Using the Grand Illusion Cinema 's October programming to inform the selections for the October Horror Movie Challenge was not such a bad idea. In the third week of October, they were showing the 1943 Phantom of the Opera in a double feature with Arsenic and Old Lace . Therefore, it seemed like a good plan to see in 1925 Phantom of the Opera with Lon Cheney as the Phantom and I'm glad that I did as the two films were vastly different adaptations of the story. The 1925 film I do not hesitate calling a horror movie. Both are set in the Paris Opera House, but in the earlier film, it is established that the Paris Opera is haunted. A mysterious figure moves through the Opera house and even has a box reserved for the performances. The ballet's chorus speak of the phantom on hushed whispers, which gives the film the slight unsettling quality of a ghost story. By comparison, in the 1943 version, with Claude Rains as the Erique Claudin, there is no phantom. Instead, Erique i
Notions of cinema.