Fall Of The House Of Argento

There was a time a few years ago where I aimed to own the entire Dario Argento library. With every film of his that I view from "Suspiria" on down, the chasm of quality drops enormously. When I gave up 30 minutes into "The Stendhal Syndrome", I figured that I had reached the bottom of the barrel. Enter "Phantom Of The Opera".

Surprising as it may seem, a few of the actors actually turned in decent performances. Even for Argento fans, this is fairly unusual. Despite this, it is impossible to ignore that this looks like a low budget public access special shot with a handicam. The special effects are on the same level of poor with sci-fi monster films of the 1950's, made especially laughable by their utter lack of necessity.

Having no frame of reference storywise by which to compare, I have no idea if this is a bastardization of the other adaptations. My one and only interest in this mess whatsoever was due to Dario Argento being at the helm.

The only plus to be found is that this film captures Asia Argento's beauty better than most others. She is the lone bright spot. As others have stated, how the hell did Argento go from "Suspiria" and "Tenebre" to this?


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