A majority of iconic movie monsters are concerned with romance and sexuality, not just for marketable commercial purposes but because being in love and being aroused are states where people become vulnerable, letting their defenses down. Each monster approaches these themes from a different angle — Dracula is all about seduction and penetration, the Mummy is about the concept of “soulmates” and Frankenstein is about a Monster who longs for companionship. Yet perhaps the most unabashedly romantic monster is the Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux’s deformed composer who lives in the sewers and tunnels beneath the opera house, pining for the beautiful soprano whose voice has enchanted him. While Leroux’s character has been famous since his first appearance in the 1909 magazine serial (collected into novel form in 1910), and spawned six major cinematic adaptations (along with several TV movie versions, a couple of stage musicals and unofficial spin-off films), the Phantom has never been quite the same figure twice. Unlike other monster characters adapted into films by Universal Studios, the Phantom never seemed to lend himself easily to sequels. Instead, a tradition began that saw each new, remade version of the story find a different aspect of romance to explore. In this way, the six major theatrical adaptations of Phantom’s story cover a wide realm of romantic horror, fully exploiting the themes and concepts within the character. 

Being a faithful adaptation of Leroux, 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera exploits all of the story’s romantic and sexual dichotomies. Leroux was inspired to write his tale upon hearing rumors of macabre happenings at the Palais Garnier in Paris, and as such his novel hits upon a particularly romantic bifurcation — the beautiful, almost sacred music performed in the Opera, and the dangerous, passionate figure who lurks below it. Leroux’s Erik aka the Phantom is a man deformed from birth, and his love for soprano Christine Daaé seemed to Universal studio head Carl Laemmle analogous to the Hunchback and Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had been a hit for Universal in 1923. Laemmle thus saw The Phantom of the Opera as the next logical vehicle for Hunchback star Lon Chaney, hiring him and director Rupert Julian to make a major motion picture out of Leroux’s story in 1925. Where the Hunchback was purely sympathetic, however, Chaney made his Phantom more of a dastardly Gothic villain. Kidnapping Christine (Mary Philbin) under the guise of being a music teacher sent to her by her dead father, he brings her to his lair beneath the Opera, a nightmare world of underground lakes, booby traps and torture devices. There, he makes demands similar to that of the title character from the French folktale “Bluebeard” — Christine is to be his wife, and she is free to do anything but look beneath his mask. Crazed by curiosity (which Philbin plays as almost lustful), Christine unmasks Erik, revealing his face that looks like a Death’s Head (Chaney’s own makeup design, which is still unparalleled to this day). This visage not only makes the Phantom look creepy and menacing, but acts as a subtextual indicator of sexually transmitted disease, Christine’s potential husband and lover ravaged by nature. Chaney makes sure to portray the Phantom’s murderous madness as well, showing Erik to be diseased within and without, leaving Christine to be rescued by her childhood sweetheart, the young and healthy Raoul (Norman Kerry). 

When Universal, well into their monster cycle, sought to remake The Phantom of the Opera in 1943, they toyed with a number of ideas that might update the material. At various stages of development, this new Phantom was to be disfigured only in his own mind as well as revealed to be the father of the Christine character. That latter plot point still existed in the script as director Arthur Lubin began shooting the 1943 film, but it was later removed after censors mistakenly believed the movie was implying incest. As a result, this Phantom is a confused and ambiguous romantic figure, an older man named Erique Claudin (Claude Rains), whose life as a struggling composer has been made harder by his anonymous financial support of young chorus girl Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster). After a tragic misunderstanding where he believes that a rude music publisher is attempting to steal his life’s work, Claudin is left a murderer and disfigured by acid thrown in his face, causing him to retreat to the sewers beneath Paris and manipulate events in Christine’s favor. Kidnapping Christine only during the film’s climax, the Phantom brings her to his lair, and all the while Rains and Foster play their scenes with a mentor/student (if not father/daughter) vibe, making Christine’s unmasking of the Phantom one of curiosity and pity rather than romantic interest. What romance is missing between the Phantom and Christine is substituted with Christine being part of a love triangle not involving the Phantom, portrayed by a series of screwball comedy scenes featuring rivals Anatole (Nelson Eddy) and Raoul (Edgar Barrier). The movie is unfortunately muddled by attempting to be too many things — a thriller, a musical, a classy drama as opposed to horror film — and leaves the romantic aspect of the story too ambiguous and oddly paternal, something that would’ve been more compelling had it been allowed to be fully confirmed and fleshed out. 

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While less visually lush, having been made on a tighter budget, Hammer Films’ 1962 version of The Phantom of the Opera perfects the revisionist aims of the 1943 movie, turning the relationship between the Phantom and Christine into a purely artistic one. Where music and the opera were romantic elements used in the prior films, in this movie, the major romance is between the characters and music itself. Here again, the Phantom is a once-handsome man, Professor Petrie (Herbert Lom), who makes a fateful Faustian deal with a devil of a Lord, Ambrose D’Arcy (Michael Gough) to sell his music. D’Arcy unambiguously steals Petrie’s work, causing the enraged Professor to attempt to burn down the publishing shop, burning himself in the process. Director Terence Fisher and writer John Elder (a pseudonym for Hammer producer Anthony Hinds) don’t stop there in terms of reimagining the character — they give all of the Phantom’s murderous tendencies to a mute Dwarf (Ian Wilson) who lives with him in the sewers beneath London (substituting for Paris), allowing the one-time music teacher to tutor chorus girl Christine Charles (Heather Sears) to properly be able to sing the Phantom’s magnum opus, an opera about Joan of Arc. The movie is still romantic in a traditional sense, chronicling the love story between Christine and the Opera’s producer Harry (Edward de Souza), yet its major focus is on a devotion to art and music. The Phantom kidnaps Christine not to marry or seduce her but to teach her, resulting in moments of abusive tutoring a la Whiplash (2014), instruction that’s in service of and sacrifice to a higher cause. The Phantom isn’t immune to such sacrifice himself, saving not just Christine at the end but his own soul, moved to tears by his music finally being done justice. 

After such a Sacred interpretation of Leroux, it’s no surprise that a secular take would follow. Made during the height of popularity for major slasher franchises, Dwight H. Little’s The Phantom of the Opera (1989) is a full-blown horror movie take on the story, casting none other than Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, as the title character. With the aspect of lustful, romantic longing having been absent from the story for a long while (officially, anyway — Brian De Palma’s 1974 Phantom of the Paradise, inspired by Leroux, kept it alive), Little’s movie brings it back tenfold. In a plot device inspired by 1932’s The Mummy, a modern-day Christine Daae (Jill Schoelen) is transported back in time through supernatural means to 1885 London, where she is a struggling opera singer who is secretly being tutored by a voice in her dressing room. The voice belongs to Eric Destler (Englund), a man who once was a struggling composer when he decided to sell his soul to the literal Devil, causing him to be disfigured in the bargain. Eric not only wants Christine to sing his music, but he demands she be his bride, too, a request the movie makes clear is sexually motivated — in one early scene, Eric hires a prostitute to be Christine for the night. A Jack the Ripper/Sweeney Todd type murderer, Eric is an undeniable threat, a true dark side to entice Christine, and unequivocally the villain of the film. While a White Knight suitor is around to help in the form of Richard (Alex Hyde-White), Christine represents an 80s Final Girl in the way she rescues herself, drawn to the sexually vulgar and violent Eric throughout the ages yet rejecting him at every turn. 

Where the 1989 film establishes how sexually attractive the Phantom’s danger is yet keeps him clearly villainous, the 1998 Phantom is bizarrely yet intriguingly more complex. Dario Argento’s film of Leroux is infamous for being outrageous and off-kilter, yet this is somewhat explained by his version’s thematic aim, which is to move beyond the sordid implications of the story and make it nakedly kinky. This time around, the Phantom (Julian Sands) is a man abandoned by his parents and tossed into the sewers to be raised by rats, an origin story that deliberately recalls the Penguin in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), another movie dealing with characters struggling with their sexual kinks. After the Phantom lays eyes on young soprano Christine (Asia Argento) and introduces himself to her, he barely speaks about her singing voice — instead, he’s moving his hands over her body and rapturously describing the way she smells. Thus the film becomes the only Phantom adaptation where the character and Christine have a confirmed sexual relationship, consummated in the underground lair, with the attraction Christine feels to the Phantom’s darker nature made explicit. Even the “light” to the Phantom’s “dark,” Raoul (Andrea Di Stefano), is a man who fantasizes about a sexually voracious Christine while in a brothel, styled to somewhat resemble Prince, a figure of sexual expression. Argento seeks to contrast the sexually open love triangle with not just 1877 Paris but several supporting characters whose kinks are even darker (such as a pair of old pedophiles who prey on the Opera’s ballet students). Although the Phantom commits some gory murders, the movie’s climax sees not just him but Christine and Raoul pursued by the authorities, as if they’re being persecuted for their desires and impropriety (Christine is even outed on stage as the Phantom’s lover). The Phantom helps the couple get away before sacrificing himself, and there’s the distinct sense that had he not died, the trio could’ve been a polyamorous threesome. 

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Both the 1989 and 1998 versions act as a sort of reaction to what had become the defining portrayal of the Phantom, eclipsing even Chaney’s version: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical. That stage version increases the love story (not to mention love triangle) at the core of Leroux’s novel while downplaying the horror aspects. Not that it eschews the horror — the Phantom still commits a murder or two, and the “Bluebeard” aspect of the story returns in a big  way. Yet the Phantom’s facial disfigurement is softened, something that is more easily dismissed on stage than it is in Joel Schumacher’s 2004 film version of the musical. Gerard Butler’s handsomeness is still very much pronounced when he’s unmasked by Christine (Emmy Rossum), making his tortured rage at his looks seem like an overreaction. Still, the effect Webber and Schumacher are going for is Gothic romance, which is why the film is so akin to the 1925 movie, simply heightening the grandiose passion of the characters. Where Schumacher is most clever and subversive is in his fetishistic treatment of the material, working in conjunction with costume designer Alexandra Byrne. The main trio of the Phantom, Christine and Raoul (Patrick Wilson) are dressed to enhance and expose their physical attributes (keeping it PG-13, however). Legs are showcased in tight stockings, chests are shown off in low-cut tunics and shoulders are bared as straps fall — the movie is clearly from the same man who infamously put nipples on the Batsuit. Adding to this is the fact that the Phantom keeps a facsimile of Christine in a wedding dress in his lair — almost a sex doll — and the lusty, heavy-lidded performances by Butler, Rossum and Wilson are in the grand tradition of romance novel bodice rippers. In this context, Webber’s outsized pop ballads become justified, the pent-up passion of the trio needing to be sung (belted, even) since it can’t otherwise be expressed. 

Throughout all his incarnations, the Phantom is seen to be an expressly romantic figure, with each aspect of his romanticism — whether it be carnal or otherwise — evoking excitement as well as danger. It’s why he deserves to be considered one of the classic movie monsters, for he’s misunderstood and sympathetic as well as relatable in his desires, making him genuinely menacing. Leroux’s most ingenious choice was tying the character to music itself, the one medium that best captures passionate, uncontrollable emotions. To twist the words of another Gothic monster, Count Dracula, is to best encapsulate the enduring appeal of the Phantom himself: “Listen to it, the music of the night. What creatures it makes.”

Bill Bria (@billbria) is a writer, actor, songwriter and comedian. ‘Sam & Bill Are Huge,’ his 2017 comedy music album with partner Sam Haft, reached #1 on an Amazon Best Sellers list, and the duo maintains an active YouTube channel and plays regularly all across the country. Bill‘s acting credits include an episode of HBO’s ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and a featured parts in Netflix’s ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ and CBS’ ‘Instinct.’ His film writing can also be seen at Crooked Marquee as well as his own website. Bill lives in New York City.