The lovely and innocent Christine, unaware of her benefactor's true identity, follows him down to his hidden lair, five cellars below the Paris streets, where, against his orders (to say nothing of common sense) she snatches off his mask and recoils in horror at his disgusting visage. It is quickly revealed that he is, in fact, the elusive and legendary spectral figure that has haunted the old building for years, known simply as The Phantom. The well-known story, set in a Paris opera house, concerns the sudden rise of a beautiful young singer through the intervention of an unknown and mysterious stranger. Although he had already made a name for himself in such grotesque roles as Fagin in the 1922 version of Dickens' Oliver Twist and as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame it is for his role as Erik, The Phantom that he will be forever remembered. Its star, Lon Chaney, was called 'The Man of a Thousand Faces' because of his penchant for donning disfiguring disguises and painful make-up.

The Phantom of the Opera is a gothic horror masterpiece.

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