Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin as Christine Daae
Finally a deformed dude from movie(s) that I’m familiar with. Prior to Hunchback I was big into the Phantom of Opera so I have seen a lot of the movie/ musical version of this.
Phantom of the Opera comes from book written by Gaston Leroux from 1909 and was made into several popular movies namely the 1925 version starting former Quasimodo, Lon Chaney and 1943 version starting Claude Rains, though it was the 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber that made it a Household name.
The basic plot of Phantom is a deformed musical and all around genius, a.k.a Erik, lives under a Paris opera house where he falls in love with an aspiring opera diva, Christine Daae. Erik is obsessed Christine and kills though who get in his way. Unlike our pal Frollo, Erik is in love with Christine to fair degree. In a way Erik is a combo of Quasimodo and Frollo. He’s tragic and dreams of beauty and love but he is crazy.
Erik’s appearance and back story changes from version to version. In the book he looks like a corpse with a skull head and gray skin. The book was the basis for Chaney’s make-up. In the 1943 version, he was burnt with acid. The Webber musical used a half make so the performer could singer easier. The deformity therefore only affect one side of his face. Typically the deformity has a hug lip, exposed areas and doesn’t look very nice. The 2004 version just looked like a bad sunburn.
Well the brings us to the end and it’s time to re-read Phantom, I better get reading.
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