When Operatic Horror Hits a Sour Note
The 1989 version of The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Dwight H. Little and starring Robert Englund and Jill Schoelen, is a horror adaptation that tries to blend slasher sensibilities with classical melodrama—and ends up pleasing neither audience. Set partially in modern-day Manhattan before veering into 19th-century London (yes, not Paris), this awkward Frankenstein of a film aims for gothic grandeur but collapses under the weight of its own confused ambitions. It’s a film that can’t decide if it’s A Nightmare on Opera Street or a Hammer horror tribute. In the end, it’s neither.
One thing is clear by the time the credits roll: Jill Schoelen deserved better. She’s the lone bright spot in a production that squanders a classic tale, miscasts a horror icon, and clumsily stabs at artistry with all the grace of a butcher hacking up a libretto.
The Opening: New York City, Really?
The film begins in modern-day Manhattan with Schoelen’s character, Christine Day, a promising young opera singer preparing for an audition. She and her friend Meg stumble across an old piece of sheet music, Don Juan Triumphant, composed by one Erik Destler—a name that immediately raises eyebrows for anyone familiar with Phantom lore. Naturally, Christine decides to perform it.
Cue a convoluted accident involving a falling sandbag, a knock to the head, and suddenly we’re no longer in Manhattan—we’re back in 1880s London (or some grubby, dime-store version of it), where Christine is now a young ingénue pursuing stardom at the opera house. Is it time travel? A dream? Reincarnation? The film doesn’t care, and neither will you. This lazy narrative device sets the tone: expect plot holes the size of orchestra pits.
London by Way of B-Movie Backlot
Gone is the opulence and romantic grandeur of the Paris Opera House. Instead, we’re given a dingy, dark, and under-lit London opera house filled with dusty props and poorly written supporting characters. This isn’t the lush, candle-lit catacomb setting of past adaptations. This is a backlot with fog machines cranked to 11.
Christine finds herself under the spell of a mysterious, unseen benefactor who showers her with encouragement and murderous assistance. Soon, rival singers are turning up dead. Heads roll—literally—and the Phantom begins his reign of terror from beneath the opera house.
Robert Englund’s Erik Destler is no tragic genius. This Phantom isn’t content to merely stalk from the shadows or wallow in romantic self-pity. No, this version peels faces off his victims and stitches the skin to his own, trying to maintain his “beauty.” It’s more Texas Chainsaw Phantom than Gaston Leroux. The gore is gratuitous and joyless, a desperate attempt to inject some 1980s horror edge into a story that’s supposed to be about tragic longing and doomed love.
Robert Englund: Freddy Without the Fun
Casting Robert Englund as the Phantom was a bold choice—but ultimately a failed one. Coming off the massive success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Englund had become synonymous with Freddy Krueger: a wisecracking, dream-stalking icon. But in Phantom, his performance is flat, cold, and disturbingly monotone. He doesn’t exude sorrow or menace. He just lumbers around in shadowy corners, wheezing through his lines like he’s bored and halfway through a NyQuil crash.
His makeup is grotesque, more akin to a burn victim than the classically disfigured Phantom. Instead of tragedy, there’s mutilation. Instead of elegance, there’s oozing gore. He peels skin off corpses and glues it to his face, and the audience is supposed to… sympathize with that? It’s a tonal whiplash the film never recovers from. Englund is capable of more, but the script gives him nothing but growls, glares, and knife thrusts.
This isn’t a Phantom to swoon over. It’s a Phantom you want to run from—and not in the poetic way.
Jill Schoelen Sings Above the Noise
And yet, amid the mess, Jill Schoelen rises above it. As Christine, she gives a performance far better than the movie deserves. Schoelen brings genuine vulnerability and warmth to the role, her expressive eyes doing more in one close-up than the film’s overwrought script accomplishes in its entirety. Whether she’s playing wide-eyed optimism or the creeping realization that something isn’t right in the opera house, Schoelen feels authentic. Real. Grounded.
She also brings a kind of classic movie star presence to the screen, reminiscent of actresses from the golden age of horror films. While the sets crumble around her and Englund gurgles through his skin suit, Schoelen acts like she’s in a serious period drama. She sings, she cries, she conveys terror without resorting to cheap histrionics.
It’s a shame her performance is trapped inside this gothic mishmash. In a better film—a Phantom worthy of the name—she might’ve been remembered alongside Emmy Rossum or even Sarah Brightman. But here, she’s the pearl in a bucket of pig slop.
Directionless Direction
Director Dwight H. Little, best known for Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, fumbles nearly every aspect of tone and pacing. One moment we’re supposed to be feeling romantic tension, the next we’re watching a man get his face peeled off in gory detail. The camera lingers on disembowelments and eye gouges, then tries to snap back to gothic romance as if the audience hasn’t just been knee-deep in viscera.
The film wants to be sexy and scary, but it’s neither. The love story lacks chemistry, the scares lack build-up, and the whole thing feels stitched together from conflicting notes: “Add more gore! But make it classy! Throw in a time travel subplot! But don’t explain it!”
And the transitions between scenes—especially the final one that jerks the viewer back to modern-day New York for a rushed showdown—feel abrupt, unfinished, and confusing. It’s as if the editor gave up halfway through and said, “Screw it, that’s good enough.”
Music to Forget
For a film set in the world of opera, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) has shockingly little memorable music. The score is bland and unmemorable, a series of generic orchestral swells that fade into the background like sonic wallpaper. There’s no grandeur, no operatic sweep, no soaring crescendos or haunting leitmotifs. Just plodding music cues and forgettable arias.
Contrast this with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical—which had already taken Broadway by storm when this film was released—and the difference is night and day. Where Webber’s Phantom gives you chills with its musical themes, this version barely registers. The music is an afterthought in a story that should live and breathe it.
Slasher Disguised as Drama
Let’s be honest: this isn’t really The Phantom of the Opera. It’s a slasher flick in period costume, using the Phantom’s name as window dressing. There’s no soul, no sympathy, no emotional anchor to the story. The kills are gruesome, frequent, and devoid of context. Victims are introduced just long enough to be killed. There’s no investment, no suspense, no art to the violence.
Instead of watching a tortured man grapple with love, rejection, and deformity, we get a leather-gloved killer carving up singers backstage like he’s trying out for Friday the 13th: The Operatic Cut.
This tonal confusion makes the film feel mean-spirited. The Phantom of the Opera is, at its heart, a tragedy. But this version mistakes brutality for depth. The script (by Duke Sandefur) lacks poetry, and the dialogue often borders on laughable. No one speaks like a real person, or even a stylized Victorian character—they speak like they’re trying to remember their lines through a haze of Ambien.
The Ending: Don Juan No More
After a parade of blood, cheap jump scares, and Schoelen’s best efforts, the film finally limps toward its finale. Christine confronts the Phantom, now fully revealed as a monster both inside and out. There’s a brief suggestion of pathos, a glimmer of the character’s traditional self-loathing and yearning—but it’s too little, too late.
A clunky showdown leads to another clunky dream/time shift, and we’re back in modern-day New York for a “twist” ending involving reincarnation and a possible return of the Phantom. It feels tacked on, confusing, and wholly unearned.
You leave the movie not with the echo of an aria in your ears, but with a headache and the lingering question: why did they even bother?
Final Verdict: A Masked Miscalculation
The Phantom of the Opera (1989) is a film that takes a timeless story of beauty, obsession, and tragedy—and boils it down to a bloodbath with candles. It’s joyless, muddled, and ugly in all the wrong ways. The production design is half-baked, the music forgettable, the direction tone-deaf, and Robert Englund is misused to the point of parody.
And yet, through it all, Jill Schoelen shines. She gives the film its only heartbeat, its only soul, and its only reason to endure beyond late-night horror marathons or completist Englund fans.
But even her talents can’t rescue this film from the dank sewer of forgettable remakes and ill-conceived horror hybrids. This Phantom doesn’t haunt your dreams. It just wastes your time.
Rating: 3.5 out of 10
(Three points for Jill Schoelen, and half a point for ambition. Everything else should be locked away beneath the opera house forever.)
