Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-01-02 (Thursday)

Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:

The Phantom of the Opera (4K disc) - I watched the 1943 classic
Universal Studios version.  When I put the disc in, I was expecting the
1925 black and white, silent version, and was very pleasantly surprised
when this version (filmed in color) played instead. I bought a 4K box
set of the classic Universal horror movies a couple of years ago.  I'm
finally cracking it open to start to watch some of them.  With the
exception of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein," I've never seen any of the
classic Universal horror films.

Going into this, I was only familiar with the Andrew Lloyd Webber
musical version.  In that version the identity of the phantom is
unknown.  And he's already the Phantom at the start.  In this version
Claude Rains plays a music composer who believes someone is stealing his
work and tries to murder the man.  The man's wife throws acid on his
face to stop him.  So, everyone knows who the Phantom is and his back
story.  He spends the movie trying to help a young woman in the opera
become a star. To my surprise, this version is practically a musical too.

He's a violinist fired from the opera company having lost the use of soe
of his fingers, and he's the mentor of the young soprano. Without an
income, he's desperate and broke, and yeah, he did write a piano
concerto based on a children's lullaby that his publisher may have been
trying to steal from him. He committed murder, and poisoned the lead
soprano so his protoge could go on stage.

It's Claude Rains' most famous role, and boy does he chew scenery.

And it's nearly exactly the same plot as The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1939) starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.

The Wolf Man (4K disc) 1943 version of the Universal Studios classic
about a man who is bitten by a werewolf and turns into one himself.  On
the commentary they said the movie was a huge success.  I forget the
names, but when all the money came flowing in, one guy bought his wife a
diamond ring, another got a $50,000 bonus, and another asked for a $25
raise, and to the guy who requested the $25 raise, Universal said, no.

How is a movie studio not the setting for one of theae classic horror
movies?

When I pulled out the box set, I had a general idea of which movies I
planned to watch, but not the order.  My first thought was to go to
Wikipedia, figure out the release order, and watch in that order.  But I
*wanted* to watch Phantom first, so that's what I went with.  Turns out,
Claude Rains stars in this movie too.  And he stars in "The Invisible
Man." Had I known that I would have started with "The Invisible Man" and
watched in release order.  In addition to Claude Rains this movie stars
Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi as a different werewolf.

And of course his father was the star of the 1925 Phantom.

I was on the fence, but I decided to hold off on watching "The Invisible
Man" until the reboot's sequel is released. I'm holding off on watching
"Frankenstein" for similar reasons.

You can't see it if it's invisible.