Jim Reid wrote:Who's Allen Perkins? He seems to be taking the baton from Sulpy, only he's irate about The Phantom of the Opera.
Well, that’s another film that will continually get the screaming voices in the heads of the anals singing in four-part harmony because there were so many versions and re-do’s of that messed–up-movie before, during, and after it’s so-called “general release” that you could never have a “definitive” print of it, even if you had decent materials on anything and everything resembling the original silent versions. I love that one because my favorite version of it is still frankly the 1929 International Silent Version, even if I do have a pretty darn good as they come print of the Show-at-Home version, because that reissue version understands that Raoul and Christine are a couple of drips and makes it the Phantom’s movie as much as possible. The irony that I love about all the whining about PHANTOM is that no matter how much noise is made, or how much is rediscovered, it is most likely that not one frame further of Lon Chaney would ever be recovered because Universal used every bit of him they had, and knew better than to trim any of it in any of the incarnations. All any so-called “restoration” of PHANTOM is going to do is give us a hell of a lot more Raoul and Christine (and maybe some Chester Conklin if they ever found a print of the San Francisco version) and who needs that really?
So when I want to see it, I pull out my lovely Blackhawk print with the Gaylord Carter track and still have a jolly old time, as do the folk I show it too. Too damn many other films to see to worry about one of the commonest titles in the surviving body of silent films.
I was enjoying Lokke Heiss explaining comedy to us way more than the endless Phantom whine. Did you know Buster Keaton was a “Robot Comedian”? Oh, and Lokke, quick and easy answer to the question, “Did the House on Un-American Activities Committee actually do any good?” and that answer is “NO”. Despite the fact that chairman J. Parnell Thomas went to jail, that was actually on other aspects of his scumballism rather than HUAC, but the irony of his bumping into Dalton Trumbo in jail was definitely one of God’s better little jokes.
RICHARD M ROBERTS