The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked

This 51 minute documentary was included on the DVD for the 1943 remake of "Phantom of the Opera". This remake was a very lavish but incredibly dull shadow of the great 1925 film. Thankfully, this documentary was better than the full-length film and makes watching the disk worth while--an odd case where the DVD extras are better than the accompanying feature film.

The documentary begins with Scott MacQueen narrating. You only briefly see him on camera--which is a good thing, as his hand movements were way over-exaggerated and distracting. Perhaps I noticed it more since I am relatively fluent in sign language, but really think most will find his gesticulations odd to say the least. Fortunately, the film gets a lot better--and is an interesting look at the various of "Phantom of the Opera" made up until that time. It consists of film clips and interviews and is quite good.

Note that the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical is only very, very briefly mentioned, as the filmed version had not yet debuted. However, given the play's popularity, I do think it strange that it was given such cursory mention--very. very cursory mention.