Spoiler: it was the butler dressed up as the mother. Leroux’s other accomplishments include one of the first locked room mysteries, The Mystery of the Yellow Room.

Long before it become inseparable from romance-obsessed high school girls, the Phantom of the Opera was a gothic serial written by Gaston Leroux. This is impressive seeing as the 1925 film was almost never made and, in terms of editing by contemporary standards, is a disaster.

The film, and its lead star Lon Chaney, have become entwined with the birth of what would become known as the Universal monster group. Phantom of the Opera, despite not being near the genesis of horror film, still stands as one of the most iconic milestones in monster style filmmaking. Murnau’s Nosferatu in 1922, and Japanese experimental films like Shinin no Sosei. Several instances of what would be horror in film were already made by this point in history, including George Melies Le Manoir du diable in 1896, F. The 1925 silent film Phantom of the Opera stands as an important film in the horror genre despite it not really being close to the first horror film created.

1925 phantom of the opera mask