Dario Argento is known for being surreal and frankly kind of weird. His films contain dreamlike imagery and often focus on this imagery to the exclusion of lesser matters, like plot. This isn't to say that his movies aren't worth watching, on the contrary, his films feature some of the most nightmarish imagery in horror history, but it's very true that his style over substance approach is an acquired taste. This is why it surprises me so much when his fans bitch about movies like "Phantom of the Opera," one of his movies that is almost universally hated and reviled. People complain "It doesn't really have a plot and there's a bunch of weird imagery and it doesn't make sense," as though that weren't true of pretty much ALL of his films. For my money, I think Argento's "Phantom" gets a bad rap, because there's certainly a lot to like in this movie.

There is a lot of ridiculousness in this movie, and for me, what saves it is the romance between the beautiful maiden, played by Asia Argento, and the Phantom, played by Julien Sands. Their love is never less than one hundred percent believable (and Asia Argento plays the part of the young maiden falling deeply into love and ignoring any obstacles to that love as young people do). For his part, Sands, who is remarkable articulate for a guy who was supposedly raised by rats, plays the part of the doomed suitor perfectly, I'm not much of a fan of Sands, but I give him props for this role because he did well. Of course, there are many who object to this bizarre love story, including a young man who wishes to marry the beautiful maiden, so he seeks to kill the Phantom (which he really has good reason to do, considering that the Phantom IS killing a lot of people under the opera house, so the message that people want to kill the Phantom because they don't understand him is really silly...dude, he's brutally murdering anyone he doesn't like). That being said, the final scene of the film is very sad and it sums up the doomed love triangle perfectly.

Where do I start? First of all, ignoring the fact that a guy raised in a sewer by rats isn't going to be as educated and articulate as the Phantom, forgetting the ridiculous visions the Phantom sees in the sky, and forgetting the midgets who appear in the story for no apparent reason, the movie suffers from a lack of credible acting by any of the players besides Argento and Sands. Everyone else here is absolutely terrible at delivering their lines, so it's a good thing that most of them die before we have a chance to get too angry about this. The movie, while I think it gets bashed more than it deserves, does tread on pretty stupid ground for most of its running time, so it's definitely not for everyone and it's worthwhile to note that even Dario Argento's strongest supporters don't usually like this movie.

It's far from Argento's best film, but for my money, it's an interesting take on the "Phantom of the Opera" story with some cool gore and some good acting for the leads, and for that, I can't help but like it.