The Phantom of the Opera (1998 film) and featured the "Air des clochettes" from the opera "Lakmé" by Léo Delibes and the overture from Charles Gounod's "Faust". The Phantom of the Opera (1998 film) The Phantom of the Opera () is a 1998 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento, adapted from the novel "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra" by Gaston Leroux. However, there are many differences between the book and the film (the biggest being that the Phantom is not disfigured). In Paris 1877 a pack of rats save an abandoned baby from a basket that was flowing along a river. They raise him in the underground
Erik (The Phantom of the Opera) strangles the publisher and tries to retrieve his music, only to be disfigured when the publisher's assistant throws etching acid in his face. In the musical horror film "Phantom of the Paradise" (1974), Winslow (the Phantom character) gets his head caught in a record-press, while Robert Englund's horror-version has him selling his soul to Satan and having his face mutilated as a result. This version also has a gruesome variation on the mask, in which Erik is sewing flesh to his face. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation, only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often