Rating: 
Summary: Art-House horror for the soul - Multiplex freaks stay away!
Review: Well, after the pretty poor by Argento standards Trauma and the near-perfect Stendhal Syndrome , Dario Argento pulls off his most expensive in-joke yet! This is a very difficult film that demands a lot from it's viewers. It is not always easy to read between the lines of an Argento film. It never has been easy after all. Argento does not care to make a traditional horror film, that's for sure. Instead, he creates a self-ironic film, deliberately balancing between shots of poetic grace (the Phantom's visions of children pierced by mousetraps - chilling) and shots of extravagant kitch (Asia's appearance in the same scene!). Argento's choice of not to have his Phantom disfigured was not without a point: This man is disfigured from the inside, and thanks to the script, it shows. Let's not forget that Gerard Brach, the co-scripter, is the man who co-wrote "Frantic", "The Fearless Vampire Killers" and many other Polanski films. He lived up to our expectations once again. The film is deliberately funny in places but it contains some very weird scenes (like the one in the brothel - unbelievable for an Argento film). I would say that it is his most 'Fellini-esque' film yet. It is his "8 1/2". This is his contribution to a tradition kept by directors such as Fellini or Visconti for that matter (he is often called "the Visconti of violence" after all). Let's not forget the help he gets from his actors: Julian Sands couldn't be a better choice. His phantom is gentle, vicious, romantic and monstrous all at the same time. Asia on the other hand seems to be stoned for most of the film which adds more to the dreaminess of the concept me thinks. Sergio Stivalleti has done some great work with CGI, especially in a scene where a poor guy gets impaled (you think it's really happening!). Ronnie Taylor's photography is NOT up to perfect standards (it is known that he could not stand the weather conditions and wanted to leave as soon as possible) but the known quality of his work is there, once again. A movie that belongs more to the Art-House section than to that of Horror, I might add. Don't miss it though. And buy the Ennio Moriconne soundtrack, it is a masterpiece!
Rating:
Summary: Underrated
Review: Give credit to Argento from trying something new besides his giallo whodunit plot. Also praise for tinkering with the tried and true original dinosaur Phantom formula. The gore is not abused or overused and carries the plot, to its conclusion. The sets are typically gorgeous Argento. Even the comic relief of the rat catcher was needed to further the plot. This is a movie long-tim,e Argento fans will usually either love or hate. After reading numerous reviews, it is his most underrated film in his long career. This Phantom was unpredictable. The film's high points are the imagry and the acting. It is now out-of-print on VHS, so if you don't have a DVD player yet, get it while you can. Four stars only because Argento's also done undisputed classics in the 1980s, then venturing into his under-appreciated 1990s years of his least active period. But for the sake of this film alone, five stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been a whole lot worse.
Review: The Phantom of the Opera (Dario Argento, 1998) Okay, so both Julian Sands and Asia Argento are pretty standard definitions of sex on a plate. Put them together in one of history's finest love stories, add in a director whose work is called 'operatic,' you've got a formula for success. The existing reviews of this film seem to be polarized. There is the crowd who liked either the book or the loathsome Rice/Webber monstrosity that managed to mass-hypontize Broadway into thinking it was worthwhile. They all hate the movie. And then there is the crowd who worships Dario Argento. They... well, like the movie. Kind of. And there are a core of fans who think it's the best thing since sliced bread. I think I fall into the middle section. I thought it was enjoyable, if a bit amateurish (Asia Argento's lip-synching in the singing scenes is quite painfully amusing, for example). A very interesting take on the story. Argento keeps to gore to a minimum here, at least, for Argento, preferring to take the 'operatic' moniker and apply it to the cinematography, the performances, etc. It works well enough, but it just doesn't say 'Argento.' One wonders if there were another fledgling director under whose name they were planning on releasing the movie (e.g., Demons, directed mostly by Argento but bearing the name Lamberto Bava); Asia, perhaps? In any case, one of my rules of film viewing is 'never pass up a chance to see Asia Argento naked.' And this is one of them. ***
Rating: 
Summary: Julian...WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
Review: After one viewing of this "hip" and gory version of the classic Gaston Leroux story, I couldn't believe that a great actor like Julian Sands actually agreed to be in a film with such a terrible script (trust me, this movie totally butchers the original tale to no end and reduces the Phantom to an incredibly inconsistant and unbelievable character). I found it even harder to believe that Dario Argento (a man who brought us such horror classics as "Suspiria" and "Tenebrae") would spend so much money on gorgeous sets and a decent cast only to see his efforts ruined by a re-working of the original story that simply DOES NOT WORK. Damn it, if it's not broken, DON'T FIX IT!!! The characterization of the Phantom is quite screwy here, to put it mildly. He's born illegitimately to a poor mother and abandoned in a small raft on the river Seine. He washes up in a grotto beneath a Paris opera house and is "adopted" by a brood of rats (instead of being eaten, which is probably what would really happen...). Then we see a cornball dialog card (read by a narrator) telling us how the baby forms a bond with the forces of darkness... Flash forward about three decades. A beautiful singer/understudy at the opera house (Asia Argento) is trying to make a name for herself while the Phantom lurks in caverns beneath the building. A team of construction workers break into the Phantom's world unintentionally and provoke his wrath (all are brutally slaughtered). The Phantom (at no point called "Eric") then starts creeping through secret passages in the opera house and he becomes enchanted by Christine's singing. When he finally introduces himself to her, he is not a masked and disfigured monster, but a handsome, washed, long haired gent with a perfect command of language (give me a break...HE WAS RAISED IN A SEWER BY RATS!). Despite his animalistic and savage tendencies, the Phantom falls in love with Christine, and he plays an organ in his cave to accompany her singing after he introduces her to his "world"...did the rats teach him how to play the organ, too? Yeah, sure, the Phantom is depicted as having some sort of telepathy that lets him see into peoples' minds, but this is a very weak plot device, and it just doesn't adequately explain how the Phantom knows so much about the world above his pit. Christine is soon torn between her dapper and decent admirer, Raoul, and the animal magnetism of the Phantom. When the Phantom gets wise to this, trouble starts brewing, and he gets obsessive and jealous. Meanwhile, he savagely murders a couple of nosey stagehands who intrude upon his "world" (he impales a man on a stalagtite and chews a woman's tongue off in a scene very similar to the tongue chewing scene in "Warlock"). Also, the Phantom shows his humane side when he partially eats a would be child molestor who chases one of the opera's young dancers into the catacombs (he then sends the child home with a pat on the cheek...?). The Phantom's downfall comes about after he executes a revenge plot after Christina is passed over for the female lead in a musical production of "Romeo and Juliet". He drops a gigantic chandelier onto the audience during the performance (it crushes bodies and tears off heads). The opera house exterminator then suddenly appears on the stage and tells the enraged audience survivors that he has seen Christina copulating with the Phantom in the caverns...mob madness follows, and Raoul leads Christina into the pits to save her, where they encounter the Phantom, who holds off the mob (at the cost of his own life) as they escape in a boat. Earlier in the film, the Phantom is portrayed as a blood thirsty monster with super-human strength, but when the gun toting mob closes in on him, he softens up and stands between them and the fleeing couple and is gunned downed accordingly. So, he must truly love Christine...but how he ever learned about love in a sewer, I'll never know. The subplot involving the opera house rat exterminator is entirely unnecessary. He builds a souped up "rat sweeper" hotrod with slicing blades and takes it into the tunnels...keep in mind that the movie takes place in 1877, so we're talking cornball "Wild, Wild West" sci-fi technology here. In any event, the crazed exterminator is instrumental in the Phantom's defeat and execution. This film exploits gore to make up for a weak story, but the only genuinely disturbing scene in the movie is when the Phantom takes his shirt off and let's his rat "brothers" crawl all over his body...Sand's look of masturbatory ecstasy in this scene is delightfully revolting. Phantom fans and "completists" should probably view this film just so they can say that they've seen it, but the true horror fan would do better to stick to the classic versions and avoid this one entirely. entirely.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes Phantom of the Mall look good!
Review: The Phantom? Of the Opera? Raised by rats in the sewers? Bwa-ha-ha! From the man who practically introduced Euro-Splatter to America, comes a film you'd expect from a Wes Craven/Roger Corman team-up, not to mention a Director's Daughter leading role that makes The Godfather 3 look good in comparison. I tried to laugh, but this film is so bad it passes funny and slams right into painful. If you want to see Julian Sands in a great role, just rent Warlock again. "I am not a man. I am a rat!" - Julian Sands, completely destroying his acting career.
Rating:
Summary: Not typical Argento, but I liked it
Review: I really enjoyed the artistic feel of this movie. It really did remind of something that could be considered Felliniesque. I liked their take on the Phantom and also enjoyed the irony that was laced through the Phantom's methods of dispatching his victims. There were a lot of scenes in this movie that can only be described as interesting. If your looking for pure Argento or a movie that is traditional in it's portrayal of the Phantom story then you may be disappointed. But for just pure interesting movie watching I would recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting representation- very different from the book
Review: I did not care for this version. It is very gory in some places and it doesn't follow the plot of the book very much. I was surprised at how bad the story was displayed. The Phantom seems to be compared to rats too much, which was not in the book at all. Plus I didn't care for the settings because I had thought that the cellars under the opera house had been built, and in this movie they were catacombs of sort. I wouldn't reccommend this movie, read the book instead!
Rating:
Summary: NOT Argento's Finest Work, ...
Review: As a huge fan of Dario Argento, I must say that this is probably his worst film. I does have it's bright spots but not enough to save this film. I think that the idea for the film was good but the overall product was bad. The acting was atrocious, and some of the effects were totally unneccessary (i.e. the CGI sequences). To go one step further this DVD is flawed beyond belief, the dolby digital soundtrack on the WIDESCREEN side is miscued, so the music cues in late, voices do not match the lip movements. However the Pan and Scan side of the disc the soundtrack is perfectly in sync. Although I refuse to watch the Pan and Scan version of anything that was shot in widescreen, I viewed this when I found out the sound on the Widescreen side was flawed.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Please Everybody All The Time.
Review: Now this is an example of how a director can slip up. I feel all directors are allowed a mistake a time or two, and this is Dario Aregento's. It really didn't bother me that this strayed from the original book, what bothered me is that Aregnto seemed totally uninspired as though he was obligated to make this movie or something. It never seems very Argentoish and looks like it was a made for tv movie. Alot of the time you wonder if Argento was trying to make a comedy. There's some Tim Burton-esque goofiness going on in some parts. There's some decent performances, and some pleasantly gruesome scenes, but Dario should slap an Alan Smithee on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Argento direction & vision.
Review: First of all this is not the "usual" vision of POTO, but another telling of the tale, Argento's vision. No there is no mask, but what a better mask than that of beauty? Within the mask of "beauty" of the Phantom lies the real "monster". If you are expecting the Chaney version or the "Universal Studios" version, by all means, purchase either. This, as those are, is "based on the story", a director's vision. The author's vision in it's origial form is in the book -- READ THE BOOK. The novel by Leroux is a classic. This version is different, yes, but contains all the elements and atmosphere one would expect. All in all the film is beautiful, tragic, comic at times, and, dare I say, romantic.The transfer could have been better -- the pixelation in some scenes is apparent. Also, the film IS IN WIDESCREEN on one side. Check your player's set up menu if you have this problem. I thought the same concerning the full screen editions being on both sides (special thanks to the other reviewers for their input!). In closing, have an open mind, people -- this is a film, and not the classic book, and is meant to be escapism. Evil, like beauty, comes from within.
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