Original subtitles

-♪ Hey, everybody, have you heard the news? ♪

♪ Joe Bob is back in town ♪

♪ He's over at the drive-in, hanging around ♪

♪ Watching crazy movies, so come on down ♪

♪ To Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ Blood, beasties, boobies, and more ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's a spooky good time with monsters and ghosts ♪

♪ Crazy, kooky fun with the world's greatest host ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's gonna be legendary ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ It's gonna be very scary ♪

♪ Joe Bob's "Last Drive-In" show ♪

♪ Let's go ♪

-"Feast your eyes,

glut your soul

on my accursed ugliness." -Yeah.

-Is that the most famous title card in movie history?

It's too bad we never got to hear Lon Chaney

actually speak it, because apparently he was quite

a thespian on the live stage.

But happy birthday, "Phantom of the Opera."

It has been a 100 years, and we are here tonight to celebrate

what most people regard as the greatest American horror flick

of the silent era.

It's actually the movie

that took the horror business away from Germany

and brought it back to America, where it belongs.

-Whoo! -"Feast your eyes,

glut your soul on my accursed ugliness,"

are the words of Lon Chaney when his mask is ripped off.

And Lon Chaney is the first, last, and only movie monster

who did his own makeup.

And he was so determined to create his accursed ugliness

on screen that he actually tortured himself.

He mangled his own face to get the result that he wanted.

I don't know how many film versions of "Phantom"

exist today.

More than 30, I think. -At least, yeah.

-But I don't think any of them

come anywhere close to Chaney in terms of makeup.

He was actually a good-looking man,

unrecognizable under that makeup.

Has anybody ever done better, Darcy?

-No, never.

-Darcy the Mail Girl, ladies and gentlemen.

Ah.

-One of the most die-hard "Phantom of the Opera" fans

in the universe, ready to preside over

social media for the centennial.

Send in your tweets, your e-mails, your DMs,

your Instas, your TikToks.

How many times have you watched "Phantom"?

-Oh, gosh, I don't know.

Like at least 50. -50? Damn.

-At leas, yeah. They used to show it

at the Silent Movie Theater in LA.

-And you were a regular there, right?

Do they still have that? The Silent Movie Theater?

-No, actually, the theater is still there,

but they went out of business back in 2017.

I tried to buy it, actually.

-You tried to buy it? -It's a long story. Anyway.

-Well, Darcy, I had no idea.

You really do love silent film. -I do.

-And you told me that you have actually touched

Lon Chaney's makeup case?

-Oh, gosh, no, I didn't touch it.

I went to the museum to look at it.

-That new Academy Museum I've been wanting to go...?

-Yeah. No, wait.

Actually, the makeup case is actually

at the Natural History Museum.

- The one with the dinosaurs? - Yes.

-The La Brea Tar Pits and all that?

-That's the one.

-So they consider Lon Chaney's makeup

part of naturalhistory?

-Obviously. Yes.

-See, that's how awesome he is.

California school children go to the museum

and they learn, "Hey, here's a T-Rex.

Here's a triceratops.

And here, boys and girls,

is the makeup kit of horror actor Lon Chaney,

because he changed the world with that makeup."

Seriously, why do they have it there?

-It's LA.

-That's your explanation for a lot of things.

-It's LA. -"It's LA."

How many actors today in major motion pictures

do their own special-effects makeup?

-Zero.

-Have there been any actors other than him that do that?

-Um, I think there are a few,

but they're more in, like, the low-budget pictures.

It's not -- often you don't have a choice.

You just have to make it work yourself.

-Because Jack Pierce did all the Universal monsters,

but he never did Chaney.

I think he consulted on the Chaney films,

but he didn't do the actual makeup.

-And I think Lon Chaney directed

the reveal scene of his makeup.

-I have heard that story. -Yeah.

-when Christine rips off the Phantom's mask,

supposedly, Mary Philbin, who played Christine,

was not reacting in the right way,

so Cheney waited till Rupert Julian, the director,

went home for the day. Cheney hated Rupert Julian.

He wouldn't talk to him.

The cinematographer had to carry messages

back and forth between the two men.

So Cheney waits till Julian is gone for the day,

and he calls the crew back together,

and he improvs with Mary Philbin

until he gets the exact reaction to the makeup that he wants.

Anyway, I'm still a little boggled by the fact

that you were a regular at the Silent Movie Theater.

-What? Why? -I guess -- I guess that was

the last place in the world

that was still showing silent films, right?

-I don't know about that, but It was a really great place.

I loved it.

-One of the real tragedies of history

is that 80% of the silent films are lost.

And actually, the version of "Phantom of the Opera"

that we're about to watch tonight

is not the original version seen at the official premiere

at the Astor Theatre in Times Square

on September the 6th, 1925.

That version does not exist anymore.

It's lost. Um, I'll get to that later.

And actually, the original version is not

really the original version.

The very first version of "Phantom"

was shown at the 2,000-seat California Theatre

in downtown LA on January 7th of that year.

And the audience hated it.

So universal did re-shoots and re-edits

and showed it again three weeks later,

and the test audience hated it even more.

And do you know the reason

that the test audiences hated the movie, Darcy?

-Uh, because they didn't like Christine kissing

the Phantom at the end.

-Exactly. But not only that,

they didn't think the Phantom should be allowed

to liveat the end of the movie.

-I love the Phantom. The Phantom is a badass.

-Well, the original audiences in 1925 thought

that he deserved nothing less than the death penalty.

-'Cause he's ugly.

-So Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal,

told Rupert Julian to change the ending.

And Rupert Julian didn't want to do it.

He pointed out that the Phantom does not die

at the end of Gaston Leroux's novel.

There's a suggestion that maybe he commits suicide much later.

But really, it doesn't matter, because in the novel,

he redeems himself after Christine kisses him.

He feels the power of unconditional love,

and it's so powerful that he tells Christine to marry Raoul,

and the test audiences said, "Fuck unconditional love!

Murder his ass!"

And so they took a subplot,

and they kind of wedged it into the main story,

and they had Edward Sedgwick direct it.

He normally did quickie Westerns.

And once you had the Phantom being killed by a mob,

the movie tested through the roof

and actually became the most successful movie

in Universal history up to that time.

-People are awful.

-True. And that's my point,

because apparently the Phantom has to die because...he's ugly?

He can't redeem himself. He's too ugly.

So tonight, we're celebrating the 100th anniversary

of the movie that explores the theme of ugliness.

And, 'cause there are lots of reasons to hate the Phantom.

He's sneaky, he's violent, he's controlling,

he's willing to commit murder to get what he wants.

But the main reason audiences hate him is he's ugly.

So in Gaston Leroux's book,

he's described as a "living skull,"

and Chaney tried to live up to that description.

He raised his cheekbones with cotton

stuffed inside his mouth and collodion on the outside.

Collodion is a very flammable, syrupy substance

that creates the appearance of scarred skin when it dries.

He glued his ears to the side of his head.

He used a skull cap to make his forehead several inches higher,

and then he flat-pressed stringy, black hair across it.

He exaggerated the creases in his brow with a black pencil.

He painted the outer parts of his eye sockets black,

and then he put white highlights around that

to make it look like a skeleton head.

He used a rotting set of false teeth

and put prongs in them

to hold his mouth open wide at all times.

He distorted his lips and face with grease paint,

and worst of all,

he put putty around his nose to sharpen the angle,

and then he inserted two loops of wire into his nostrils

to make them flare.

Then he attached additional wires to his nose

and the skull cap hidden by putty

to yank those nostrils upward.

So all of these effects were quite painful,

and in some scenes they had to stop shooting

because of his bleeding.

The makeup was so shocking and so integral to the story

that Carl Laemmle gave strict orders

that no pictures of the Phantom

would be released prior to the opening of the film.

So, Darcy... -Yes.

-...do you think the Lon Chaney Phantom is

the definition of ugly?

-What? No, of course not. He's beautiful.

And, Christine -- let's be real.

She is a bitch for freaking out that much when he's unmasked.

Like, for real. Then later, oh, my God,

when she stops to wonder if she should destroy

the whole city rather than hook up with an uggo?

Girl, come on.

That bugs me so much.

-All right. Yeah, I agree with you

that the moral choices of Christine

never get questioned, do they? Uh, but --

-I'm questioning it.

-Because she's beautiful, and the --

and in the opinion of most people, he is not beautiful.

All right. -That's messed up.

-Here's what we're gonna do, though.

We're gonna spend the night deciding what is ugly,

as horror professionals,

because if you're, say, a fashion designer

or really anybody dealing with body products,

you have to constantly ask yourself the question,

"What is beautiful?"

And our idea of what is beautiful changes over time.

And different cultures have different ideas of beauty.

So I assume that different cultures have

different ideas of ugly as well.

When you adapt the Gaston Leroux no vel to the screen,

the first thing you have to decide is,

what do we want the Phantom to look like

when he gets unmasked?

Because the novel makes it clear

that he's the smartest person in the world,

he's the most resourceful person in the world,

the most talented magician, most talented architect,

performer, engineer.

He can do anything,

but he happens to be the ugliest person in the world.

Not because something happened to him.

He was just born that way.

So this is a dream project for whoever does

the special-effects makeup.

You're gonna go crazy on ugliness,

but when you do that,

you're gonna reveal things about yourself

'cause it's just what you find to be the definition of ugly.

So at the first break, I'm gonna bring out Shane Morton.

Whoo!

-Shane does production design for us, makeup,

art direction, set building here at "The Last Drive-In."

He is a man of many talents.

And I am gonna ask Shane to take a lucky volunteer

and ugly him up during the show.

But not just any volunteer.

Shane is going to apply makeup to Spencer Charnas,

founder and frontman of Ice Nine Kills,

the horror-themed metal band.

They are now touring with Metallica, in fact...

-Whoo! -...and putting out awesome albums.

They just have one awesome album after another.

And the reason I chose Spencer is that

he's one of the best-looking guys in show business.

Classic good looks.

And so it's an especially tough challenge for Shane

to turn him into the world's ugliest human being.

Okay. And then while we're doing that,

I'm also gonna be showing various photos of actors

who have played the Phantom throughout history

so that we can see what they perceive to be ugly,

hideous, revolting.

Supposedly, the Lon Chaney makeup made women

faint from shock.

So if he could do that in 1925,

let's see what these guys could do in subsequent generations

when they had a lot more tools at their disposal.

Like, okay, look at this one. Put it up, Austin.

This is the face of Claude Rains in the 1943 remake.

Jack Pierce was really motivated to just destroy the face,

but the studio said no,

they didn't want the makeup to be too intense.

So, and they even created a ridiculous backstory

about the Phantom being a frustrated composer

who strangles a music publisher,

and that causes the publisher's assistant

to throw acid in his face.

Gaston Leroux would have hated that.

The whole idea is that the Phantom is born ugly.

He's not unlucky. He's not a victim.

The only thing that distinguishes him

from all other men is that he was born

with an unattractive face.

So what do you think of the Claude Rains makeup, Darcy?

-He's just a handsome man with a really big scar.

-Exactly. And remember this one?

-Oh, my God. Gerard Butler in the musical?

Give me a fricking break, man.

-I think it's even less glopola than the Claude Rains makeup.

-Yeah. Get out of here, Gerard Butler.

How can we possibly think that's a hideous monster?

-Come on. -Yeah. They weren't trying

very hard in the musical. -No.

-What do you think is ugly?

-Oh, wow. That is a very deep question.

-Well, it is, but it's the question for tonight,

so take some time to think that over.

-All right. -Let's get this party started.

We are about to watch the sensitive story of a musician,

engineer, architect, magician who lives five levels down

from the Garnier Opera House in Paris,

next to an underground lake

where he hides his hideous face from civilization

with his movements causing rumors

that there's a ghost in the building.

Unfortunately for everybody in the cast,

but fortunately for the story,

he falls in love with a young opera singer named Christine

and manipulates everything above ground to make sure that,

"A," she becomes famous and "B," he possesses her.

Now, you would think it would be easier to possess her

if she does not become famous.

But the Phantom logic is mysterious

because of his own great talent as a singer and musician,

the Phantom is able to coach her to greatness

without ever revealing his own face.

Meanwhile, a boring but handsome young count falls in love

with her as well, causing her great anguish

as she's forced to choose between the man

who controls her career and the man who's hot.

Christine really agonizes over that,

and the stakes get higher and higher as the bodies pile up.

Does that about sum it up, Darcy?

-Not really, but Christine is a little bit of an airhead,

don't you think? -I would agree with that, actually.

Mary Philbin was that actress.

Not an airhead in real life, but yeah.

So let's look at those Drive-In Totals and get started.

We have...

Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...

Arthur Edmund Carewe as Inspector Ledoux

for wearing a fez and black eyeliner

and getting away with it.

Norman Kerry as the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny

for chasing after Christine and for owning a barouche.

Mary Philbin as Christine Daaé for heaving her bosom

and for deciding that being an opera star

isn't worth a relationship with the Phantom.

And, of course, Lon Chaney,

the Man of a Thousand Faces, as the Phantom

for creating the Phantom's iconic look

and for doing more with his hands and eyes

than many actors could do with words.

Four stars. Joe Bob says, check it out.

-Yay.

-I'll tell you what's ugly.

-Yeah?

-I was just reminded of it.

The Astor Theatre,

where this movie premiered,

and three other theaters on Times Square

were all torn down so they could build the Marriott Marquis.

Have you been in the Marriott Marquis?

That high-rise with the atrium

where people periodically commit suicide?

Far be it from me to criticize the Marriott Corporation,

but really?!

FourTheater District theaters?

are we really better off that we have a high-rise

where people can get a better view

of Ryan Seacrest once a year?

-Are you asking me? -Yes.

-Oh, um, Ryan Seacrest is fine.

-Four classic Broadway theaters, Darcy!

So you can order a $30 cocktail in a revolving restaurant!

-Oh, yes. That -- That is sad.

-It's abominable, Darcy! It's an outrage!

-It's true. Calm down, Man. -I can't!

-I've never seen you wear a hat like that before.

-Oh, yeah.

This is called a straw boater.

Popular in the '20s.

I was trying to get a look

that was like the 1925 premiere of "Phantom of the opera."

And so, you know, tweed -- like, Yale fraternity is what this is.

-Yeah. -And then the jodhpurs.

Erich von Stroheim. You know, they wore these.

They have thighs, giant thighs. I don't know why.

-Nice. -Anyway, what is your --

what are you going for here?

-Oh, well, I was attempting '20s flapper.

Didn't... -That's flappery.

-I mean, it's flapper adjacent.

-No, that qualifies as flapper.

-We're '20s-y. -Yeah.

-More or less.

-Lot going on in these early scenes,

which appear to have been shot in the actual Paris Opera House,

but actually, they built the Paris Opera House

on the Universal backlot! Stage 28,

where they constructed the interior of the Paris Opera,

plus the grand staircase made of marble,

was such a famous set

that it became a tourist attraction

long before the Universal theme park even existed.

At the time that Gaston Leroux wrote the novel,

t he Paris Opera House was the largest

and most famous opera house in the world,

and the Paris Opera House set was the largest

and most famous movie set in the world.

Uh, one thing I never understood --

I thought it was kind of a fictional stretch --

is how the Phantom could hide himself in an opera house.

I mean, I've -- I've performed in many opera houses.

For much of America's history,

every city and small town had an opera house.

And in many places,

the opera house became the downtown movie theater.

And even in the ones with massive dressing rooms

and offices under the stage and lower levels,

you never think, "Wow.

If somebody's set up camp right over there,

they could go undetected for years."

You just don't think that.

But that was before I knew the dimensions

of the Paris Opera House.

It was built by architect Charles Garnier.

He was commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III,

who died before it actually opened in 1878.

But Napoleon's idea was to make it the grandest opera house

in the world, and he succeeded.

First of all, it has 17 floors.

Five of those floors are cellars and sub-cellars.

It goes down five stories into the ground.

And when they were excavating,

they discovered an underground river down there.

So there are nine lakes under the opera house,

and they diverted much of that water into two tanks

that hold 22,000 gallons

that they use internally at the opera.

There are 14 furnaces down there.

That's got to add to the creepiness.

There are 2,531 doors in the building,

requiring 7,593 keys. -Wow.

-There are dressing rooms for 500 performers.

There's a stable for 12 horses

that they used in various productions.

So it's no wonder that legends grew up around this building.

It was one of -- and it was one of those legends

that Gaston Leroux heard when he got the idea

for "Phantom of the Opera."

"Phantom of the Opera" was a newspaper serial, uh,

starting at the end of 1909, continuing into 1910.

It was serialized in the daily newspaper "Le Gaulois."

Um, and it was not well-reviewed.

And in fact, I would say it's a very flawed novel,

possibly because it was written in installments.

Nevertheless, anybody who was familiar

with the Garnier opera House in the year 1910

would have not been surprised that

somebody could hide underneath it for years, if not decades.

Now, you'll notice there's a lot of trap doors in the movie.

I think they used them just to economize on the storytelling.

It's easier to get somebody from one level

to the next without having to shoot them going

up and down stairways.

I should also point out that Gaston Leroux was a journalist,

and he was doing a sort of "Blair Witch" thing

with the story.

The book is a collection of documents, depositions,

testimonies, accounts by narrators

who may or may not be reliable.

He was implying that the whole story was nonfiction,

which was possible with the original ending,

not possible with the Universal ending.

Anyway, the most successful Universal film

prior to "Phantom" was "The Hunchback of Notre Dame,"

which came out in 1923, also starring Lon Chaney.

And that's why, when Carl Laemmle happened

to meet Gaston Leroux in Paris,

and he got a copy of the "Phantom" novel,

he knew right away he wanted to make that movie

because it had all the same elements -- a Paris landmark,

a deformed outcast living inside the Paris landmark

in love with a beautiful woman.

Of course, the difference was that "Hunchback"

was written by Victor Hugo,

one of the greatest French writers who ever lived.

And "Phantom" was written by a flashy news reporter

who occasionally wrote detective stories.

So, no matter.

Laemmle assigned his top writing team to the project.

His hottest director at the time, Rupert Julian,

a New Zealander who had just been brought in

to save a movie called "Merry-Go-Round"

after Erich von Stroheim went crazy over-budget

and had to be fired.

Rupert Julian was well known as an actor as well,

but mainly because he was a dead ringer for Kaiser Wilhelm II.

He had starred as the Kaiser

in a movie called "The Kaiser: Beast of Berlin."

Uh, but Rupert Julian was a lot like the Kaiser in real life.

He was a strict, by-the-book disciplinarian,

always perfectly coiffed, groomed, and dressed.

I've done a little bit of a Rupert Julian with this, you know?

Kind of guy who wore spats over his shoes,

you know, kind of a dandy with an overbearing attitude.

And as I said before, Cheney hated him,

and he ended up refusing to talk to him.

The two men communicated through messages

that were carried back and forth by the cinematographer,

Charles Van Enger.

Anyway, Carl Laemmle found the book.

He set about making it the next big Lon Cheney role.

But he had one big problem --

Cheney was an MGM contract player.

He had to go to MGM, hat in hand,

and asked to borrow him for an undisclosed sum.

But finally, on May the 17th, 1924,

Laemmle was able to announce

at a sales conference in New York City

that Cheney had been secured

for the next big prestige Universal movie.

And then Laemmle would go on to spend $2 million

on the movie itself, probably an equal amount on promotion.

So to give you some perspective, in 2025 terms,

that would amount to about $74 million.

But here's what makes that number truly astounding.

The same studio was turning out five-reel Westerns,

many of them starring Hoot Gibson,

for $12,000 per movie.

And part of Laemmle's promotion for the movie

was Stage 28 itself.

There were pictures in the newspapers and magazines

when the Llewellyn steel company poured the concrete.

There was publicity when the Hammond Lumber Company

provided trucks carrying the largest lumber order

in the history of their company.

Universal employees were sent to Europe

to buy and/or photograph interior objects

that could be used on the sets.

Ben Carré, a Hollywood art director

who had worked at the Paris Opera,

created 24 charcoal sketches of locales in the novel

that were re-created down to the smallest detail.

So from the very beginning,

"The Phantom of the Opera" was perceived

as the biggest event in the history of Hollywood.

They even shot part of it in color,

using a natural color process called Prizma for the opening,

early Technicolor for the masked ball,

and some other weird color process for the scene

on the roof with the gargoyles.

Okay, I'm gonna talk this movie to death

if I don't shut up.

So, uh, is Spencer ready?

Hey, Spencer.

-What's up, Joe Bob?

-Welcome to "The Last Drive-In."

-Thanks for having me. I'm ready to get ugly here.

-Shane here is about to turn your face

into the ultimate definition of ugly.

-Super ugly. -Super ugly.

-And I want to keep the makeup on.

I've got a flight to catch,

so hopefully I scare some of the flight attendants.

-Yeah, TSA is gonna love that.

Yeah, I'm already on the no-fly list.

-Well, I've seen Ice Nine Kills live,

where you reproduce iconic horror films in amazing detail.

And I've been to your horror convention in Salem,

Massachusetts, or right next door to Salem.

Uh, I've been in one of your horror-based videos.

And I have to say, Spencer,

Ice Nine Kills is the nexus between metal and horror.

-And now I'm gonna have the face to prove it.

-And Shane, I know you idolize Lon Chaney.

-Since I saw him on PBS when I was five.

I've had this tattoo since '92.

Sometimes it scares me when I wake up with it there.

So, yeah. Lon Chaney is my god.

-And you actually teach makeup classes based on

many of the techniques that Lon Chaney originated?

-I do. Like, when I -- when I teach these classes,

you got to start off with the foundation

of where all this stuff comes from,

and Lon Chaney's "Phantom of the Opera makeup,

this buildup of the ocular ridge, all this stuff,

it's bringing out the skull beneath the skin.

And it's still the foundation for every zombie makeup.

And Rick Baker did for "Thriller,"

to, like "Walking Dead" or whatever.

It all comes from Lon Chaney.

He is the first and the greatest.

-So this will be your personal statement

of the most repulsive face you can imagine?

-Yes, beyond gruesome and weird.

And go a little bit further.

And we'll be using out-of-the-kit techniques

totally for this.

So there are no pre-built prosthetics or anything.

I've made some skin textures and things to get weird,

but we're gonna try to keep it to the way

that Lon Chaney would have done it if he had silicone.

-Okay, and guys, we have a surprise for you.

We have a live shot of the crypt of Lon Chaney,

which is at the Forest Lawn Cemetery

in Glendale, California, but it's unmarked.

You have to know where it is.

So we had one of our associates, Alex Poteet,

go down to Forest Lawn today and find it

because Shane and Spencer,

when we finally reveal your makeup

at the end of tonight's show,

I'm gonna ask Lon Chaney for a sign.

We'll see if it works.

I don't think anyone has ever tried to séance

that unmarked crypt,

but we are trying to do that tonight.

Lon Chaney will be your judge, Shane.

How does that make you feel?

-Well, you know, it's a lot on my plate,

but I've always said Lon Chaney shall never die.

So I feel like he's always been watching over me anyway.

So here we go.

-So, Shane, your mission is to turn Spencer

into the ugliest creature alive.

Did you sign a release, Spencer?

-I signed an NDA, but I don't think I got a release.

-All right, men, we will be checking with you

as the night goes on.

Good luck.

Darcy, I want to incorporate other Phantoms

into our experience tonight. -Okay.

-So to start it off, I want --

I want you to tell me what you think about two of the Phantoms

from "Phantom" history.

The first one is from the 1955 "Phantom of the Operetta,"

an Argentinian musical comedy.

And were they even trying with this?

-No comment here.

-All right. Beneath contempt, right?

Basically a Phantom with acne.

Okay, but here's the Hammer Films version,

1962, with Herbert Lom.

What do you think of this?

-It's in the film for, like, less than a minute.

The death mask is what's really iconic from that.

-Well, they definitely gouged some flesh for that.

But what I don't like is they invented a backstory

for Herbert Lom whereby he gets splashed with acid

and abused by his partner, and so they create fake sympathy.

The whole idea is supposed to be born ugly, no explanation.

Do you like this one, though, Darcy?

-The Lon Phantom is more victim than monster.

The disfigurement is not what's important.

He is just an outsider.

And his burn is a physical symbol of that.

-Agreed. And I think that's enough

"Phantom of the Opera" from our team.

So let's get back to the sensation of 1925,

"The Phantom of the Opera."

Do you know what else burns my bacon?

-Tell me.

-They tore down Stage 28...

-Oh, girl. -...in 2014.

-I know, man. I was devastated. Like, legit.

-You know, it had already been rebuilt and improved in 1966

when Alfred Hitchcock made "Torn Curtain."

And then it had been used for all kinds

of other movies as well.

But you know what's there now?

-Super Nintendo World. -Exactly!

-I know, I'm so conflicted. -Super fucking Nintendo World.

They use it for meet-and-greets with Toad.

-But also Princess Peach!

Oh, my God. Okay, for real.

When I take the Mario Brothers ride with my kid,

we have a little ritual.

-You shouldn't take the Mario Brothers ride.

-Exactly. I'm conflicted, man.

So what we do is we say a little prayer for Stage 28

before we go, and then it's okay.

-And you cross yourselves? -Yes.

-Damn, Darcy, I'm -- -Forgive us.

-I'm sorry you have to experience that trauma, though.

-Thank you.

-Lon Chaney wept. -I know.

-And so the Phantom entrances Christine --

she's walking like a zombie --

and takes her deep into the dark underground caverns

and the black lakes to his lair.

And, of course, we still haven't seen his face.

The early audiences didn't know that he was disfigured

because the novel was not that well known,

which made the reveal scene all the more powerful.

But this would be a good place

to talk about the actress who played Christine.

Mary Philbin was born

in the tiny Irish village of Cloonliffen,

population 51... -Wow.

-...and 11 of those 51 were her family members.

But her parents moved to Chicago when she was three years old,

and she discovered the stage as a small girl.

And she was not like any of the other young starlets

in Hollywood, though.

She was extremely close to her family.

She was very religious.

She was so close to her family

that when she got cast in her first film,

"The Blazing Trail," at the age of 19,

the whole family moved with her to Los Angeles.

The Philbins were friends of the Laemmle family,

owners of Universal, so she moved up quickly.

She made six films her first year.

She got noticed in an Erich von Stroheim movie

called "Foolish Wives."

It was the most expensive Universal film up to that time.

Her breakout role was "The Merry-Go-Round" in 1923,

the movie that was directed by Erich von Stroheim

until he was fired

and Rupert Julian was brought in to finish it.

She played the peasant girl working as an organ grinder

in a Vienna amusement park,

and a playboy count falls in love with her,

but is already engaged to the daughter of the Minister of War,

and because of court etiquette,

he is forced to go ahead with that marriage,

and she thinks she's been deserted.

But then she reunites with her lover

after a series of wartime melodramatic episodes,

and he renounces his title in order to be with her.

So the count was played by Norman Kerry,

the actor who again plays a count, Raoul,

in "Phantom of the Opera."

Um, Raoul is one of the most boring characters ever invented.

I mean, he doesn't do much except wait around for Christine

and deal with her fickle choices.

But Kerry does as well as he can with it.

Kerry was a high school football star growing up on Long Island

and became good friends with Rudolph Valentino,

while Valentino was still a taxi dancer in New York

long before he discovered Hollywood.

And Kerry had also been the romantic lead

in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

So Norman Kerry and Mary Philbin knew each other,

got along very well together,

but she never really got along with Julian, the director.

He didn't like her performances.

He would do endless retakes to the point that Van Enger,

the cinematographer, told Julian

he was ruining her ability to act

by nickel-and-diming every scene that she did.

And the crew grew very restless with how slowly Julian worked

and how picky he was.

Plus, he wasn't very nice to actors,

and Norman Kerry grew so exasperated at one point

that he turned his horse on Julian and ran him down.

Anyway, Mary Philbin always got the man at the end of the movie,

but she did not get the man in life.

Uh, Universal Pictures in the early 1920s

was a very young company.

Carl Laemmle was in his 50s,

but he had a knack for hiring talented young men,

some of them right out of high school.

His most famous hire was Irving Thalberg,

who started out as a secretary in the New York office

and was named head of the studio at the age of 20.

But another guy rising quickly through the ranks

was Paul Kohner,

an Austrian who interviewed Laemmle for his father's

newspaper while Laemmle was visiting the famous spa

at Karlovy Vary, and Laemmle was impressed by him

and talked him into moving to America

and started him out as an errand boy,

and he moved up through various film-production jobs,

eventually became one of the most powerful producers

and agents in Hollywood.

Represented Mar-- um, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo,

John Huston, Billy Wilder, Ingrid Bergman,

Maurice Chevalier, Lana Turner, and many other stars.

But in 1923, when he was a unit production supervisor,

still working his way up, he fell in love with Mary Philbin,

and she fell in love with him.

And they were inseparable for four years.

But when they announced their engagement,

Mary's parents strenuously objected because he was Jewish

and they were strict Catholics.

So after much agonizing,

Mary Philbin was faced with either marrying Kohner

and being shunned by her family forever,

or staying close to her family and losing Kohner.

So she told Kohner she couldn't marry him,

and he was devastated.

But seven years later, he married Lupita Tovar,

who starred in many movies on both sides of the border,

known especially for starring in Universal's

Spanish version of "Dracula."

And they were married for 56 years

until Kohner's death in 1988. But here's the sad part.

When they were cleaning out Kohner's desk in 1988 --

his agency was in a famous building on the Sunset Strip --

they found dozens of love letters from Mary Philbin.

He had saved every last one of them.

Probably saved him at his office

so that Lupita wouldn't know about them.

And Mary Philbin had saved his letters as well,

and they were with her when she died

five years later at the age of 91.

She died in the Huntington Beach house that her family had bought

when they first moved to Los Angeles in 1921.

She had lived there as a virtual recluse for the 65 years

after her career ended in 1929,

and she was never able to make the transition to sound films.

Okay, no more sad stories.

Shane, how you doing back there?

-Doing great. This is kind of the boring part.

We're just getting started and we're putting the bald cap down.

-Okay. Just remember, we want the ugliest human being

that's ever been imagined by the mind of H.P. Lovecraft.

-Well, we are gonna get in here

after I do these basic kind of Cheney Phantom moves.

Then I'm gonna get in

and start applying Lovecraftian shapes because,

as we know, the Phantom wasn't just born ugly.

He's been mutated by his use of the black arts.

So he's a little weird.

We're gonna go a little weirder

than maybe people are expecting.

-Okay. We love to hear that. How are you holding up, Spencer?

-It reminds me of, uh, swim camp,

you know, with the, uh -- the swim cap.

Uh, other than that, it's pretty good.

Just like a huge condom on my head.

-Do you think this is gonna be annoying or exciting?

-I think somewhere right in the middle.

But I'm excited to be annoyed.

-All right, guys, carry on.

-Why did you say H.P. Lovecraft?

-Doesn't he kind of specialize in ugly monsters?

-Mm, I wouldn't say so, no.

-Who would you nominate?

-Nobody, really, honestly.

-Jack Davis? Basil Gogos? -No.

'Cause when I look at those monster drawings,

I just think they're beautiful.

-Remember that "Twilight Zone" episode

where a woman's face is covered in bandages

'cause she's had her 11th plastic surgery

and she's trying to be normal,

or else the government will banish her forever?

-Oh, yeah. That's a good one.

-And then they remove the bandages,

and it's Elly May Clampett from "The Beverly Hillbillies."

-Donna Douglas! Yeah.

-Yeah. Donna Douglas.

And the doctor says, "I'm sorry,

but the surgery has failed again.

You cannot remain in society any longer."

And then the camera turns around,

and we see this is a society of people with pig snouts

and sunken eyes and swollen lips.

-Standards of beauty.

-That's kind of what we're doing here, right?

We're showing how everyone's idea of beauty

is based on whatever you're used to.

-Correct. -Okay, back to the movie.

You think it'd be possible today for a Paul Kohner

or an Irving Thalberg

to be working as an errand boy in Hollywood,

and the studio boss just says, "You know what, kid?

I like the way you think.

You want to be head of production?"

-Never. Never.

-Maybe not head of production like Thalberg,

but, "Hey, you're smart.

We're gonna let you produce a feature."

-That would not happen. No.

-Why not? People hate teenagers now?

I don't know, honestly.

-I got hired as a sportswriter when I was 13,

and that was a tremendous boost of confidence.

I mean, I wanted to work as hard as possible to prove myself.

I would think that's as good a reason as any to have teens.

I mean, they have unlimited energy.

They overperform. You pay them very little

and you get huge benefits.

-Nobody's doing that.

-Unless you play baseball.

-Unless you play baseball.

-Although Juan Soto -- he didn't make his first

$800 million until he was 26.

-Is it just me, or does Christine

constantly contradict herself?

"Let me go and I'll be your slave forever."

Isn't it one or the other?

Either let me go or I'll be your slave?

But that reveal -- that is so good.

And if you ever get the chance to watch it

with a concert-level organist --

who was that guy we saw in LA on Halloween?

-Oh, Clark Wilson. -Clark Wilson.

He is one of the last practitioners

of what they call theater organ music in the world,

and he performs his own soundtrack for "Phantom"

on one of those giant organs

with the umpteen-jillion pedals and keys.

And he uses a lot from Faust, of course,

because that's the opera where Christine replaces Carlotta.

But anyway, that moment where the --

where she rips off the mask, the deep bass organ chord

that he does makes you jump out of your seat.

And as I mentioned before,

Lon Chaney directed that scene himself

so he could get a terrified reaction out of Mary Philbin.

All right, we can't really spend three hours on every break.

-We could. -There's so much to talk about

with "Phantom." And at the last break,

I forgot to continue our review of "Phantom" makeup.

So here we go.

Here's the 1937 Chinese Phantom from "Song of Midnight."

Darcy? -It's not bad.

They were trying. I appreciate that.

-Um, here's Vincent Price in "The Abominable Dr. Phibes,"

which has a slight resemblance to the "Phantom" plot.

-I love Vincent Price, and I love this movie,

but the story here is not really about his face.

-True. Here's William Finley in "Phantom of the Paradise."

-Yes! Love "Phantom of the Paradise."

That is probably my favorite adaptation after the original.

-I like what they did with the eyeball,

but they're doing that half-face thing.

The half-face ugly is not the novel.

The novel says the whole face is ugly.

They're trying to get away with a cool mask.

Okay, here's a good one. "Phantom of the Ritz."

I don't remember who this actor is. Um...

-Joshua Sussman.

-Joshua Sussman. Very good, Darcy.

They went for the slime-glopola face.

What do you think? -It's one of the better ones.

-Shane, are we using any slime? Is Shane there?

-I'm here. -Are we using any slime on this?

-Oh, we're gonna have slime. -Glopola.

-We're slimy. -What's your slime quotient?

Is there a lot of slime on this?

-We'll just have enough to give it that glisteningly,

zit-popping, um...

smegma-dripping-out- of-the-mouth sort of stuff.

-When stuff is coming out of the mouth or nose,

that is always gross, I love that.

-Yeah, -Yeah, we gotta have some snot.

-How are you with snot and slime, Spencer?

-Love snot and slime.

Uh, I remember that Nickelodeon show where they would always...

-Oh, yeah. -...get slimed, right?

-Yeah.

-But they never got snotted, so...

-Well, you never know what was in that slime.

-Yeah, yeah. And I have seasonal allergies,

so there should be some natural snot as well.

-Well, we'll use that.

-Right. -Okay, man.

Well, we're counting on you to make us scream when we see this.

-Oh, that's gonna happen.

See that? It already got a Chaney nose going on.

Look at that.

-People actually did scream and faint in the theaters

when the Phantom's face was revealed in 1925.

Some people believe the reason

Lon Chaney was such a great silent-film actor

is that his parents were deaf, and when your parents are deaf,

especially in the 1880s and 1890s,

when formal sign language was -- for a while,

was banned in some of the deaf schools,

you become a master of pantomime.

And actually, his formal education ended at age nine

when he left school to care for his sick mother.

But as soon as he was old enough to work in vaudeville,

which would have been around age 15 or 16,

he hit the vaudeville circuit.

And he was a great singer, great dancer, great comedian.

Supposedly he had a wonderful stage presence,

and he toured with various vaudeville companies

for several years, and then, like many talented actors,

he managed his own theater, The Majestic, in downtown LA.

-Aw. -Unfortunately, in 1913,

his wife went to the theater one night

and attempted to kill herself by swallowing mercury.

So this suicide attempt failed,

but the resulting scandal ended his theater career

and forced him into movies.

Now, I'm not sure why your wife trying to kill herself

would affect your career prospects,

but apparently it did.

And at the time,

you could make a great deal more money on the stage

than you could on screen.

Plus, the stage had much more prestige,

so it was a comedown when he started taking bit movie parts.

And because of his makeup skills,

he had a lot of character parts.

So for the next six or seven years,

he built a reputation in Hollywood

as a versatile character actor,

but nothing more than that, really.

And then he made a movie called "The Miracle Man,"

where he played a contortionist con man,

and he got brilliant reviews for that.

And that led to a tour de force performance in "The Penalty,"

where he played a crime boss

whose legs had been amputated at the knee,

and the devices he wore for that were so complicated and painful

that he could only work 10 minutes at a time.

But it was a breakthrough role for him.

And then came

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" playing Quasimodo,

making him a star in the company owned by the man

who invented the star system, Carl Laemmle.

Um, he actually made 157 movies,

but 102 of those movies are lost.

But his reputation as The Man with a Thousand Faces

fascinated the public all through the 1920s

and into the sound era,

and he even transferred easily into talkies

due to his vast theater experience.

But he would only make one sound movie,

a remake of Tod Browning's "The Unholy Three," in 1930.

He actually did five of the voices in that movie,

but he died one month after the film's release

of lung cancer at the age of 47.

Um, the funeral of Lon Chaney

was like a who's who of Hollywood.

The pallbearers were Lionel Barrymore,

Louis B. Mayer, Tod Browning, several other stars,

and the Marine Corps provided an honor guard.

If you go to his grave at Forest Lawn, it's unmarked.

It's a crypt.

Um, according to his express wishes, it's unmarked.

But, of course, he was memorialized in the movie

"Man of a Thousand Faces," starring James Cagney as Chaney,

the movie that inspired Tom Savini

to become a makeup artist.

Um, all of his artifacts, as we noted earlier,

went to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum,

including a cast of his head and his collection of wigs.

He had more wigs than you, Darcy.

He had 100 wigs.

-Oh, no, he did not.

-He didn't have 100 wigs?

-I'm sure he did,

but he didn't have more than I do.

-You have more than 100 wigs?

-Oh, yeah. -All right.

Well, you are the queen of cosplay.

So let's go back to the movie and watch the master work.

I'm impressed, Darcy.

-Wigs are important.

-Obviously. You know who loved Lon Chaney?

-Who? -Forrest Ackerman,

the editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine.

Every issue of "Famous Monsters" had a page called

"Lon Chaney Shall Not Die"... -Aw.

-...devoted to his life and career.

So at least until 1983,

when Forrey stepped away from the magazine,

Lon Chaney was never out of the public eye.

-How old would he be now if he was alive?

-Lon Chaney would be...141.

-I bet he would still look awesome.

-He would be doing makeup, make himself look 18, right?

Right.

-So this is the part of the movie when

Charles Van Enger, the cinematographer,

really gets to show off.

At the time this film came out,

there were three color processes competing

for Hollywood's attention.

And "Phantom of the Opera" uses all three of them.

The Prizma system, which was invented in 1913,

was used for the color shots in the introduction,

what's called the Soldier's Night sequence,

going over the history of the opera house.

The Handschiegl process, invented in 1916,

was used to color the Phantom's cape

when he's up there on the roof, spying on the lovers.

And Technicolor, also introduced in 1916,

was used for the masked ball.

So many memorable images --

I mean, the Phantom sweeping down the staircase

in his Red Death costume,

the Phantom perched on the roof angel,

the hundreds of extras partying.

These were grand scenes considered revolutionary

at the time of the premiere,

even though we're not sure exactly what

the Astor Theatre premiere audience saw.

Our best guess here at Shudder is that the print

we're watching tonight

is a combination of the 1925 theatrical release,

which had 17 minutes of color in it,

and the 1929 re-release with some sound added.

But nobody knows for sure.

Um, beca-- after six months of pre-production,

11 months of actual shooting, 9 months of post-production,

if you include the re-shoots and the re-edits,

Universal didn't bother to preserve any prints

from the original run of the movie.

So around 1950, Eastman Kodak in Rochester

goes to Universal and says,

"We've noticed that the nitrate negative is starting

to disintegrate.

You should really do something about it."

And they told Universal

that they wanted to help them save it.

But Universal had virtually nothing in storage.

Most of the prints of the movie that exist today

are compilations that have been cobbled together

from various outside sources.

I counted 12 different versions,

including the George Eastman house print from 1950

and the most recent Kino Lorber Blu-ray.

But the most valuable print is probably what's known

as the John Hampton Show-at-Home Duplications Compilation Print.

John Hampton was the original owner

of the Silent Movie Theater in LA, your favorite place.

-Yes, he was great. -Okay.

And so John Hampton found a stash

of 16-millimeter versions of "Phantom"

that had been made available to libraries and schools

and collectors,

and he combed through those for the best images

and the most complete assemblies.

It says something about the passion

people had for this project

that it has survived re-writes, re-edits,

new made-up endings,

and actual physical deterioration,

but it still holds up as a compelling work of art.

One thing I wanted to mention,

as evidence of how carefully the movie was art-directed,

is that bed in the Phantom's lair.

I-I think it's what you call a sleigh bed,

or you used to call a sleigh bed,

but it's got a ship's prow on the front and it's gold.

And the Phantom and Christine move around it quite a bit,

as though it's the place that both want to end up.

Am I the only person who thinks it's a very kinky bed?

-I feel like you are. Yes. Yes.

-Well, anyway, I looked into where they got it.

Carl Laemmle had sent all these people to Europe

to find artifacts,

and they purchased that bed at an auction

of the estate of a French entertainer named Gaby Deslys,

who was sort of the bad girl of Europe.

She was a dancer, then she was a singer,

then she was an actress,

and she was known for having a fairly public affair

with the King of Portugal.

And she created all these dances,

all these popular dances -- the Grizzly Bear,

the Turkey Trot.

And there was a dance named after her, the Gaby Glide.

So they brought the bed back to Universal,

and tell me this does not make it kinky.

They put it in a film called "Trifling Women"

starring Barbara La Marr.

And I don't think many people remember Barbara La Marr,

no relation to Hedy Lamarr,

but she was known as "the girl who is too beautiful"

because one time when she got arrested

for drunk and disorderly, the judge just sent her home

because he said she was too beautiful to go to jail.

Anyway, the bed was used for her exploits,

and many, many years later it would be used

as Norma Desmond's bed in "Sunset Boulevard."

But anyway, I think you look at that bed

and you instinctively go,

"Christine, don't sit on that bed.

Go away from that bed. Beware that bed."

-You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?

-Yeah. Too much. So let's go back to the movie.

Roll it. Do you know who Barbara La Marr was?

-Not really.

-Um, the opposite of Mary Philbin,

the ultimate Hollywood party girl.

Heavy drinker. Two hours of sleep a night.

Always on crash diets,

linked romantically to a new man every month.

Probably a lesbian. Um...

Collapsed on the set of "The Girl from Montmartre"

in 1925, went into a coma, never emerged from it.

-Wow. -Dead at 29.

The coroner said she died from tuberculosis and nephritis.

She died from partying.

-Wow. Respect.

-It's a choice, though, right? -Yes.

-Okay. All right. That was her bed.

The Phantom's bed is her bed.

-Okay, I get your point now.

-All right. Thank you. -You're welcome.

-Okay, Shane.

How are we doing in the ugly department?

-Oh, we're -- we're getting ugly.

Time clock is ticking, though.

-Spencer, thanks for being such a trooper.

What is your family gonna think

when they see you in this makeup?

-I'm in for a, uh, pretty rough Thanksgiving.

-All right. Are you guys gonna do a mask?

-Of course. What's the Phantom of the Opera without a mask?

It's getting to the point where we're gonna have to

hide this from you guys, anyway.

-Should we start hiding everything?

Should we start concealing the final result?

-Oh, yeah. I think it's time to hide this from the audience

so we get a big surprise when reveal happens.

-All right, carry on. You have about two and a half hours left.

-We're gonna make it. -Okay.

Darcy, we got some more glopola faces to compare.

Here's Robert Englund in a "Phantom of the Opera"

remake in 1989. What do you think of this one?

-It is very impressive.

But the Phantom's face is supposed

to resemble a human skull. -True.

And, actually, there were two Phantoms in 1989.

The other one was "Phantom of the Mall."

-Yeah. -But again, it's a face that

was horribly burned in a fire. Does that count?

Oh, it definitely counts.

-Okay.

The same would be true of Liam Neeson

in Sam Raimi's "Darkman."

-True. -And he was injured like that.

-Yeah, I-I love them both.

They look amazing, but they're really similar.

-You know, our friend Jill Schoelen

was the Christine character in two of those...

-I know. -...movies back to back.

She was in the Robert Englund "Phantom,"

and then she was in "Popcorn" in 1991

with that disfigured dude haunting a theater.

Uh, which is the better Jill Schoelen "Phantom"?

-Oh, man, if I gotta pick, it's gotta be "Popcorn."

-Okay. -I love "Popcorn."

-Much of what you saw in that last sequence

was added material, not from the novel

that had one purpose -- to make you hate the Phantom.

He escaped from Devil's Island.

Not in the book.

He murders a stagehand at this point in the story.

Not in the book.

He's being tailed by a detective -- not in the book.

And that was actually something

you could only do in the silent era.

That character was supposed to be a character

from the novel called the Persian,

and the Persian was a man

who had saved the Phantom's life at a time

when the Phantom was living at the royal court of Persia,

showing the Shah how to engineer his castle

and make it impenetrable and safe,

and also demonstrating assassination techniques

that the Shah found to be convenient,

like the Punjab lasso.

That's why Raoul and Inspector Ledoux look ridiculous

as they walk underground, holding one finger up in the air

to avoid being lassoed Punjabi-style.

So when the Shah decided that Erik --

that's the Phantom's actual name --

when he decided that Erik knew too much,

he plotted to assassinate him.

But the Persian helped Erik to escape the country

and go to Paris,

so the Persian now is trying to rescue Christine

by appealing to Erik's sense of obligation to him.

Well, they just decided at some point to destroy

all that part of the plot,

since you don't know what anyone is saying in a silent movie,

and you can change what they're saying

and even their name by simply inserting a new title card.

That's what they did.

The Persian became Inspector Ledoux,

undercover French police officer.

And, in fact, they had shot a whole lot of flashback footage

at the Persian court that was now wasted.

And they even bought an elephant specifically for

those Persian sequences.

The elephant's name was Minnie.

She was a five-ton circus elephant sold to Universal

by the Kansas City Shriners.

And her footage ended up on the cutting-room floor.

-Aw. -Minnie, however, ended up

at the Los Angeles Zoo in nearby Griffith Park...

-All right. -...where she was a star

attraction until her death about 20 years later.

Um, now, normally I don't go into story-conference notes

because it's boring and pointless.

We should just look at the movie that exists,

not the movie that was envisioned.

But in this particular case, it helps to understand --

can I do this, Darcy? This is --

-Would it matter if I say no?

-Of course not. -Then go ahead.

-All right. Publicity for "Phantom of the Opera"

started a full year before its official release,

and the studio was planning a February 1925 premiere

at the Globe Theatre in New York.

It would have been the first movie ever shown there.

The Globe was a very fancy, legitimate theater.

It's still there today. It's the Lunt-Fontanne.

Still fancy, but not as fancy as it was in 1925

when it originally extended all the way to Times Square.

New Yorkers familiar with Times Square

know what I'm talking about.

All that tacky retail between 46th and 47th on Broadway?

That was not there.

That was the grand promenade entrance to the Globe.

Anyway, not only did they book the Globe,

they rented two of the largest electric signs on Broadway,

and Carl Laemmle ordered a full-court publicity press

pointing to that February premiere.

But on January the 7th, about a month before the premiere,

the studio went into an all-out panic.

Laemmle had asked his friend Sid Grauman

to sneak the movie at one of his downtown

Los Angeles theaters,

and the audience despised the movie.

The comment cards came back

with devastating hatred for the ending,

confusion about some of the elements, including the Persian,

and they thought it was absurdly melodramatic.

They thought it was too long.

The editor, Gilmore Walker,

had started with a rough cut of 22 reels,

a four-hour film,

so, of course, they had to have an intermission.

Well, the small talk at intermission was all negative.

Quite a few people left the theater.

So the editing department started working

around the clock to change it.

And for the new cut, Walker got rid of 10 reels.

It was -- he was -- they were just editing with an ax.

And Laemmle ordered a second sneak on January the 27th.

This time the audience reaction was even worse.

So much had been cut out of the film now

that nobody understood the purpose

of many of the characters.

So Laemmle canceled the premiere at the Globe,

and he ordered Rupert Julian to shoot a new ending.

The Phantom had to die. Julian refused.

The ending he had shot was true to the spirit of the novel.

The Phantom is transformed by a kiss,

realizes the meaning of true love,

gives his blessing to Christine to marry Raoul,

and is later found dead at his organ.

But Laemmle was clear.

Based on audience reaction cards,

there must be no sympathy for the Phantom.

He must be killed.

And since Rupert Julian wouldn't shoot the new scenes,

he was fired and Laemmle brought in veteran Edward Sedgwick,

the director of those cheap Hoot Gibson westerns,

to shoot the new ending dreamed up by the story committee.

So the Phantom commits a murder of a stagehand

who "knows too much," and his grieving,

vengeance-seeking brother incites a mob

that chases the Phantom to his death.

Now, Sedgwick, who was also a comedy director,

inserted lots of "comic-relief scenes"

in an effort to satisfy the audience members

who were bored by the whole story,

when, in fact, they were apparently just bored

with the length of the whole story.

But this is also the point at which the Universal writers

decided that the Persian had, quote, "no rhyme nor reason,"

and they converted him into an undercover policeman

chasing an escapee from Devil's Island.

A legendary title writer named Walter Anthony

was hired away from Paramount, brought from New York

to Hollywood just to work on "Phantom."

All publicity was halted.

When they'd made all the writing changes,

the character changes, the editing changes,

they scheduled a test run of the "new, improved film"

with a limited engagement in April and May

at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Curran was another legitimate theater

where movies were never shown.

Um, actually, that's true to this day.

It's a famous pre-Broadway tryout house.

And the thinking was, "Okay, third time's a charm."

They used a version that included a duel,

lots of new comic-relief characters, and of course,

the new "throw the Phantom in the river" ending.

And the reaction was...

even worse than the first two screenings,

leading to another six months of tinkering and second guessing.

By the time the movie premiered in September

at the Astor in Times Square,

all the comic characters were gone,

all the stuff in Persia was gone,

the sequence in a churchyard was gone.

The besieged editor, Gilmore Walker, bless his heart --

he had cut his original 22-reel version down to 10.

The studio ultimately decided on the leanest possible version

with the least possible nuance.

Christine loved Raoul and only Raoul.

The Phantom was a deranged killer and must die.

And poor Arthur Edmund Carewe,

the Armenian American playing the Persian --

he was just unaware of anything he was saying or doing

because it had all been changed in the title cards.

Hollywood will always argue

over who's the real author of any movie.

You know, in some cases, it's the director.

In some cases, it's the writer.

In some cases, it's the producer.

In this case,

it was about 37 different people at the studio

and 10,000 audience members who had seen it at test screenings.

The only person who could claim true authorship of the movie

would be Carl Laemmle, the owner of Universal,

and the only person who could deliver a hit

under those circumstances was Lon Chaney.

It is a miracle that the movie survived at all.

Sorry, Darcy.

-Oh my God. Don't be. It was great.

But are you done now, though?

-Back to the conclusion of "Phantom of the Opera."

Am I ever done? -No. Never.

-That's what we do here. We talk it to death.

-And then you talk it some more.

-Yes. I call it dead-horse criticism.

That's what we do. -As you should.

-Not really. -Oh, no.

That is actually an excellent way to describe it.

-People love a deep dive, though.

-Not when the dive is so deep, you bump your head

on the floor of the pool and drown.

-Was it that bad?

-I mean, it was pretty long tonight, just saying.

-All right. -But, but, but, but!

-Happy birthday, "Phantom," is what I should say.

-No, exactly. "Phantom" deserves it.

Happy birthday, "Phantom."

And that is the only way you're getting away with this tonight,

just so you know. -I know.

-I know. -I know.

Okay.

-You know, I always wonder about that last comic moment

where the Phantom pretends to have a grenade in his hand,

but then he laughs at the mob

right before they tear him apart.

-That's great.

-I would love to watch the 22-reel,

four-hour version of "Phantom"

that was tested in January of 1925,

but we don't have any of that lost footage.

We don't have the footage from the Persian court.

We don't have Christine's visit to her father's grave

in the churchyard -- churchyard cemetery.

Uh, we don't even have those comic-relief sequences

that Edward Sedgwick shot to try to lighten it up.

We don't have the duel with Count Ruboff,

but what is it about this story

that has inspired so many adaptations and re-imaginings,

and what made it the longest-running show

in the history of Broadway?

13,981 performances at the Majestic Theatre

between 1988 and 2023,

with that giant chandelier rising

from the stage every night.

The chandelier scene, by the way,

was based on a real event at the Paris Opera.

An audience member was killed and several injured

when the chandelier did fall into the crowd

on a certain night in 1896.

I think the reason the Phantom story has persisted

is that it's so elastic.

Um, the Phantom can be anything from an assassin

to a psychopath

to a misunderstood genius with a heart of gold.

Every retelling creates a new Phantom,

so it's actually not a very original story.

It's very similar to the more famous novel

"Trilby" by George du Maurier.

The Phantom is a more reclusive version of Svengali in "Trilby,"

but at the core of the story is the question,

does it make a difference if you're forced to go through life

with a face that the world rejects?

And, of course, the answer is, yes, it does.

Um, whether the Phantom dies by suicide, is killed by the mob,

or simply fades away,

as he does in the disappearing act at the end

of Andrew Lloyd Webber's version,

um, it's clear that he's cursed from birth.

He has no real chance because we do care what he looks like,

despite what we say.

There's also the idea in the novel and the film

and the musical

that the world is usually divided into two classes

of people -- the privileged and the outcasts.

And you can't cross that chasm.

Everything above ground at the Paris Opera House

is beautiful, wealthy, perfectly formed,

ordered, cultured.

And everything below ground at the Paris Opera House is ugly,

defiled, poor, mad, homeless, chaotic.

This is always a recipe for monstrous violence

and violent monsters.

Most of the people involved in the original "Phantom"

were forgotten by the time that they died,

Lon Chaney being the sole exception

because he died so soon, just five years after the premiere.

I already talked about the sad life of Mary Philbin,

who lived till age 91 as a virtual recluse.

Norman Kerry, who played Raoul,

didn't really get any work after 1931,

although he lived till 1956.

Uh, Rupert Julian, the director who had had

a distinguished theater and film career

as both an actor and a director, uh,

retired in 1936 after his sound career failed to take off,

and he died in 1943.

Arthur Edmund Carewe, the Armenian actor

who played Inspector Ledoux,

committed suicide in 1937 at the age of 53.

Gaston Leroux, the novelist,

lived only two years after the release of the movie,

but he seemed to enjoy the notoriety of it,

even after his novel had been butchered

by the Universal rewrite squad.

He didn't mind that much 'cause he was basically a reporter.

He was not a literary man.

He was really one of the most celebrated reporters of his day.

He wrote plays and novels, basically, as a sideline.

And even though Carl Laemmle would continue to invest

in the best horror films of the day,

including "Frankenstein," "Dracula,"

"The Mummy," many others,

he would lose control of Universal in 1936

and a hostile takeover and die three years later.

And Darcy, one thing that was interesting to me

is that the torture chamber of the Phantom

was a room of infinite mirrors. -Oh, yeah.

That is absolutely my definition of torture.

-You hate mirrors.

-They're kind of -- they're overrated.

-I think the idea was that when that building

was being used as a revolutionary prison,

they put the mirrors there to make people watch themselves

as they were tortured. -That sounds unbearable.

-I'm not a fan of mirrors,

but even worse is watching myself on the actual show.

I can't -- I can't do it.

Sometimes I have to do it, but it's painful.

I try not to do it 'cause it makes me self-conscious.

-Aw. Well, it's way beyond self-conscious for me,

so I get it. -I know.

Well, um, no mirrors here.

So let's get ready for the second movie

of "The Last Drive-In" premiere tonight.

Uh, moving from the foundation film of "Phantom" movies

to the most batshit crazy of all "Phantom" movies,

Dario Argento's "Opera." -Whoo!

Do we have any pertinent mailbag first, though?

-Indeed we do.

This letter came in from Cliff Revard of Denver,

and I think you're gonna like it.

-Really? -Yes.

-Okay.

"Dear Joe Bob, my name is Cliff Revard,

and I am eight years old."

-Aw! -Well, they get younger and younger.

I gotta start watching my language on the show.

-He's gotta learn. -"I'm from Denver, Colorado,

in the neighborhood of Montbello.

My mom is helping to write this letter.

I have Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome,

which is a rare genetic condition

that affected my brain, heart, vision, lungs,

and other areas of my body.

I'm very bright, but because I am non-verbal,

it is sometimes hard to show people how intelligent,

funny, and cool I am." -Aw.

-"Watching your show is one of our --

my mom and mine -- favorite highlights of our week.

We get to cuddle in bed and focus on our shared comforts,

watching horror movies together.

It's a time where we are not focused on anything else

but just enjoying the moment.

I love learning about the movie and hearing fun facts.

I even laugh at your jokes."

Somebody laughs at my jokes, Darcy.

-It's a pity laugh. -Cliff laughs at my jokes.

He's just trying to be nice.

-Uh, "We love the dynamic between you and Darcy."

-Aw. -"And the cosplays are

always so fun.' -Aah!

-"You call your fans mutants and express how we are family.

And even though we may not all know one another personally,

I feel a connection to this community.

As long as we can come together once a week

and hang out with you and Darcy and the gang,

we are never alone."

I'm sorry. It's nice.

-Why did you do this? -It's a nice letter.

-"I'm happy to have my mutant family.

When I grow up. I want to write horror movies

and own a drive-in. Who knows, maybe someday you may

host my movie at my drive-in." -Hell, yeah.

-"Darcy and Joe Bob, please keep doing what you're doing.

It is really special.

Love your mutant family member, Cliff Revard."

Okay, well, Cliffy -- I'm calling you Cliffy,

because that's what it says on the outside of the envelope --

um, thanks for summing up what it's all about.

We're a bunch of people who are homeless in the world,

but at home with one another.

So something about horror does that to people.

And you're actually not the first

non-verbal fan of the show. We have another guy.

I don't know if he has Rubinstein-Taybi

or something else, but I met him at one

of the conventions in Pennsylvania.

So when God gave out words,

he apparently gave them out unevenly

so that those of us who have too many words --

and don't say anything about that, Darcy...

-I said nothing. -...can donate some to

the wordless by speaking up for them.

Shane, I hope you're at least half done,

'cause we are out of here.

-I am about half done with the sculpting,

and then I'm gonna get ready to paint it.

So, yeah, I'm feeling pretty good.

-All right. Remember, it's not ugly

until it makes you want to throw up.

-The time-constraint thing is kind of making me

me want to throw up.

I think I'm gonna be okay, though.

-And, Spencer, I feel like I owe you an apology.

-No, man, you sent me those two bolo ties a few months back.

Just keep those coming, and we're square.

-But, Spencer, you -- but you are free to throw up

whenever you want.

Go ahead. -You must have missed it.

About five minutes ago, I vomited all over Shane.

Sorry about your boots, buddy.

-It's all right.

-They weren't real suede, were they?

-All right, just one more movie, and then you're done.

And now we're gonna clean up our clothes

and get ready for part two

of "The Phantom of the Opera" 100th birthday.

And then after that, we're gonna reveal

the ultimate ugly face.

I'm Joe Bob Briggs with Darcy the Mail Girl,

reminding you that the only thing fair in life

is the hair on a Norwegian albino's butt,

and the drive-in will never die.

What?

-I've got a -- I've got a -- -It's okay.

-I've got an ugly joke. -Okay, go for it.

-All right. Three women die and go to Heaven.

-Okay. -When they get to Heaven,

Saint Peter says, "We only have one rule here in Heaven --

don't step on the ducks." So they enter Heaven,

and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place.

It's almost impossible not to step on a duck.

And although they try their best to avoid them,

the first woman accidentally steps on a duck.

So along comes Saint Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw.

And Saint Peter chains them together and says,

"Your punishment for stepping on a duck

is to spend eternity chained to this man."

So the next day,

the second woman accidentally steps on a duck.

Along comes Saint Peter. He doesn't miss a thing.

With him is another extremely ugly man.

He chains them together with the same admonishment

as for the first woman -- for eternity.

The third woman has observed all this,

and not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man,

she's very careful where she steps.

She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks,

but one day Saint Peter comes up to her

with the most handsome man she's ever laid eyes on.

He's tall, he's muscular, he's thin.

Saint Peter chains them together without saying a word,

and the happy woman says,

"I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you

for all eternity."

And the guy says, "I don't know about you,

but I stepped on a duck."

-That's mean. That's not nice.