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Budapest, late 19th/early 20th century: Sandor Corvin (Maximilian
Schell) tries to make his wife Elena (Jane Seymour) the primadonna
of the opera house, even though her vocal range is rather limited. Baron
Hunyadi (Jeremy Kemp), patron of the opera house, lets her have the lead
role in the house's latest production Faust anyways because he has
the hots for her - but when she refuses him, he has her booed of the stage
at her debut, which emotionally wrecks her to the point where she commits
suicide. Sandor is determined to avenge her, but when killing the
journalist (Philip Stone) in Hunyadi's employ who has written the harshest review about
Elena's singing, he gets himself badly burned and
disfigured by acid, and wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for the
homeless
mute Lajos (Gellért
Raksányi), who saves him, takes care of him until he has
fully recovered, and then becomes his sidekick. Why Lajos does that is
never explained, nor is it ever made clear why a journalist keeps large
quantities of sulphuric acid in his office ... but anyways, Sandor moves
to some quarters beneath the Budapest opera house and starts wearing masks, with his face disfigured and everything. Years later: The
Budapest opera house plans to put on a new production of Faust, but the
director, Michael (Michael York), just fails to get along with his leading
lady,
Madame Bianchi (Diana Quick). So he casts for an understudy, and thinks
he's found the perfect woman to replace Madame in Maria (Jane Seymour
again), an ambitious young singer he soon falls in love with. Maria though
soon also attracts the attention of Sandor, now known as the Phantom, who
starts to educate her as a singer because she's so alike his wife, and he
also sees to it that Madame Bianchi leaves the production to give way to
her (less than perfect) understudy. When she starts to spend too much time
with Michael though, the Phantom gets jealous, so much so that he
threatens to kill Michael, who then fires Maria from the production and
gets Madame Bianchi back instead. The Phantom kidnaps Baron Hunyadi and
Maria, and while he kills the Baron, he keeps Maria as his loveslave - a
relationship that goes horribly wrong after she removes his mask and sees
his real monster face. Michael has since found the plans to the opera and
makes his way to the Phantom's underground lair, from where he saves Maria
of course. The police plans to capture the Phantom, using Maria as bait
... and now it gets weird, in a cartoon-like sort of way: During the
premiere of Faust (with Madame Bianchi in the lead), the Phantom plans to
crash the big chandelier onto the audience and saws off the chain the
thing is hanging from - above himself sitting on the chandelier (very much
reminiscent of Wile E.Coyote in any number of Road Runner-shorts,
but not played for laughs this time around). Only when he has almost sawed
through the chain he notices that Maria is sitting in the audience and
somehow gets her (and all the others) to realize what he's doing, so
everyone saves himself, and when the chandelier crashes into the
auditorium, the Phantom is the only one who dies. Perhaps
not the worst adaptation of Phantom of the Opera - but
anything but a good film: First and foremost, the whole thing seems to be
totally sloppily written - most of the characters lack motivation for
their actions, there is an amazing number of plotholes and leaps of
reason, and rather frequently, the characters' intentions totally change
from one scene to the next withouth any explanation ... and don't even get
me started on the cartoon-like ending, that's not only unintentionally
ridiculous but also lacks the impact a finale of a film of this sort would
need. On top of that, the cast is merely competent, nothing more, with the
film's most versatile actor (Maximilian Schell) hidden behind a mask most
of the movie, and the direction seems to go an extra mile to let everyone
know this is just made for television and therefore as bland as can be. In
all, a major disappointment, especially since the source material has
proven itself to be a great base for good shockers in the past, and the
rather pittoresque Budapest settings would have deserved something much
better.
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