Saturday, May 7

Argento's Phantom of the Opera (1998), pick up the old disc...

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I found Phantom of the Opera (Il fantasma dell'opera) at a yard sale from an outfit called Allumination Filmworks and the anamorphic widescreen version has been dumped. The out-of-print A-Pix Entertainment DVD had both options on a flipper disc. The Allumination (and apparently another from Ardustry) only present the film cropped to full screen that's quite poor looking in comparison to the first R1 disc. It's like the A-Pix transfer was prepped for DVD while the Allumination uses a video master intended for the VHS release. 

All three unrated director's cut editions retain the supplements like ten minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and Julian Sands interview. Not Argento's finest hour, akin to an interesting mess blessed with a Morricone score and Dario's camera uncomfortably leering at his daughter. Still, it's advised to shift around for the A-Pix for those interested...

(A-Pix 1999 16x9 TOP / Allumination 2007 4x3 BOTTOM)  

2 comments:

SaxCatz said...

This "film" is truly terrible... no matter HOW you view it.

Ryan Clark said...

I actually enjoy this one somewhat. I went back and forth on it for a while, but when viewed as a comedy it's at least entertaining. I have the A-Pix disc, and while the widescreen version looks okay, for some reason the motion is really weird and makes it look like it was shot on video when it clearly wasn't. If you check out the trailer on YouTube, it looks much more film-like than the DVD. Maybe someday we'll get a better release, although I doubt it because this movie is almost universally reviled, even by the most ardent Argento fans.

...do you dare tread upon the staircase?

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