Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

morrison-dylan-fan Counting down the days to my birthday,I decided that I would watch a double bill. Picking The Evil Dead 3 as the second flick. I took a look at the remaining works of auteur Dario Argento I had left to watch. Initially just finding the "workprint cut" of Trauma and his "live Opera" Macbeth, I spotted that I had never seen his Phantom adaptation,which led to me booking a ticket for the opera.View on the film:Going historical for the first time since the very interesting, 1973 non-Horror/non-Giallo The Five Days of Milan, co-writer/(with Gérard Brach & Giorgina Caspari) director Dario Argento reunites with Opera's cinematographer Ronnie Taylor (who also worked on Phantom adaptations Popcorn and Phantom of the Paradise) aim for an epic Gothic Horror,complete with a magnificent Opera house and winding catacombs. Working on a healthy budget,Argento (who throws sex scenes between the Phantom and his own daughter in to up the sleaze factor!)becomes unsteady in reaching the grandiose ambitions,as the stylisation of camera moves is pulled to focusing on rubbery gore effects, and the lighting is dimmed to the point of the impressive locations being covered in pitch darkness.Whilst losing the directing ambitions he had shown in Opera,the screenplay by Argento/Brach and Caspari brings to the front one of Argento main themes across his work,via the parental (and sexual!) love the Phantom has for the rats that raised him. Following the path in his directing,the writers appear undecided over what direction to take this loose adaptation, where the would-be sweeping romance between Phantom and Christine lacks any feeling of passion,and the bonkers, rat catcher surges into Gothic Horror (that would be the main element in Argento's next historical Horror: Dracula)are clipped before they become fitted into the mask of the movie. Joined by a sultry Asia Argento as Christine, Julian Sands tries to give the Phantom a brooding, Dracula-style allure,but fails due to Sands being extremely timed in digging his rat fangs in,and lifting the curtain on the phantom of the opera

M MALIK 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.

DD Panda This is by far one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Beginning with a very fast approaching 'fantasma' (no real introduction of the characters)and a following love-story (both in 1 minute) the movie is quite fun sometimes. Only the blood-splattering scenes from time to time and the slight feeling that there is no sense behind all the actions is a bit disturbing. Unfortunately there is no really suspenseful scene, despite that my girlfriend left the room twice. Don't watch this if you are not stoned or intoxicated by other chemicals. The whole story is nuts, including an out of place reference to Edgar Degas... The only element worth in this movie is the music, so I gave it a fair 2.

Michael_Elliott 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.