,the screenplay by Argento/Brach and Caspari brings to the front one of Argento main themes across his work,via the parental (and sexual!) love the Phantom has for the rats that raised him.
Following the path in his directing,the writers appear undecided over what direction to take this loose adaptation, where the would-be sweeping romance between Phantom and Christine lacks any feeling of passion,and the bonkers, rat catcher surges into Gothic Horror (that would be the main element in Argento's next historical Horror: Dracula)are clipped before they become fitted into the mask of the movie. Joined by a sultry Asia Argento as Christine, Julian Sands tries to give the Phantom a brooding, Dracula-style allure,but fails due to Sands being extremely timed in digging his rat fangs in,and lifting the curtain on the phantom of the opera