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
Phantom of the Opera (1976 musical) developing a grand scale version of his Phantom in the West End, and offered to produce it. In fact, Hill and Lloyd Webber had worked together earlier on a revival of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" at the Winchester Theatre. Lloyd Webber and his producer, Cameron Mackintosh, had been highly enthusiastic when they broached Hill about his Phantom of the Opera. But in the end, Lloyd Webber chose to pursue the musical without Hill. "Phantom of the Opera" then emerged on the other side of the Atlantic in 1987 for its American premiere in St. Louis at the Repertory