On today’s episode of Cinemallennials, I talked with Will Pender, host of Now that’s What I Call A Podcast about the silent horror classic, The Phantom of the Opera starring the Man of a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney, and the original scream queen, Mary Philbin.
Lon Chaney paved the way for all of our favorite grotesque but deeply human onscreen characters. Costumed and made up creatures like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Apes from The Planet of the Apes, The Elephant Man, Jar Jar Binks, The Amphibian Man from The Shape of Water and one of my all-time favorites, Gollum/Sméagol could have never been realized if Lon Chaney and his makeup never appeared on screen.
Based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera follows the story of Christine Daae, a young singer who for years has been tutored by a kindly masked figure, known to her as Spirit of Music but known to everyone else as The Phantom of the Opera, a shadowy spirit that causes chaos when his musical sensibilities are disturbed by the Opera’s owners. Defied once more and thought to have been betrayed by his muse, our, sometimes recognized as an empathetic figure, the Phantom goes on a rampage claiming if he can’t have Christine, no one can. So sit back, relax, and befriend the outcast.
You can purchase The Phantom of the Opera here.
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