Remember my review of Frankenstein?
How about Dracula?Or the few Dracula depictions I once made?
Do those wacky Universal Monsters, specifically the Phantom ring a bell (no, not Quasimodo?)Well, now you're in for a treat since we have オペラ座の怪人 by G. ルルー (Gaston Leroux), adapted by Kate McMullan to whet your appetite for more literature.
I read the original many moons ago and I don't ever recall there being a carnival, but I could be wrong. I've seen several versions of the PotO movie (the best makeup of all time is Chaney's) plus the Weber-Rice engeki*-extravaganza in English and Japanese and I must say I've never seen a more dull show than オペラ座の怪人 in Japanese...YAWN! The singing was magnificent but the staging was just BOOORing!
*演劇 = engeki = theater
My favourite cheesy cinematic version is Phantom of the Paradise but as I recently discovered, it doesn't hold up well over time. I do have an amusing Paul Williams anecdote though. Back in the early 80s, I commuted to Yorkville in Toronto to work in the mail room of a now-defunct Marketing Firm. One of my co-commuters was a woman who worked in the reception of Fraggle Rock! Needless to say, I relished any brush with greatness she could regale me with and I certainly wish I could find the Henson-autographed Fraggle photo she once gave me!! Anywho, she told me about the time she met Paul Williams on set and she told him that she is a huge fan who bought an album of Phantom of the Paradise and he replied, "Oh, you're the one!" An old gag, but a good one!
I'm going to have to be on the lookout for other classics in this series. I have Dracula, but need the second one in this edition-Frankenstein, the 3rd one is King Kong, a Holmes story, then Vampyre, Jekyll & Hyde, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and the one you just witnessed.
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