That does not count odd distaff versions such as the musical parody of The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) a pornographic version Phantom (1998) Angel of Music (2008) about a modern reporter conducting an investigation into the truth of the story Phantom of the Theatre (2016), a Chinese version that conducts some radically different takes on the story modernisations like The Phantom of Hollywood (tv movie, 1974), The Phantom of the Ritz (1988), Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989) and a Disney Channel children’s tv movie The Phantom of the Megaplex (2000), which had the Phantom haunting respectively a movie studio, a movie theatre, a mall and a cinema multiplex, as well as the low-budget The Phantom of the Opera (2014) where the Phantom’s spirit is disturbed by a reality tv crew and the story even being given an uncredited relocation to another planet in the Doctor Who episode The Caves of Androzani (1984). It was subsequently followed by the pallid Universal colour remake Phantom of the Opera (1943) starring Claude Rains the Hammer version The Phantom of the Opera (1962) starring Michael Gough Phantom of the Opera (1983), a tv mini-series with Maximilian Schell and Jane Seymour the slasher movie version The Phantom of the Opera (1989) with Robert Englund, which involved time travel and The Phantom selling his soul to The Devil a reasonable tv mini-series version The Phantom of the Opera (1990) featuring Charles Dance and Italian horror director Dario Argento’s take The Phantom of the Opera (1998) starring Julian Sands.
The Chaney Phantom of the Opera still stands as the greatest version of the story, made with a Gothic flair that no other adaptation has ever managed to recapture.
The first and the very best of the film adaptations came with the silent The Phantom of the Opera (1925) starring the great Lon Chaney, an actor who made the virtue out of grotesque disguises.
The Phantom of the Opera (1909) was originally written by French mystery writer Gaston Leroux. The Phantom (Gerard Butler) and Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum) Prior to 1986, when the musical phenomenon began, The Phantom of the Opera was a character that lived in the pantheon of Universal Famous Monsters where the original role was celebrated for Lon Chaney’s performance and its triumph of grotesque makeup after the musical, the story was claimed by the same middle-aged crowds that regard My Fair Lady (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965) as the pinnacles of cinematic art, or by lovers of melancholy romantic fantasy along the lines of tv’s Beauty and the Beast (1987-90). The Phantom of the Opera musical is a case of a phenomenon having changed and shaped a public perception of a story in an entirely different way to the one it was originally intended. To respond to such questions, one puts their all-important air of being a deacon of obscure trivia on and says “Well, actually there have been no less than seven different films made out of The Phantom of the Opera before the musical came out.” This usually produces a look of amazement and one can then go for the coup de grace and tell the person how, rather than the florid romance that it has been made into by the musical, that these other films tell The Phantom of the Opera as a horror story, while the original book that all of these are based on was intended as a Gothic thriller. As an historian of horror film, I have had several similar occasions where people have come up to me and made the comment: “Gee, I didn’t know there had been a film made of The Phantom of the Opera before the musical came out.” I cite this because it shows two things – firstly, just how prevalent the musical Phantom of the Opera phenomenon has become and, secondly, how it has altered people’s perceptions as to what the original story was about. I have heard in mention several times the apocryphal story of someone who was standing in a record store during the mid-1970s and overheard two teenage girls say in amazement “Gee, I didn’t know Paul McCartney was in another band before Wings.” There are probably various other variations on such a story, all of which are used to cite as examples of how today’s youth live in ignorance of what has gone before them.
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