It’s always kinda depressing when a movie shoots its wad in the first five minutes. The excellent opening sequence of The Monster of the Opera features a sexy woman in a flimsy negligée being stalked by a pitchfork-wielding vampire, and it contains some gorgeous cinematography and exquisite nightmarish camerawork full of Dutch angles and loop-de-loop camera moves. Too bad the flick never comes close to recapturing that marvelous bit of gothic filmmaking.
Sandro (Marco Mariani) is a flamboyant theater director who intends to put on his latest production in a theater where several actresses went missing years before. He says to hell with all that and plows full steam ahead with his new play. Unfortunately, the place happens to be the haunt of a vampire (Giuseppe Addobbati) who likes sinking his teeth into prima donnas. Naturally, he has his sights set on Giulia (Barbara Hawards), the show’s leading lady, who also happens to be the reincarnation of his lost love.
Other than a cool scene where some dancers suddenly appear wearing skeleton costumes and a neat dungeon set featuring scantily clad women chained to the wall, The Monster of the Opera is mostly a bore. The pacing in the middle section gets bogged down as the many scenes of the cast and crew of the play cleaning up the theater and rehearsing don’t have much pizzazz to them. It also doesn’t help that it takes an hour or so for the vampire to start putting the bite on people.
Another debit is that the weird and arbitrary additions to the vampire lore are more perplexing than anything. Take for instance the fact that a vampire can only bite you when you stand perfectly still. The troupe’s solution? Dance, dance, dance! What the hell? Oh, and despite the title, the performance they’re putting on isn’t really an opera. It’s more like a Vegas show meets a classical ballet version of Cyrano or something. While I admire The Monster of the Opera’s desire to be different than the rest, I can’t guarantee you’ll stay awake by the time the curtain falls.
AKA: The Vampire of the Opera.
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