Helping him in this task is the aforementioned Yagher, who presents us with different faces for this Phantom, each of them reflecting where the character is mentally. And yes, while he is indeed murderous, the fact that he is trapped within a Faustian bargain, and the pathos attached to that, Englund does a great job conveying. He does his best to shed his best-known role, Freddy Krueger, and provide his Phantom with some depth so that the audience can feel some sympathy toward him at times. Of course, there’s the name on the marquee, Robert Englund, who really turns in a fantastic performance. The best tangent to go on here are the horror alum that we find within. This ends up being both a good and a bad thing as we’ll talk about in a little bit. Still, the money saved appears to have been clearly used on the costumes and make-up effects provided by Kevin Yagher, who provided effects for Nightmare on Elm Street 2.

Thus, while this story typically takes place in Paris, here the events unfold in Victorian England. One bit that likely saved some money in the budget was the fact that the sets used here in Phantom were from another film that had just finished production and had not been torn down yet. That this film was made only one year earlier, 1989, suggests how much Golan’s fortunes had turned in that span of time. To give you some idea, this is the same guy/studio behind the painful 1990 version of Captain America. As I mentioned in the lead-in, it’s incredibly lavish, especially when you take into account that it was produced by Menachem Golan, half of the classic Cannon Films, under his 21st Century banner. It truly defies expectations in some regards, most of those for the positive. Based on Gaston Leroux’s 1909 story, again, I’m amazed that this version of The Phantom of the Opera isn’t talked about more.

The phantom of the opera 1989