Writing that summer just emphasized how many weird missteps this story took. We don't know exactly why it is that the phantom is fascinated with Christine. It doesn't seem to be a romantic thing. (From what I've read, this production had made it so the Phantom was actually Christine's father. That would been a little more interesting.) There are two other competing love interests for Christine, a baritone and a policeman. Their interactions are played for laughs, which would be fine, except… they actually come across as kind of gay. It really looks like they're playing up some kind of sexual tension between the two of them, especially in the last scene.
Even though this is included in the Universal Monsters collection, the phantom is a strange character. He's not really a monster. He's a disfigured person. When we finally see his face in the last few minutes of the movie, it's anti-climactic
Somehow, a single gunshot is able to make a substantial stone structure collapse. After this, we get a strange statement from Christine about how she identified with the phantom. Huh?
The pacing of the movie is weird. It takes a long time to get to the disfigurement. Then we spent a whole lot of time with Christine, who has minimal interaction with the phantom. I'd probably guess that only the last 15 minutes really make the movie worthwhile. The rest of it seemed pretty slowly paced.
The good thing is that it's shot nicely. The colors are very nice.
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