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Episode 481 - The Phantom of the Opera - Part 4 (Patreon)

Published:
2019-12-26 22:14:04
Imported:
2021-07
⚑ Flagged

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Content

The saga ends! It's part four of The Phantom of the Opera! Get it!

Special thanks for taking the trip with us Jaime Andrews!

Next up: Bonus Original Fiction

Comments

Anonymous

Thank you again for covering another awesome story, my angels! Also, I think that Trap-Door Lover would go well with Stevie Wonder's "Part-Time Lover". Most of the lyrics still fit. I wonder if you'll ever decide to have a "Blackwood/John Silence month" like how you covered some of Hodgson's Carnacki stories. Happy New Year!

Thunk

"When I tell you that my nuptial mass is written ... wait till you hear the Tekeli-li"

Anonymous

Another comment about the 1925 movie, the original ending was filmed, with the slight change that Erik was redeemed by Christine’s kiss and died of a broken heart after she left. Test audiences hated the ending and the film went through extensive reshoots with various directors. One director added western style action and even some slapstick and comedian Chester Conklin. All this footage was scrapped save for the climatic chase sequence which became the new ending and the film was a success.

Anonymous

Patreon ate another of my posts. Sigh. I did not like the ending of the novel. It pretty much fell apart for me. (Like the test audiences Mark mentioned above). The OG dies from love? Really? Since when has anyone ever died from love? We are also supposed to believe that he stops being a sadistic sociopathic murderer because a hot chick felt pity for him? Then dumped him anyway to hook up with the captain of the football team? (Or rich aristocrat, pretty much the same thing). I am pretty sure that is what turns incels from sad, unlucky guys a person can feel genuine empathy for, into mass murdering terrorists. Not the other way around. So I vastly preferred the 1925 film's ending. Granted, the whole mob with torches and pitchforks is a little overdone. But I don't think it became a stereotype until the Universal films of the 30s. I would have preferred it be Christine who killed him. Or at least Raoul or the Persian. But I will take whatever killing I can get over 'dying of love'. At least the mob was out for revenge for the stage hand who was found dead at the beginning of the story. That brought it all around full-circle. I really enjoyed the ending to the Robert Englund film. In it the Phantom makes a deal with the devil to become a musical genius. He also becomes immortal. But only so long as his music lives. *Spoiler Alert* It's a 30 year old movie, so I don't feel really bad about giving this away. In the end Christine destroys his music, thusly killing him. A big break from the novel, but I thought it was creative. I also noticed that sadistic 19th Century murderers had a lot of patience. In both Phantom and The Pit and the Pendulum the death traps are so slow, they take days. In P&P they actually have food and water put out for the guy under the pendulum, since it takes so long for it to descend. Apparently they are worried he will die of starvation before it can cut him in half. In Phantom Raoul and the Persian are in the torture chamber for a day and a half I think. Now that is a slow cooker! The trouble is, with it taking days to kill someone like that, you cannot just sit there and watch it the entire time. You would eventually get tired and have to go to sleep. Not to mention bathroom breaks. And wouldn't you get bored after 12 hours of just watching nothing happen? Imagine if they died when you were taking a nap, and you missed it? That would be a waste of a good sadistic killing. I guess I am just too modern. One in the head, one in the heart, and be done with it.

Jason Thompson

As a fan of "The Count of Monte Cristo," I'm intrigued to find out that the Phantom gained his powers the same way as the Count, by traveling to "the Wild East", the Islamic World & Ottoman Empire. (I mean, he already was a super-musician of course, but the killing powers.) I wonder if he was consciously ripping off Dumas or whether it was just a trope of the times... probably the latter, I mean, Christopher Nolan's Batman does it too!

Jason Thompson
>>30469148

(And, that being the case, it's nice that "The Persian" is one of the good guys)

Anonymous
>>30467456

I've heard that novels written in the 1700s and 1800s were much longer because the people who had the money and education to enjoy them generally didn't work for a living and had a lot of spare time to fill. I'm sure it's similar with torture chambers.

Anonymous

The Persian was contemplating suicide, not because of the torture chamber, but because he'd just spent a day and a half taking care of Baby Raul. Also I think it's impossible to sing through a reed. You could maybe hum. It was a siren hum. I (gently) mock this story for its over the top elements and its toxic relationship dynamics, but it's really from a very different time and culture so, given its popularity at the time, a lot of what I find silly is probably just a matter of the story being written to resonate with people of a different age. I thought the observation about audiences of the 20's and 30's wanting a straight forward ending with a dead monster and a righteous mob was great. It reminded me of the difference between the 1931 Frankenstein movie and the actual novel. I have not read this book, so I don't have a sense of the tone, but is it possible that Raul is Leroux kind of making fun of the ruling class?

Anonymous
>>30464123

Another addition, the film actually had three directors in addition to Rupert Julian (the only one credited), Edward Sedgwick who directed the action and comedy scenes (of which only the ending remains), Ernst Laemmle and even Lon Chaney himself. The woman who managed to salvage the film and make a masterpiece out this chaos was the editor Lois Weber.

Anonymous
>>30472411

I did not get the impression that Leroux was lampooning the aristocracy or simply the wealthy. I think it was all meant to be taken at face value. But I could have just missed it in the interminable slog to get through this story. In contrast however, when I read The Great Gatsby it was really, really plain that Fitzgerald was laying into the decadence of the indolent rich in that story. So I was able to figure it out then. But maybe where Fitzgerald wielded a lightsaber in that story, Leroux used a scalpel, and I was too thick to miss it?

Anonymous

I waited for the final episode to mention Depalma's film, because I figured your were holding off on Phantom of The Paradise until you reached the end. I actually think it does a better job of giving the phantom proper motivation for his actions and captures the spirit of opera's place in culture by transforming it into Rock Opera. Our views of that world are so stuffy as opposed to the playgrounds for the rich they actually were. Seeing Phantom as a world of petty rivalries, preening show boats, and emo lurkers transforms the read from a solemn examination of uptight pretensions into laughing at the wildly romantic pretensions of the characters in the book. Finally, it just occurred to me how many horror classics are the literary versions of "found footage." Whether Dracula, Frankenstein, Phantom, or Cthulhu, all the great works of fantastical horror are either assembled collages of primary documents or first person gazes into what you are not supposed to see.

Steve

French is a naturally more flowery language than English so lazy translations sound pretty strange.

Anonymous
>>30459788

Evey time I heard 'Trap Door Lover' I thought of the song 'One Track Lover' from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Now I want a song version of 'Trap Door Lover' with keytar and a mid-song rap solo by The Persian.

Trace

I feel as though this original song from the Josie and the Pussycats film "Back Door Lover", is a missed opportunity to recontextualize "trap door lover" for the modern age. https://youtu.be/iwykvrwvWW4

Anonymous
>>30512293

Frankly, I think "Trapdoor Lover" should be performed to the tune of "One Track Lover"--complete with The Persian having an impromptu rap solo: https://youtu.be/OO-ZGP68-3w

Anonymous

All this talk of Christine and not one shout out to Christine of “Bug Alley” fame - she was a performer too, right? For shame!

Anonymous

I think the Phantom of the Opera has a bit of the kitchen-sink syndrome we see in a lot of modern franchises. Whether it is superheroes or fast and furious folk or laser sword magicians, we see a lot of cool stuff developed and then rather tossed aside as the need to heighten is fulfilled by more plot twists and explosions and retconned half-assery than the Hulk can shake a stick at (Hulk no need puny stick). Eric's backstory, torture chamber, and too clever by half scheme to blow up the opera house are all thoroughly unnecessary. We were already on board and just needed the landing stuck. On the other hand, I did just purchase some maple-sugar treats because you pure maple sugar pressed into the shape of maple leaves is the sort of hat on a hat I can get behind.

Anonymous
>>30493939

Question: I don't speak much French at all, recognize a few words here and there maybe. The original subbed version of Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" (La Belle et la Bête) seemed really horrible. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's been done better, I dunno. Have you seen it and how correct or incorrect am I?

Anonymous
>>30667954

I wonder if he wrote by hand or used a typewriter? If by hand, editing is a fresh hell, if by typewriter, the length and kitchen sink-edness of it could have been affected by its relative ease of use--like the bloated epics churned out by some writers after getting a word processor or computer. *Cough*King*Cough*

Anonymous

I once went to a ballet performance of Phantom...not a play WITH ballet, but the entire thing, done without dialogue, done only as ballet with orchestral accompaniment. On the whole, it was good. but the final fight scene came across laughably as a dance off, and really broke my suspension of disbelief.