Il Fantasma dell'opera

Warning - do NOT pick up the film with this cover.

Life is entirely too short and too beautiful to watch Dario Argento’s “adaptation” of the oft-filmed Gaston Leroux novel The Phantom of the Opera. Life is therefore also too short to write a review for it, except for my urge to warn as many people as I can to stay as far away as possible from this depraved piece of trash: Do not to make the same mistake I did as I browsed the shelves of Blockbuster and thought I had found an off-beat variation of the classic tale. The DVD art, at least, presented the film as a watchable, if melodramatic, interpretation. “Off-beat,” I learned too late, scarcely does this justice. For that matter, neither does “depraived piece of trash.”

If you have seen every version of Leroux’s novel except for this one, then you have seen every version. Unless your idea of a “version” includes sequences in which a non-disfigured Phantom (Julian Sands) chops people up, bites out their tongues, and assaults helpless persons for no rhyme or reason in all sorts of grisly manners. In this adaptation, the Phantom was abandoned at birth and raised by rats, with whom he has a telekinetic bond (“I am not a phantom. I am a rat!”). There is a moment in the film in which rats cover his body, and he unbuckles his trousers and lets them run down his crotch. I wonder what Julian Sands’ mother would have thought of this scene. To call this the worst version of The Phantom of the Opera is an insult to the true worst version (which I can’t specifically think of now, but I am sure that it is National Film Registry material next to this).

The storyline is non-existent. Scenes of vulgar sexuality are interlaced with scenes of characters wandering off into the Paris Opera House sewers and meeting violent ends via the Phantom and his rats. Both are shown in painstaking detail. Christine (Asia Argento, the director’s daughter) figures in as the love of the Phantom’s life, and yes, he is still obsessed with making her the star of the opera. But this romantic storyline, the heart of the novel and all subsequent film versions, plays like a very minor subplot here. In its place, we inexplicably are given the story of a rat-catcher (István Bubik) who is determined to destroy every rat in Paris. He builds a car/machine that has propellers made out of razor-blades, which he uses to chop up the squeaking rodents as he laughs manically. We see rat abuse in as much gory detail as you would expect, after which the machine hits a bump, its razor-blade propellers fly through the air and—what do you want to bet that there’s a decapitation in full detail? Well, there’s a decapitation in full detail.

Watching this pornographic display of sexism and violence made me feel dirty, depressed, and totally ashamed that I had brought it into my house. I confess that I didn’t finish it, but I watched more than anyone ever need have to. There is not one redeeming quality to this film—not in acting, direction, musical score, nothing. Dario Argento has evidently made a great deal of these types of film, some praised as masterpieces of atmosphere, others dismissed as the trash that his Il Fantasma dell'opera is. I’d only heard of the “masterpieces” before, and I’ve learned my lesson to do more research before blindly admitting an Italian horror director into my home. This is, admittedly, the only film by Argento that I have seen, and it is the only film by him that I ever intend to see. It is the working of a sick, sick man who enjoys focusing on human suffering and sexual violence. That he uses a classic story to exploit his perverted obsessions makes him even more despicable, because I’m certain that I’m not the only person who was fooled.

This week (6/24/05), George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead will be released in theaters all over the United States. Romero, a (ahem) biting social commentator, utilizes violence and gore to parody and lambaste the United States consumer society. I have no objections to the use of gore and violence on these levels, because there is method to the madness. Romero intentionally goes too far and pushes the envelope because he understands the effect that such images have on us. He utilizes gore to shake us into action, to force us to realize that if there is indeed a market for films like Dario Argento’s Il Fantasma dell'opera, then we are a truly disturbed society. Even The Exorcist used its horrific images to create a story that ultimately revealed human perseverance. In contrast, Il Fantasma dell'opera only exists to make us feel despair, and to soften our reaction to images of gore and violent sexuality as if it is all something that we should accept and appreciate in cinema. Argento also understands the effects that such images have on us, and instead of exploiting it for good, he uses it to push us farther along into desensitization. I shudder at the thought of what a film such as this will look like in twenty years from now. I don’t believe in censorship, but I think that any studio that would agree to finance or release this garbage should feel as ashamed about doing so as I did for watching it.

But I’m determined to make it right in this review. If my description of Il Fantasma dell'opera sounds like a good time to you, then we’re both probably better off if you left my website and never read my reviews again. If my description instead made the film come across as the depravity that it is, then I have done my job in warning you to stay away, even if you are a Phantom purist. There is nothing pure here.

Please, please do not watch this movie. If you see it in your rental store, cover it up with another film. Write the managers and petition that it at least be given a warning label. Do everything you can to help your fellow man steer away from Dario Argento’s Il Fantasma dell'opera. I beg you. I plead with you. For this warning, you’re welcome. But I still don’t feel any better having seen this vomit.

Sorry. That last sentence undermines vomit. I’m not joking.

Cast:
Julian Sands: The Phantom
Asia Argento: Christine Daaé
Andrea Di Stefano: Baron Raoul De Chagny
István Bubik: Ignace, the rat-catcher

A Focus Film production. Directed by Dario Argento. Written by Argento and Gérard Brach, and having nothing at all to do with the novel by Gaston Leroux. No M.P.A.A. rating, because they probably refused to touch it with a four-mile pole. Running time: 99 minutes. Original Italian theatrical release date: November 20, 1998.