The Phantom Project Forum

Last Friday, I watched the Maximilian Schell version with my girlfriend... the following Saturday afternoon I watched the Charles Dance version with my brother and his other half.

In both cases their reactions were somewhat peculiar, they alternated between being entranced by the beauty of certain scenes and doubling over with laughter at others.

It was then that something that occurred to me - the most amazing thing about the Phantom's story is it's ability to captivate despite moments of breathtaking stupidity.

There is not one single incarnation of the Phantom legend that does not include at least one scene which makes me shake my head and wonder what the creative mind(s) behind it were smoking when they thought that it would be a good idea to include it.

My all time favourite stupid bits in Phantom:

The bit at the end of the silent film where Erik momentarily tricks the lynch mob into thinking he's holding a hand grenade
(just how dumb are these people anyway?)

That running gag in the 40s technicolor version with Raoul and Anatol talking at the same time, or the other one where they get stuck in a door. These gags were horrendously unfunny the first time, they only become more painful with each repetition.

The chandelier sequence in the 80s telemovie, where the chandelier seems to be afflicted with what Roger Ebert called "Movie Bomb Syndrome". Seriously, that sucker takes at least 45 seconds to fall, seemingly just so the characters can have time to get out of the way, in the most laughably unconvincing manner imaginable.

Oh, and the scene where The Baron gets pecked to death by a bird in the 80s telemovie is pretty ludicrous as well.

The 1989 slasher flick has a lot of stupidity tied in with the whole time slip/reincarnation thing... which seems to have been put there mainly for the purposes of sequel whoring. But that aspect is at it's worst with the ending... it never ceases to amaze me just how stupid the heroines of 80s horror films can be when it's convenient to the plot. I know that Christine has just been through a very traumatic experience, but seriously, couldn't she think of a better way to destroy the Phantom's music than that??????????

The 1991 mini-series... truthfully, if you go into this in a cynical mindset, rather than a romantic one, then virtually every second scene contains something to poke fun at... but the scene that takes the cake in this respect is the one on the staircase where Phillipe is proclaiming his love for Christine. The trite greeting card sentiment of the dialogue, coupled with Adam Storke's laughably earnest and effeminate line delivery, all underscored by John Addison's schmaltzy music... I could accept all the other liberties Kopit & Co took with this story as being part and parcel of the fairytale atmosphere he was trying to create, but this scene was too much even for me, and really took me out of the show.

Similarly there is one other scene in the mini-series that bugs me... the one where Christine has to remind Phillipe who she is - despite the fact that she is supposedly the love of his life. It's made worse by Adam Storke's acting (or rather, lack of it) when he realises that the Christine Daee he's talking to is the same Christine Daee from his childhood... he wasn't coming across as the brightest bulb thus far but this scene makes him look like even more of a bufoon for not making the connection already. I could be wrong, but "Christine Daee" isn't really that common a name, is it?

Continuing the whole "Raoul The Douschebag" theme, there's that dressing room scene in the animated version where Christine tells him who has been coaching her and he responds with a cartoon villain laugh. Sure, what she was telling him was pretty far fetched, but it did seem like something of an inappropriate overreaction nonetheless. The combination of bad voice acting and animation is what really makes it hilarious.

People go on and on about how insignificant the Phantom's deformity is in the Schumacher version (and admittedly, it is stupid and not at all frightening even in the original stage show)... but for me, the silliest moment of all is the transition between Christine auditioning for "Hannibal" and singing "Think Of Me" as part of the finished production... I mean, her costume looks very pretty in a Cinderella kind of way, but it seems like all of a sudden Christine is performing in an entirely different opera. None of the reviews I've read of Schumacher's film ever mention this disparity, that the production values and costumes of the actual production are totally different from that of the "dress rehearsal"... oh, and what is up with Raoul dashing off in the middle of her performance? Where the hell is he going?
Is he trying to get to the head of the queue at the stage door? If so, then why are there so many people ahead of him already? Surely her performance wasn't that impressive that so many people fled from the theatre in the middle of the show so that then they could wait around her dressing room to offer their congratulations?

The 1998 version, oh dear god... virtually every single scene in this movie contains something that you can poke fun at, I'm spoiled for choice when it comes to stupidity in this one... but the most stupid scenes of all I find are the hallucinations of Christine's two men-friends... where The Phantom is standing on the roof of the opera house imagining his enemies floating through the sky caught in a giant mousetrap... or the scene in the steam bath where Raoul imagines Christine fondling her breasts and drinking blood.

Oh, and although I've never seen this version, Anne's description of the scene in "Phantom Of The Mall" where Eric trains a snake to leap up out of a toilet and attack one of his enemies sounds like it might very well take the crown for most stupid scene ever in a Phantom movie.

All of Anne's reviews seem to support my theory that any incarnation of Phantom is destined to have at least one incredibly stupid scene that will have the reader/viewer/listener scratching their head in wonderment.

You know, there's something to make fun of in every version. It's very true. I find them all very entertaining--it's rare to have a film that has NO parts that you could point to and giggle (the only one that's really coming to mind for me is Yu's The Phantom Lover, and even then... well, homeboy was running around in a lot of white tights for being a revolutionary).

Snicker. I like the 1983 Markowitz/Schnell film a lot more than you do, I think, but that chandelier scene is just terrible. There shouldn't be time for anyone to do more than process a nice, fervent, "Oh, shit," before everybody gets squashed. Markowitz tried to shoot it in a dreamlike way, I think, but there was no saving it from its own silliness. I wasn't actually as concerned about the birds in the carriage scene--it was pretty symbolic, and I figured it was being used as an example of a sort of more supernatural element to the Phantom--but it, too, didn't exactly make a lot of sense, really.

*facepalm* Time travel. It made me so sad. I liked so much of that movie that it was just depressing to see that.

Honestly, if you go in looking to make fun of it, the entire animated movie is like a long buffet of silliness between the bad voice acting, the bad animation, and the mishmash they're making of some decent scripting. The effort is so great, but the execution is laughable now and then. It all depends on how you watch it, I guess.

The older movies I have to give a pass to, though. I actually love that scene in the 1925 film; since they've done such a great job of showing off how terrified the regular people are of the near-mythic Erik and how unsure everyone is of the fact that he's even human, it was really pretty powerful for me to see that he could still exercise that fear over them, even at their most bloodthirsty. But if you want to talk silly, that entire carriage chase... oy vey. They originally filmed an ending where Erik just died of a broken heart as in the original book, but it was deemed too boring. Le sigh. Chaney frenetically whipping horses like a grinning maniac just makes me giggle/sigh every time. I agree that the humor from the 1943 film hasn't stood the test of time at all--it seems simplistic, repetitive, and borderline ridiculous--but again I give it a pass because it was more the accepted entertainment of the time. Plenty of old films from the thirties on through the fifties use similarly hackneyed humor ideas (I just watched Meet Me in St. Louis the other day... so ridiculous by modern standards), but they weren't actually hackneyed yet, then, and they were what audiences were looking for. So I can't really call that stupid; not entertaining for the modern viewer, yeah, I really could have done without it. But good for the time in which the film was made.

Phantom of the Mall. Now THAT is stupid. Hilariously so. The Meateater (originally titled Phantom of the Bijoux, too.

You know, there's something to make fun of in every version. It's very true. I find them all very entertaining--it's rare to have a film that has NO parts that you could point to and giggle (the only one that's really coming to mind for me is Yu's The Phantom Lover,

I watched "The Phantom Lover" for the first time, the night before last.

I'd say the crowning moment of stupidity in that one is the bit where The Phantom's girl is blinded. It seems out of synch with what actually happened to her and seems to have been put there simply as a way to wrap things up quickly... though really, they could've wrapped it up just as quickly by having her simply accept Mr. Song's ugliness.

The other moments of stupidity come with the anachronistic pop songs that supposedly represent Mr. Song's "genius". In retrospect, they make the scenes where the caretaker dude waxes lyrical about how talented he is come across as rather silly.

Also, of all the film versions of "Phantom" that have been made over the years, "The Phantom Lover" is the one that most resembles fan-fiction.

So many fan fiction tropes pop up in this - the "blind chick as compensation for Erik", the way that the Raoul-figure is depicted as the true villain (here he's not only simple but a wife beating sadist as well) and the presentation of a Phantom who is totally declawed. He never so much as threatens anyone who hasn't personally injured him or his loved ones in some way.

Snicker. I like the 1983 Markowitz/Schnell film a lot more than you do, I think, but that chandelier scene is just terrible. There shouldn't be time for anyone to do more than process a nice, fervent, "Oh, shit," before everybody gets squashed. Markowitz tried to shoot it in a dreamlike way, I think, but there was no saving it from its own silliness. I wasn't actually as concerned about the birds in the carriage scene--it was pretty symbolic, and I figured it was being used as an example of a sort of more supernatural element to the Phantom--but it, too, didn't exactly make a lot of sense, really.

There are many things that I do really like about that film... I own it on DVD and have watched it many times.

I like much of the imagery and visual style of the film, I like Schell as an actor generally, I think he makes a very strong Phantom, I'm actually in the minority who really like Jane Seymour's acting here and I find both her "Elena" and "Maria" personas likable.

The film actually starts out very well, but I feel it goes pear shaped in the end - the tuition of Maria is overly rushed and there really needed to be more scenes of The Phantom teaching her, it all comes across to casually... then there's Michael York's annoying, whiney bleeting... and finally the central conflict is not resolved in a satisfactory manner. Again, it's rushed through and doesn't really make a lot of sense if you think about it.

*facepalm* Time travel. It made me so sad. I liked so much of that movie that it was just depressing to see that.

The problem is, I insist on my films having a coherent sense of internal logic. This has impaired my enjoyment of the Markowitz/Little/Argento films immensely.

I have grown to like the Markowitz and Little films despite their flaws - they have a certain sense of style and some very good acting, despite their flaws.

I don't think I could ever like the Argento version though. Not only does it throw logic completely to the wind, but it's also made in a style that is unappealing to me, and I think the acting is crap.




Oh, and by the way....


I can't believe I forgot to mention that scene in "Phantom Of Manhattan" where Erik discovers he has a son and then suddenly starts talking in rhyme.

There are a great many stupid plot contortions in that book, but that one really sticks out to me, for some reason.

Then there's that scene in the original novel where Raoul confesses to stalking Christine and is then surprised by her indignant reaction. Twit.

Or Gaston Leroux being the music-director of the Paris opera house in "The Canary Trainer". Nicholas Meyer, shame on you for being so slack, I know you can write about historical figures with more plausibility than this - Leroux was a journalist and thus it would've been so easy for Meyer to work him into the story that way.

And then there's that bit in Susan Kay with the "cuckoo"... damn, I could go on like this forever...

I haven't yet read Forsyth's book (though I believe it's next on my list after the one I'm working on, in fact!), so I can't comment.

Interesting that you say that Tang is the Raoul figure... I hadn't thought of him that way at all. The original novel's love triangle is vastly skewed by the Ye Bang ge Sheng films, but if I were going to try to peg someone as Raoul, I'd say that it was the young protege that the Phantom is trying to hand his lady off to. He really seems to have the innocence and youth thing down, as well as being a possible romantic possibility for the Christine-like character (though he himself is really also the Christine character... those wacky Asians). In the original film version of that, the Phantom actually died and the girl ended up with the younger protege, who took care of her in the Phantom's stead... kind of reminiscent of Susan Kay's version of Raoul-as-caretaker, now that I think about it. Tang seems like more of an added representative of the oppressive political regime to me.

I'm not a big fan of the use of Leroux in Meyer's novel, either, though I think it was intended as kitschy fun, really. It didn't bother me too much since it seemed obvious that Meyer wasn't trying to be historically accurate, but I think the book would have been stronger without it.

AMM wrote:Interesting that you say that Tang is the Raoul figure... I hadn't thought of him that way at all. The original novel's love triangle is vastly skewed by the Ye Bang ge Sheng films, but if I were going to try to peg someone as Raoul, I'd say that it was the young protege that the Phantom is trying to hand his lady off to. He really seems to have the innocence and youth thing down, as well as being a possible romantic possibility for the Christine-like character (though he himself is really also the Christine character... those wacky Asians).

The way I looked at it... Song is the Erik figure (or rather, the ultimate fanfic version of him) and Tang is the Raoul figure (or rather, the ultimate fanfic version of him).... whereas the Christine character has been split into two... instead of The Phantom having both a romantic and musical interest in a single character, he has a romantic interest in one character and a musical interest in another character - with "Cyrano De Bergerac" undertones which ultimately tie these two together.

Hmmm... rather like how with "The Phantom Of The Paradise", the Phantom is kind of split into two, with Winslow assuming the "victim" aspects of the character and Swann assuming the "victimiser" aspects.

In the original film version of that, the Phantom actually died and the girl ended up with the younger protege, who took care of her in the Phantom's stead... kind of reminiscent of Susan Kay's version of Raoul-as-caretaker, now that I think about it.

I find it hard to decide which of those two endings is more stupid and contrived.

I haven't seen "Song Of Midnight", but I think I might actually prefer the fanfic style ending of "The Phantom Lover"...

For me, the whole "Raoul as caretaker" schtick seems to cross the line further into bathos than having The Phantom live happily ever after with a blind chick.

I was really not sure what I thought of the Raoul-as-caretaker idea in Kay's novel. I wasn't satisfied with it, which was a letdown after all the things that I liked about that book; it was very pat and totally removed any chance of him getting to have any character development (then again, I have the same complaint about Christine in that novel; Kay does a fantastic job of characterizing Erik, but she does it at the expense of pretty much everybody else). I didn't like it, but it also wasn't what I'd call bad--it did at least have symbolic significance. Which pretty much sums up my reaction to the last several chapters of Kay's novel, actually; not really bad, but a letdown after the rest of the book. I really wanted her characters to function more as people instead of as characters in Erik's personal drama.

Song at Midnight's ending wasn't too problematic for me because it wasn't played in that syrupy fanfiction way at all. It's not really romantic at all; they're both obviously traumatized and sort of clinging to each other because they don't have anything else left in the world; both of their significant others are dead, and they're the only person the other one has any connection to anymore. I think, also, that there's some more decidedly Asian approach to the idea of the kid having a duty to take care of the woman since he had helped the Phantom out where she was concerned, and the whole political subtext of the Chinese people being damaged by the war but rising above it to survive. It's not a happy ending at all; it's just sort of a "and then life went on because it had to" kind of a thing. I always feel like, with that movie, I don't have a complete grasp on what's going on because I just don't have much insight into the Chinese mindset of the day... someday maybe I'll find somebody who can explain it to me more thoroughly.

I can see what you mean about the triangle, though. I still don't see the Raoul-connection to Tang, but I can see how you could connect the dots that way, and I certainly couldn't say for certain which interpretation is closer to the filmmaker's intent. I guess it's a matter of personal opinion there.

AMM wrote:I was really not sure what I thought of the Raoul-as-caretaker idea in Kay's novel. I wasn't satisfied with it, which was a letdown after all the things that I liked about that book; it was very pat and totally removed any chance of him getting to have any character development (then again, I have the same complaint about Christine in that novel; Kay does a fantastic job of characterizing Erik, but she does it at the expense of pretty much everybody else). I didn't like it, but it also wasn't what I'd call bad--it did at least have symbolic significance. Which pretty much sums up my reaction to the last several chapters of Kay's novel, actually; not really bad, but a letdown after the rest of the book. I really wanted her characters to function more as people instead of as characters in Erik's personal drama.

I wouldn't say that Kay characterises Erik at the expense of everyone else - she only does it at the expense of Raoul and Christine.

Up until the final two chapters, I felt that all of the characters were vivid and well drawn... they didn't just come across as figures in the landscape of Erik's neuroses, they DID come across as REAL people... in fact, I'd say that one of the strengths of the novel is that "The Persian" does function more as a person than he ever did in Leroux's book.

Honestly, I think the characterisation and narrative momentum is brilliant - up until the final two chapters (the "Erik/Christine Counterpoint" and "Raoul" chapters)... then the book just goes off the deep end in the worst possible way...

If Kay had only chopped off the last two chapters from the book completely then "Phantom" would be a brilliant book that is genuinely worthy of it's high esteem in the fan community, methinks. Unfortunately, Kay just didn't know when to quit.

Song at Midnight's ending wasn't too problematic for me because it wasn't played in that syrupy fanfiction way at all. It's not really romantic at all; they're both obviously traumatized and sort of clinging to each other because they don't have anything else left in the world; both of their significant others are dead, and they're the only person the other one has any connection to anymore. I think, also, that there's some more decidedly Asian approach to the idea of the kid having a duty to take care of the woman since he had helped the Phantom out where she was concerned

Hmmm, maybe....

My issue is not so much with the sentimentality and melodrama (this is "Phantom" after all, melodrama and sentimentality have always been a big part of it, even going back to Leroux's original novel - though it's staunchest supporters may deny it)
My issue is more that both endings seem like a very contrived and pat way of tying up loose ends.
But as I've said, I've never seen "Song At Midnight" so I can't say... a lot of things look ridiculous on paper but somehow work out on screen...