Originally slated for Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom plays The Phantom in 1962's The Phantom of the Opera, a surprisingly sedate and tasteful take on the story. Starting in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer Film Productions was the hottest thing in horror due to its high gothic horror mixed with blood and sexuality not seen in American horror.
The British invaded more than just music in the mid-20th century. But it certainly shows the two angles in which the story can be seen, is it a darkly romantic drama or a horror-mystery? The Phantom of the Opera continues to walk that knife's edge into the rest of the 20th century. The bad guy must suffer horrifically for his actions, killed by either angry mob or falling rocks, it was just how things were. While people were certainly confused by this dramatic change in tone at first, they came to love it as its own musical drama with an incredible score.īoth of these films have the same distributor in Universal Pictures, but their differences are like night and day, both showing that they understand the deep melodrama and intrigue of the story while missing the nuance of the tragic villain. As horror films mostly remained in black and white throughout most of the 1940s, this film is in glorious technicolor, with sweeping sets, a diminished disfigurement on Rains, and a generally more romantic feel than many horror films at the time. Public acclaim was now with films such as Gone With The Wind, and that's the style it emulates.
This film, starring Claude Rains, has less in common with the other Universal horror films and more with the glamorous period spectacles of the 1940s and 50s.
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