"Actor: Arthur Edmond Carewe"

• Phantom of the Opera | DVD | (12/12/2011) from £17.98   |  Saving you £1.00 (6.67%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Directed by Rupert Julian, and based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, classic horror masterpiece The Phantom of the Opera stars Lon Chaney, in one of his most grotesque performances as the crazed man without a face, who lives in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, and falls in love with the voice of a young opera singer. Infatuated, he kidnaps her, dragging her to the depths below where she will sing only for him. This 2-disc Ultimate Edition includes an all-new restoration of the film, with the Bal Masque sequence in two-strip Technicolor and other scenes hand tinted, and features both the 1925 and 1929 versions. It also includes a brand new score by The Alloy Orchestra, in addition to Gaylord Carter’s famous 1974 score – released for the very first time in stereo – and Gabriel Thibaudeau’s 1990 score. Together with new audio commentary by Dr. Jon Mirsalis, this edition features the following extras: * Still Frame Gallery *Original Trailers * Interview with Gabriel Thibaudeau * Reproduction of the 1925 Souvenir Programme and Script

• The Phantom Of The Opera | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £12.32   |  Saving you £-2.33 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The original and best version of Gaston Leroux's legendary book The Phantom Of The Opera is an awesome monument to the Golden Age of Hollywood starring ""The Man of a Thousand Faces"" Lon Chaney. In the film Chaney is Erik the horribly disfigured Phantom who leads a menacing existence in the catacombs and dungeons beneath the Paris Opera. When Erik falls in love with a beautiful prima donna (Mary Philbin) he kidnaps her and holds her hostage in his lair where he is destined to have

• Chiller Theatre Features | DVD | (03/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatre threesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, and this package is a good way of acquiring them. Of those featuring Lon Chaney, it's the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame that comes across best. Chaney's grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, and Patsy Ruth Miller's Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes and cathedral stunts with aplomb, and there's an atmospheric "posthumous" soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock. 1925's The Phantom of the Opera is slow-moving and uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julian's direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks (or is that camps?) up his range of gestures to the limit, and Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless--with looped extracts of Schubert and Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack. Cut to 1962, and The Carnival of Souls--made in Kansas for under $100,000--is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking (if a tad gauche) as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world and the next, and Gene Moore's organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence. On the DVD: Chiller Theatre is very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged. --Richard Whitehouse