Dec 29, 2021
Triple billed advertisement for The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Mole People (1956), and The Monolith Monsters (1959) from the Morning Call, Allentown PA, 1963.
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Triple billed advertisement for The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Mole People (1956), and The Monolith Monsters (1959) from the Morning Call, Allentown PA, 1963.
They used Claude Rains clips in their Dark Universe trailer as well. I have a theory that Universal doesn't want to pay Chaney Entertainment any more licensing fees for using his copyrighted makeup/appearance, and expects the general public to just not notice the difference.
Yeah, I actually have been thinking that, too. The Chaney estate has a lot of control over Lon Sr.’s properties and legacy (which I think is a good thing!), and my guess would be someone at Universal either started negotiations and then didn’t want to actually offer a reasonable amount, or the studio just said, “You know what, we own the rights to another version, just use that one.” (I feel like I remember something about Universal having some rights controls over with Hammer’s 1962 Phantom due to legal agreements between the studios, but I can’t find that now, so I’m going to assume they can’t use that one, either.)
Given that they’re definitely doing some weird sympathizing stuff with some of the monsters, it might be that they wanted a more sympathetic version of the Phantom, anyway, which Rains’s definitely is. Also, Chaney’s Phantom is partly iconic because of his revolutionary makeup and appearance for the film, and I would imagine a set of modern filmmakers probably want to design their own version of the Phantom’s disfigurement.
They’re probably right that most movie-watchers won’t notice. The vast majority of their audience have never heard of Phantom outside of the Lloyd Webber musical or maybe a few cameos in old cartoons, so it’s not like a mob is going to be up in arms over the lack of faithfulness to the 1920′s silent film.
Out of the Hell-Fire of Horror Unimaginable: Vintage posters for the 1962 film The Phantom of the Opera, featuring Herbert Lom as the Phantom, Heather Sears as Christine, and Edward de Souza as Raoul.