with your host, Kount Dmetri Kakmi

The Phantom of the Opera 
1925, USA
Director: Rupert Julian
Cast: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry

The history of the horror film is the history of the ugly and the deformed. In the outer reaches of the human mind, to be unsightly is to be monstrous and evil. If you are unpleasant to behold, you either hide or you are hunted down and annihilated. In that sense, horror is also the story of the outsider, the outcast, the pariah. That is why artists from the margins are drawn to the genre, and often they reinvent the wheel in surprising ways. 

Possibly no greater horror existed for the early twentieth century European mind than the maimed and disfigured soldiers returning from the battle fields of the First World War (1914-1918). And although Gaston Leroux’s celebrated novel was released in 1910, Lon Chaney’s inspiration for Erik, the phantom, comes from the grotesques witnessed on the streets of London and Paris. Torn off limbs, shredded faces, missing jaws and lolling tongues abounded. These men either sequestered themselves from the world or dared show themselves in public, a reminder of the folly of war and man’s cruelty to man. 

Audiences going to see The Phantom of the Opera in 1925 would have been reminded of this when Mary Philbin as Christine Daaé rips off Erik’s mask to reveal a mangled face. It is a master stroke, one that truly understands the art of cinematic looking. 

Erik and Christine are playing house in his underground lair. He has told his protegee that she must never see his face. In an unguarded moment, he regales her on the organ. Behind him, Christine veers wildly between loyalty, temptation, connivance. She knows she must not remove the mask, but curiosity has got the better of her. She must know what her strange benefactor looks like. Yielding to temptation, she reaches over Erik’s shoulder and rips off the mask. 

First we see Chaney’s uncovered face front-on and then, when he turns to confront her, we get Philbin’s horrified reaction. She screams, falls to the floor. Chaney looms over the prone body, pointing an accusing finger. You have transgressed. You must be punished. 

Two things happen at this point. The first impression is of God casting inquisitive, disobedient Eve out of paradise. The second is more mundane. Erik turns on Christine. She has disobeyed; she is like everyone else and must feel his wrath. What is more, Christine can no longer allow herself to be wooed by Erik. Despite his generosity and tutelage, he is not handsome. He is disfigured. He is not worthy of her love and must be spurned. But Erik is not just unsightly. He is a psychopath, driven insane by societal rejection. 

Order is restored when Christine’s handsome fiancé Raoul rescues his beloved and annihilates the beast. But is the phantom dead or is he just resting at the bottom of the Seine?

The Phantom of the Opera is the first of the great lavish studio horror movie productions. The expression Grand Guignol immediately comes to mind. Thanks in part to sumptuous sets and beautiful cinematography, it was wildly popular in its day. It is also the precursor to the masked killer movies that became a genre staple from the 1970s onward. 

Lon Chaney’s exquisite performance is paramount to the film’s lasting reputation. He had previously played Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and he will go on to terrify in the now lost film London After Midnight. In Phantom he is subtle and underplayed, relying on body language, gesture and a turn of the head to convey complex emotion. Moving like a dancer or a mime, he is terrifying and pathetic; repellent and fascinating. 

If I were Christine, I would stay with stalky old Erik in the sewers rather than shack up with noble Raoul topside and become a baby factory. So what if the sight of Erik’s face puts you off your petit fours? You’ll get used to it in time. 

Given the remakes, reinterpretations (Brian de Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise) and the musical’s enduring popularity, it appears humanity is simultaneously fascinated by and recoils from the misshapen. There is something primal at work; it is not merely societal conditioning because the phenomenon exists across time and place. The question remains: why does physical deformity denote malevolence? And what comes first, the grisly exterior or the twisted interior? Perhaps the answer lies in the films that will be discussed later.

Dmetri Kakmi is the author of The Dictionary of a Gadfly (as The Sozzled Scribbler), The Door and Other Uncanny Tales, Mother Land, and When We Were Young (as editor). His gothic novel The Woman in the Well will be published in 2025. He is currently working on a crime novel called The Perfect Room.