Review – The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

It’s hard to think of this as anything but “The Freddy of the Opera,” and that isn’t just because Robert Englund stars as a villain with a horribly scarred face. The whole production has a late-80s slasher movie feel to it, which clashed unpleasantly with the traditional gothic trappings of the tale. Though the bulk of the production follows – more or less – the plot from the novel, the Leroux stuff is bracketed by a modern bit in which our heroine is knocked unconscious during a Broadway audition and dreams/remembers the bulk of the plot. This brought the “Dancing Cavalier” plot from Singin’ in the Rain so strongly to mind that this picture became even harder to take seriously. There’s enough Phantom here to make this vaguely entertaining, but the “innovations” this time around almost universally detract. Mildly amusing