Directed by Dwight Little in 1989 for producer Menham Golan after being stuck in development hell for quite a while in the years prior, The Phantom Of The Opera tells a familiar tale in an interesting way. The story begins in New York where a beautiful young woman named Christine Day (Jill Schoelen) is about to audition for an opera. Her friend Meg (Molly Shannon!) discovers a manuscript long thought to be lost and offers it to her. The piece was written by a composer named Erik Destler (Robert Englund), a man who has been missing ever since he was believed to have been guilty of a rash of bloody murders and the abduction of a London based chanteuse years ago.

As Christine, who has been taking voice training with a so-called ‘Angel Of Music' she believes has ties to her late father, goes about learning the piece, she soon finds that the music moves her in unusual ways, ways that other compositions never have. She does her audition, and a freak accident with a sandbag sends her memory reeling back to younger days when she was working as an understudy for a performance of Faust. In this flashback we learn that there were strange things happening on the set, not the least of which was the lead, Carlotta (Stephanie Lawrence), discovering the corpse of a stagehand. Back in the present, Christine's debut goes off like gangbusters, but ties to her past come back to haunt her when the production manager, Barton (Bill Nighy), convinces a reporter to slam her so that he can give the lead role to Carlotta. His plan works, but then Christine finds herself involved with a mysterious masked ‘Phantom' and then learns that the critic who panned her has been murdered. As Christine falls in love with the other manager, Richard (Alex Hyde-White) and the Phantom's obsession with her becomes increasingly dangerous, she fears for his life all while a police man named Hawkins (Terence Harvey) moves in and attempts to tie this latest rash of murders to those that took place years ago.

Shot on location in Hungary (a tactic that allowed the producers not only to save money but to take advantage of that country's interesting and decidedly European look), The Phantom Of The Opera is a beautifully shot film. The film really benefits from fantastic use of color not only during the opera sequences but also in those sequences that take place in the Phantom's lair within the confines of the opera house itself. Reds will occasionally bathe certain scenes and create tremendous atmosphere but other shades and tones are employed here to enhance the remarkably smooth looking camera work. This was a film made on a modest budget but it doesn't typically look or feel like that was the case. The makeup effects, which are spoiled on the cover art taken from the theatrical one sheet (and old VHS and DVD covers too), are also well done here. The Phantom really does look burned and while it's hard not to compare his look to that of Freddy Kruger given Englund's involvement in the picture, it definitely stands on its own.

As far as the performances go, Englund and Schoelen are quite good here. Englund brings his quirky screen presence to the picture in a big way but does so without channeling Freddy. He creates his own character here, playing the role enthusiastically and with just enough scenery chewing to make it work without going completely over the top. Schoelen is decent here too, doing well in the scenes in which she finds this Phantom mysterious and intriguing but doing just as well once she learns of his true nature. Supporting work from Alex Hyde-White and Bill Nighy are decent too and Terence Harvey is fun as the cop on the case. It's hard not to see Molly Shannon and think of her Saturday Night Live work but she too does decently enough in her small role.