Revenge of The Starving Artist

Hammer Horror's The Phantom of the Opera Turned Gaston Leroux's Novel into a Tale of Class Revolt

Only half a year after I moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) authorized a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over concerns ranging from residual payments to staffing quotas for Writers’ Rooms. While streaming services exacerbated these anxieties, these were also evergreen issues that the WGA had always rallied for throughout their entire history. Just like other organized labor movements, writers fought for fair wages in the past, and they were ready to go back on the picket lines.

But there was the added threat of artificial intelligence, which was being used as leverage against pesky writers who wanted equitable compensation. Why hire some guy to write your next blockbuster when you can hire some AI company to create a program that’ll take all your ideas and churn out a screenplay without asking for so much as credit in return? Sure, AI-generated screenplays couldn’t even get good marks in a college-level course, let alone inspire the imagination of the public. But hey: AI will never go on strike. So be careful before you step on that picket line, because you could get replaced. Automation can come for you too, Hollywood.

This existential dread became even more pronounced when Deadline published a story in which an anonymous producer admitted that the AMPTP didn’t want to negotiate with the Guild until writers started to “lose their homes.” They called it an act of “necessary evil,” which was half true. It validated the outrage of writers up and down the picket lines, but reaffirmed the imbalance of power between artists and their patrons.

As someone who had just moved to L.A. to begin a serious pursuit in screenwriting, I was met with the possibility that people would rather hire a non-sentient program to write their scripts than pay me or my peers a livable wage. Worse, I might be powerless to stop them. What can a scrappy writer living in North Hollywood do against the elites? The eventual deal secured by the WGA showed the strength of solidarity, but a single union contract can’t resolve institutional disparities that have persisted ever since the Industrial Age.

Despite the deal, creativity as a vocation seems increasingly doomed. With the slashing of public art grants by the second Trump Administration, there’s been little to quell the anxieties of artists across all fields. Everyone jokes about how useless an Arts degree will be in the job market, but now the Arts themselves are under attack, and the money men are trying to make artists obsolete.

I processed this fear the way I process the rest of my anxieties: by looking back to a horror classic of my childhood. In this case, my drug of choice was Hammer Horror’s The Phantom of the Opera (1962), starring Herbert Lom.

Honestly, I could probably use any of the many, many adaptations of Gaston Leroux’s eponymous novel. The story of a deformed pianist lurking below a Parisian opera house, haunting members of French High Society who treat the Arts as just another luxury, is ripe for a class analysis. I could focus on the Lon Chaney version which, among many milestones, arguably gave cinema its first iconic scare after Mary Philbin unmasked the hideous Phantom. I could talk about Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise, which reimagined the story as a battle between a disfigured rock balladeer and the Satanic producer who stole his music. Phantom of the Paradise is not only my favorite adaptation of Leroux’s fable, but probably one of my all-timers. I consider it my personal Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Still, there’s a version of the Phantom’s tragic tale that’s never gotten its proper due, even though it speaks to this Crisis of Creation more than any other. That’s the aforementioned Hammer Horror version, which was the third cinematic adaptation after the 1925 and 1943 films (the latter of which is dreadfully boring, regretfully). The 1962 Phantom of the Opera was also the first adaptation not produced by Universal Studios, who had established a deal with the Brits to adapt many of their famous movie monsters.

From Christopher Lee’s Dracula series to the Peter Cushing Frankenstein series, this collaboration produced some of the most game-changing horror flicks of the 20th Century. Hammer Horror took the gothic, spooky, and censored characters of the Universal Monster Catalogue and injected them with bloodletting and cleavage. They ushered in a new wave of horror cinema that was ready to push boundaries and mature out of a culture sanitized by the Hays Code.

In short, Hammer Studios is one of the most celebrated brands in horror history, and their reinventions of the Universal Monsters continue to be celebrated. Except, perhaps, their oft-forgotten Phantom of the Opera.

Riding off the success of Dracula, The Mummy, and The Curse of Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera was the next step in Hammer’s campaign to put their stamp on cinema’s most famed movie monsters. They seemed especially invested in Phantom of the Opera because they were reportedly courting none other than Cary Grant for the titular role. Yes, that Cary Grant. If he had taken the role, then my Mom might have had a Hammer movie that she could have enjoyed.

While Grant was interested in playing a movie villain to play against type, he ultimately passed. The part was then offered to Herbert Lom, a Czech-born British actor who was most notable for his comedic roles. He’s most fondly remembered as Inspector Clouseau’s stern superior in The Pink Panther series.

Ultimately, the version was a financial and critical disappointment for the studio. In some ways, that’s quite surprising. This adaptation bore many of Hammer’s stylistic hallmarks. It was set in Victorian London, had a gothic flair, and walked that tightrope of posh, English thespianism and pulp sensibilities.

But in other ways, I can’t be shocked that Hammer’s audience didn’t take to this reimagining. The Phantom of the Opera is rather tame and uncharacteristically restrained for the same studio that constantly battled the British censorship boards. It lacked the sexual charge of the Dracula films, the nihilism of The Curse of Frankenstein, and the menace of The Mummy. None of the actresses are photographed with any leering sensuality, and what little violence we get is off-screen. If The Phantom of the Opera packs any punch as a Gothic Horror film, it’s with suspense, atmosphere, and moody production design. The Phantom’s Lair within the catacombs below the Opera House has always stuck with me.

All in all, The Phantom of the Opera is tasteful and quite respectable by Hammer’s standards. Maybe too respectable. There’s very little in Phantom of the Opera that wouldn’t fly in the days of the Hays Code. The Phantom doesn’t even do his own dirty work. All the murders are committed by his manservant dwarf, the only regrettable decision of the film in my opinion. This was likely done to cater to Cary Grant’s leading man image, but it just as likely turned him off for the role. If you’re going to take the leap in playing an iconic movie monster, why play the most defanged version?

No, this version of The Phantom’s story isn’t so much a spooky tale of a deformed ghoul but a tragedy of an artist and their work. In that regard, it remains a deeply resonant portrait of creative drive and unwavering vision.

Screenwriter Anthony Hinds’ new take on The Phantom is so genius that it’s hard for me to believe that it hadn’t always been the character’s origin story. Rather than the former-circus-freak turned-Opera-Simp in the Leroux version (popularized by the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical), this Phantom is a former composer named Professor Petrie whose magnum opus is stolen by the dreadful Lord D’Arcy, who passes it off as his own work. Jolly NOT good show.

In an attempt to destroy the manuscript, The Phantom accidentally disfigures himself, falls into the English Channel, gets saved by the aforementioned mysterious dwarf, and vows to sabotage D’Arcy’s production. Then he meets Christine, falls in love with her voice, and trains her to be the star of his production. The show will continue, but only on The Phantom’s terms. He keeps Christine hostage until she’s as perfect as he imagines, not dissimilar from tales of draconian visionaries who push their collaborators to their breaking point.

While this version remains somewhat obscure, it set a new template for future adaptations and reinvented the character for a generation. This is almost beat-for-beat the storyline of De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise. In fact, when my Dad showed me the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera, he was shocked at how much it deviated from the version of his childhood.

It’s a radical departure from the original text, but it crafted a new take that was just as compelling: The Revenge of the Starving Artist. While The Phantom has always struck me as a representative of introverted creatives, Lom’s take encapsulates that subtext and propels it to the forefront.

While The Phantom’s motivations aren’t revealed until the third act, his passion and creative drive are palpable. He’s introduced playing a Concerto in the sewers with two greying hands and only one good eye. Then he finds a muse in Christine, reigniting his passion for the opera after months of trying to sabotage it. Who among us has not abandoned a project, only to finally return after a fit of inspiration?

Revenge stories are not new to horror fiction. In the hands of the wrong storyteller, vendettas are a trope, and vengeance is an excuse. You can seek to avenge your parents, your spouse, your dog, whatever. The Phantom of the Opera has always been a tale of vengeance in a generic sense, or at least, of transgression against society’s upper echelon.

Hammer’s adaptation probes deeper and provides a rare catharsis for struggling creatives. The dreaded Lord D’Arcy doesn’t kill The Phantom’s family, steal his woman, or even disfigure him. Lord D’Arcy barely registers The Phantom as a human being either before or after the disfigurement. Without knowing or caring, Lord D’Arcy violates The Phantom on a deeper level: he steals his voice. His music, rather. As a bohemian, scrappy artist living in a boarding house, The Phantom/Professor Petrie has but one recuse, one claim to autonomy that transcended the material conditions of his squalor. He had his music. Just like any artist. Even if we’re crashing on our friend’s couches or delivering Uber Eats on the side, we always have our music. Be it paintings, drawings, writing, knitting, or ahem unproduced screenplays.

We have it, and they can’t take it away from us. Thought they might, and they’ll try. Lord D’Arcy tried robbing Professor Petrie of his work, and by extension, rob him of his identity. He had the wealth and influence to make it happen. But The Phantom returned as something else. The Phantom’s disembodied voice speaks to Christine from the shadows, from behind the Opera walls, as if he’s music personified. He’s the unseen artist, the miscreant who will neither receive the applause nor the massive profits from the work they contribute. Yet they contribute nonetheless, not for glory or vanity. The Phantom doesn’t even have a face. They just do it because it’s the only way that their existence can’t be denied.

During the peak of the strikes, I read a Tweet that made the argument that some executives are so frugal and difficult with artists because, frankly, they resent that they’re not creative enough themselves and that they have to pay people who are. The Lord D’Arcies of the world can wave their money in your face. They can try to trick you that they’re doing you a favor by buying your work. You should be grateful that they’re humoring you in the first place. The Phantom should be so lucky that AI didn’t exist in Victorian London. The thing is, if money could buy talent, then the wealthy would make their own art instead of buying it from real artists. They buy Basquiat paintings and frequent high-end Broadway productions billed with A-List talent. All a testament to their Scrooge-McDuck levels of money. Good for them. They can buy your work and act as if it’s a status symbol, but it just speaks to the intrinsic value of the work itself.

I call this version of The Phantom of the Opera a revenge story. It is, but only on the surface. The Phantom doesn’t even get his hands on Lord D’Arcy, or enact any real form of retribution. That’s disappointing for Hammer fans, but it gives this version a chance to be more than the revenge fantasy of Bohemians. It’s a manifesto, or at least, a testament to art for art’s sake.

This is a rather righteous interpretation of a lesser-known-Hammer flick, but I’m a softie for the tragedy of monsters, and the tragedy of Professor Petrie hits pretty close to home right now. An integral part of that is Herbert Lom’s performance. He has hardly any screentime, either as the masked Phantom or as Professor Petrie, but he gives every minute of it weight, class, and pathos. He displays the total range of the mad genius: tormenting Christine with interminable singing lessons in one scene, tearing up as she brings his opus to life. I was so enamored with Lom’s performance as a child that I considered writing him a fan letter. He was still alive at the time. I often wonder if he would have written back.

Unfortunately, I’ll never find out. Herbert Lom passed away in 2012 at the age of 95. Not bad. Still, I kick myself that I never bothered to write that fan letter. So, consider this the letter to Mr. Lom that I never sent.