Rat Phantom
Rat Phantom. Those of us who know of Dario Argento's Phantom of the Opera, mostly PotO completionists, know it as Rat Phantom. The movie where deformity-free Julian Sands puts rats down his pants.
I want a documentary- nay, a miniseries or a podcast season- on how the hell this got made. Sands refused to do classic Phantom makeup, and I'm actually not opposed to a version of the character whose problem is purely mental, but whose idea was it for him to be raised by, strongly identify with, and sexually desire rats? Did Dario go to see Batman Returns and come out wishing the penguins who raised Oswald Cobblepot in the sewers had been a different animal instead? Was he flailing around for something gross to do once Sands wouldn't do the makeup? The fact that the camera leers so much on Dario's daughter Asia Argento's breasts barely even registers as uncomfortable when paired with everything else.
Raoul and the Phantom both have long, greasy hair. When Christine laments that she loves both men, we must assume she has very specific tastes.
In what other Phantom movie has the true villain been the Ratcatcher? In what other film has the Phantom fantasized about a giant rat trap with people in it?
I'm not a Phantom purist the way I can sometimes be with Dracula, so none of these changes upset me. If anything, they fascinated me. In the hands of an unknown, first time director, this would be outsider art. In the hands of Dario Argento, it leaves me baffled. I can at least give it this- I do sense passion and care. It's not the halfhearted slog that Dracula 3D was. Oh, Dracula turns into a giant preying mantis? Boring. Wake me up when the plot is rewritten to be about him self-identifying as a rat.
I recall a youtuber saying that if Argento had just called his film Opera, wherein a singer is tormented by an obsessed killer, "Phantom of the Opera" instead, we probably wouldn't have argued with him. I think that's true. He called this movie Phantom of the Opera, though, and whether you're a fan of the book or the musical or none of it, you'll come out wanting to argue with him. Maybe this, too, is art.
