A classic

Since it is such a classic, I thought it was finally to time to check it out. Honestly, I had a rather hard time to make up my mind about this flick. First of all, is it really a horror feature? Sometimes, I thought it was actually pretty funny above all because of the mannered acting of those silent movies. I mean, with a Charles Chaplin movie, it works like a charm but with a horror flick like this one, it makes you chuckle quite often. Also, even though at first I was quite happy with the awesome classic music, it was actually rather distracting because, since it wasn’t especially composed for this movie, it often didn’t fit at all the action. Still, the production value was quite impressive, especially for a movie almost reaching 90 years old, and there was definitely something dark and ominous about the whole thing, especially the awesome bal masqué with the Phantom disguised as the Red Death. And, of course, you have Lon Chaney. Man, this guy was impressive, playing one hell of a psycho, and to think he designed himself his own make-up was even more astonishing (apparently, it is something he took care of in all his movies). To conclude, even though I wasn’t really blown away by the whole thing, it remains a really intriguing feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

7/10