Dark & Twisty

The Phantom of the Opera may be the most disappointing “horror” novel I have ever read.  I say disappointing because I had high hopes for this book based on so much of the other media versions of it. There are few silent movies if not early horror movies in general than The Phantom of the Opera.  Then there is the 1940’s version with Claude Raines.  These two movies give something to the phantom isn’t given in the book. 

In the 1920’s silent movie, Lon Chaney gives the Phantom a pathos and a sympathy he doesn’t quite get in the book.  In Universal Claude Raines version, the Phantom has a reason for his scarring and his strange madness.

In 1910, Gaston Leroux published the novel in its French version.  A year later, the English edition came out.  Leroux himself was a journalist that had adventure stories that would be unbelievable. 

The major problem I have with his story is that the story is rather melodramatic.  Since the story took place in a theatre, melodrama may have been the order of the day so to speak.  However, the story borders on soap opera. 

I found the characters to be rather stiff and cardboard.  They, however, fit in with characterization of the Victorian period, which the story would be written just at the end of.  With the characterization, the Phantom isn’t well rounded a villain for my taste.  He is mad, but we really never find out why he is mad.  The Persian says he’s always been like that, but he doesn’t elaborate as to why.

Speaking of the Persian, this character seems a little to convenient.  He seems to be just as knowledgeable about the L’Opera as the Opera Ghost.

The one thing that Leroux has going for him in this tale, is that he has a wonderful creepy setting.  There are few places in Paris more spectacular or mysterious as the L’Opera.  The building was construct around the time of the Franco-Prussian War.  During the siege and invasion of Paris during this war, the building was used as a store house of munitions and food products.  The below stage area of the L’Opera was cavernous and had many rooms.  Leroux took this into his story.  The Phantom is very creepy in that he can be just about anywhere in the building by using these various rooms. The greatest thing about the L’Opera is that is does have a subterranean  lake underneath it.  Leroux uses this as the location for the Phantom’s house, which is perfect.

Leroux had a great opportunity to make a wonderfully scare book with his Phantom of the Opera.  Unfortunately he was not a good enough writer to pull it off.  His journalistic style of writing wasn’t able to maintain the horror element needed for the story to be truly scary. 

The story relies on the madness of the Opera Ghost, but his madness seems random at best.  Some one say like in the musical version and the Claude Raines movie version that it is love, but the Phantom doesn’t really love Christine.  He loves having a plaything to mold to his own image.  It is a perverse love at best, which can be seen when he enslaves her.  The Phantom is scary only by the way that his cultural and personal beliefs so differ from our own, but even those elements are stereotypical to the belief about Persians and Near-Easterns during this time frame.

In more capable hands, this story would terrify.  Even though he was a horrible writer of character, it would interesting to see what Lovecraft would have done with such a horribly creepy location as the L’Opera.  What would Stoker have done with it?  Would the Phantom have been an elder god or some kind or fish person. Would Dracula have used the varied chambers to do his evil? Alas we will never know the true possibility.

Okay, I know that I’m going to get blasted for this random rambling about the story.  So do you worst.  I’ll be hiding in my lake house underneath the main building of Seton Hill awaiting your next arrival.  I’ll have my skull mask ready and my fingers cracked so I can play my pipe organ.