Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Pretty Good

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

II Fantasma Dell'Opera 1998 starting Asia Argento & Julian Sands.i don't need to explain here who is Dario Argento & what he is famous for but i will say that this master of horror genre has lost his game this late 90s adaptation of the phantom of the opera is a solid proof.the cast of this film got wasted here i mean director chooses his daughter Asia Argento for a role here yes she is hot i am a fan of her since i saw her with Vin Diesel in film xXx 2002 & what was Julian Sands doing here simply embarrassing himself in this mess he gets shot multiple times in the end still he is immortal somehow & survives.Dario Argento totally changed the whole concept of classic phantom of the opera he made changes to the novel way too much the story is same but done in a different way he tried to turn it into a horror of art film but failed the main character phantom is a weird psycho who lives with rats & moles in sewers down below the earth he falls in love with Christine a opera singer but he is not really in love with her he lusts after her.this is the most stupid version ever i was on a hunt for this film as i saw some good reviews i love 90's decade & good suspense,horror films even soft core but what genre is this movie anyway i saw this & got disappointing,this just fails to keeps the viewer interested to watch the whole thing,this 1998 version is a disgrace the sex scenes are pointless i mean what was Dario Argento trying to do here there is no balance & chemistry between characters.the only good scene was when the whole opera gets blown up,this film takes itself way too seriously & ends up being a big hilarious joke.may i ask what was Christine doing she is just shrieking & not properly singing anything,the phantom have nothing better to do then having sex or kidnapping people & kills people for lame reasons.let me say this again this film has nothing to watch in it as there was no screenplay for this Dario Argento wanted to fulfill some fantasy so he let out all of the nonsense in his mind here forget the locations are awful,the opera looks more like a warehouse,camera work is terrible.what makes a phantom of the opera good is a romance vibe to it this is why the 2004 version of Emmy Rossum is superior i have the Disc of that one trust me guys it is by far the best film ever made this one sucks & who can forget the bad overacting adding & not even a single good musical score.Overall The Phantom Of The Opera 1998 is a waste of time & money do not watch this at any cost my rating is 2/10:Skipp It.

Having already seen 'Phantom' in several of its incarnations ... the 1925 silent film with Lon Chaney, the 2004 musical film with Gerard Butler, and the 2011 25th Anniversary stage version at the Royal Albert Hall ... I was in the mood to see this quite different version, on Netflix streaming movies. This version has a number of giant differences, while still following the basic story, of a musical genius who lives in the bowels of the opera house in Paris, and who inspires young Christine to become a fine opera singer. First, this Phantom is not disfigured, instead is mentally distressed from having been rescued by rats as a baby floating in the river underground, then raised by rats. Thus his response when he was called a Phantom, "I am not a Phantom, I am a rat."Julian Sands, with very long hair is The Rat (Phantom). Pretty Asia Argento is Christine Daaé, Andrea Di Stefano is Raoul, and Nadia Rinaldi is Carlotta Altieri . But this is not a musical, in that singing is infrequent, and only to further the plot, i.e. a rehearsal or a performance. The Phantom and Raoul never sing. It is really mostly a horror movie. Did I enjoy it? Yes, I did. Does it deserve a high rating? No, it doesn't. But it accomplishes what it sets out to do and, knowing the basic 'Phantom' story,it is fun to see how they changed it with a quite different Phantom role.It was not filmed in English but it is presented in English on Netflix. The dubbing is really done well, I had to look really hard at lip movements to see any irregularities, it looks for the most part that the actors were speaking English.Much of the filming was done in the Pertosa Caves outside Naples, Italy. It makes the underground scenes very attractive.

The Phantom of the Opera (1998) 1/2 (out of 4)Dario Argento's horrid telling of Gaston Leroux story about a mysterious Phantom (Julian Sands) who becomes obsessed with a singer (Asia Argento) and tries to turn her into a star even if it means killing people. I still remember the first time I watched this film I couldn't believe how such a wonderfully talented director could fall so quickly and so fast. This film is a complete disaster from the word go and in fact it's so incredibly bad that I can't help but revisit it ever so often just to try and figure out what the director was trying to do. The original story has been butchered beyond control but I don't blame the film for trying to do something new and on its own but at the same time whoever had the bright idea to center the film around rats should have been fired. I'm really confused as to the importance that Argento puts on the rats and the incredibly bad comic scenes with the rat catchers is just beyond belief. Even worse is the humor that Argento puts in the film and this includes a scene where one of the rat catchers get his hand caught in a trap and then we see rats eating off his flesh. There's even a very bad scene where the "star" singer shows up the younger girl and hits her with her wardrobe. Even the performances are rather bad with both Sands and Argento sleepwalking through their parts. It's clear that the two leads have zero chemistry together and their love scenes are just incredibly embarrassing. Sands is really bad in his part as he seems to be moving around like a blind lover who doesn't really what he's doing. Even the style that Dario is known for is missing here as the entire film looks extremely cheap and ugly. The only thing that saves this from a BOMB rating is the fact that Asia has a couple nude scenes, which are certainly the highlight of the movie.

This movie looks to me like some type of experiment. Something like "Let's see what we could do with the Phantom of the Opera story to shock people a bit and make it different". Because it's totally different from any other Phantom of the Opera take. First, the phantom is not deformed, he's an abandoned child raised up by...rats in the catacombs of the Opera. If I remember correctly (there has been a while since I've read the book by Gaston Leroux) there is a weird character in the book that has the power to command the rats and is always walking around in those catacombs surrounded by rats, and the Phantom was avoiding him and letting him be (yeah, looks like all weirdos of Paris retreat under the Opera, I know). So here there's a mesh-up of this character and the Phantom: the guy is raised by rats, is able to command them, has telepatic powers (where did that come from?? no idea), loves music and plays the orgue. How he learned to talk, play the orgue, or got his things down there in the caverns we don't know. He's not at all deformed, looks more like a rock star (weird looking wig, by the way, but it's supposed to make him look sexy...), so you also ask yourself why he likes staying in those catacombs when he could be living quite normally above ground. Perhaps his weird childhood left its marks upon him and he's not adapted to live differently. In fact he's a pretty sick pervert, bites the tongue out of a woman's mouth, is killing people left, right and center, and almost masturbates in front of his rats(!). Well he does kill a child molester on the other hand... Christine is in this movie no Saint Mary, she's always almost fainting with desire when she sees the Phantom, and she can't decide if she loves him or not. One time she's offering herself to him like a slut, then she's all rebellious and shouts at him, telling him how much she hates him. It's the typical Italian love story this! Then later when the Phantom returns from his killing spree she shouts at him a bit more, he rapes her but she likes it, then she runs away into the arms of Raoul and tells him not to let her go. Then there's a weird guy in the movie and his friend, a midget. These two weirdos like to hunt rats, and invent a steam motored vacuum cleaner machine with which they drive around in the caverns and kill the rats of the Phantom. That was so hilarious I almost chocked on my popcorn! Of course they're such bad drivers they hit a rock and the midget gets his head cut off. His friend then finds the Phantoms layer and watches the hot action going on between Christine and the Phantom. When he finally manages to get to the surface, he tweets to everyone the truth, that Christine is the Phantom's whore, which makes the Phantom become Batman, swoop on the stage and save her. And here the plot becomes so laughable I thought I was gonna burst: Raoul appears and shoots the Phantom in one of the most ridiculous scenes ever, Christine suddenly realizes how much she loves the freak and cries like a baby while the Phantom is all like "Life goes on, dear girl". Then it all comes down, gore and slashing at the Phantom while Christine is in the boat with Raoul, screaming her brains out and crying, instead of jumping in the water to get to him (maybe she doesn't know how to swim?) So a movie where I had a few good laughs, have been shocked a few times by the gore and some other stuff (Christine is the director's daughter, and she has some sex scenes in the movie with daddy-o filming, pretty creepy, but OK, artists are not to be judged like other people) and I'm not sure if I like the Phantom, but find him attractive nonetheless. If you want a movie completely different from the usual Phantom of the Opera, watch it, but be warned that it's an experiment.