"Entertainment Weekly" critic Ken Tucker gave the film a score of A- and said Kopit and director Tony Richardson "make the romance between the Phantom and Christine both touching and frightening, and the casting of Burt Lancaster as Carriere, the manager of the opera company, gives the story weight and great charm..."The Phantom of the Opera" has a few old-fashioned but genuinely scary moments...It's as if Richardson went back to look at old horror movies by such filmmakers as Val Lewton and James Whale to figure out how they got their spooky but never gruesome effects". Although he found Adam Storke's Count de Chagny bland, he declared that: "...all in all, "The Phantom of the Opera" is a real achievement: It's rare enough for a costume drama to show up on TV these days; the fact that this is a good one is amazing."