Turning to dull explication when devising a plot won't do, the filmmakers also include lines that seem to exist solely for the previews (Victim: 'You're a thing from Hell.' Phantom: 'And you, sir, are Hellbound'). While 'Phantom' cliches (cape, candles, underground organ etc.) are mostly intact, the story itself has been reduced to its bare-bones plot and then peppered with Kruegeresque commentary. True, opera usually operates in the red, but this may be going overboard. All this may be a bit too much culture for the average Englund fan.Īnd opera fans are not likely to be amused by the slicing, dicing, beheading and other genre special effects (much less the plastic surgery the Phantom practices on himself). After all, the Phantom is a classical composer who has sold his soul to the Devil for success, the object of his fixation is an ingenue soprano, and most of the action takes place in a London opera house in 1885. Then there's the mix of the highbrow and low. First, this is old-fashioned melodrama with a twist of gore, a match not likely to work in either Heaven or Hell.

The bad news: Well, there's more of that. Of course, that could scare some people right out of a theater. And since it's set in Victorian London, there's no rock soundtrack instead, it's mostly opera ('Faust,' of course). The good news: This Phantom isn't Freddy Krueger, though he does share the same pizza makeup in some scenes. This time around it's a vehicle for Robert Englund, the '80s Man of a Thousand Faces (minus 999).

'The Phantom of the Opera' is a cheap knockoff of Gaston Leroux's novel, which has been regularly knocked off, cheaply and otherwise, since the Lon Chaney version in 1925. 'Phantom of the Opera' (R) By Richard Harrington

The phantom of the opera robert englund