'20s Horror Movie I Just Saw For the First Time

The Phantom of the Opera (three and a half stars total) Between Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) and Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (2007), horror-musicals that are both gory and full of singing are on the rise. The 50+ screen and stage adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera book (1909) tend to be either more about the music or the gore, but the 1925 film hits you over the head with both. What I mean by that is most audiences at the time of release were unprepared for the make up of Lon Chaney Sr. His lipless skull-like face, sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones, and nose pinned back, is supposed to be the most accurate depiction of the character from the book. As for the music, on the version I found (part of the Mill Creek Horror Classics 50-Movie Pack), Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony No. 8 in B minor is played over and over ad nauseum. Apparently different premieres in 1925 each used different scores, most of them from Faust, but I've noticed most silent-era scores were more repetitive than those today. Here's my trick for avoiding that on DVD - certain to appall traditional cinephiles - I watch in fast forward. The great thing is, you don't miss any dialogue because it's all on cue cards and they hold those long enough to still read on fast forward. Call me A.D.D. Accuse me of being a lazy critic. Tell me everything I'm supposedly missing out on. I don't care. On my last DVD player, I could even watch non-silent films without missing dialogue because the subtitles would still display in fast forward. But I digress. Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera was obviously a logistical and technical achievement. There were so many extras (ballerinas, masked ball attendees and the mob at the end). The booby traps in the dungeon were worthy of Indiana Jones. There were over fifteen minutes of color footage . . . in 1925. That's almost fifteen years before The Wizard of Oz! To fans of gore, and even fans of Andrew Lloyd Webber's adaptation, see where it all began.