Robert Englund will soon have two movie series going at once, as does Sylvester Stallone with the "Rocky" and "Rambo" pictures.
The Englund films, however, are entrenched in the horror genre.
Englund is the actor under the Freddy Krueger makeup in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films, and his latest picture, "The Phantom of the Opera," presents him as yet another makeup-laden horror character. The first sequel in this series, "The Phantom of Manhattan," begins shooting in New York this month.
But if this first entry is any indication, horror fans don't have much to look forward to.
This is the fourth remake of "Phantom of the Opera," and though still based on the Gaston Leroux novel, and in general faithful to it, this version has taken some liberties to "modernize" the story. In particular there is a framing device that has the film opening and closing in modern-day New York City. The bulk of the story is still 19-century melodrama, but for some reason set in London instead of Paris.
But none of this matters much _ it's still just another horror movie like too many others these days, with a script replete with weak plotting and even weaker characters and the emphasis clearly on gore.
The film opens with the female lead, Christine (Jill Schoelen, memorable as "The Stepfather's" stepdaughter), as a Julliard singing student who auditions for a role in a Broadway musical. During her audition she is knocked out by a prop that falls from the ceiling. When she awakens she is in 1889 England where she is understudy to the diva in a London opera company, knocked out by a prop dropped by a stagehand.
Later the poor fellow who accidentally dropped the prop is skinned alive and his body stuffed into a closet in the diva's dressing room. This, naturally, upsets the diva, so Christine gets her golden opportunity and she wows the audience.
Fearing Christine will not be able to draw the audience promised by the diva, however, the opera director bribes a newspaper critic to pan her performance. Guess who the next two victims are.
And so it goes as the film becomes merely a costume period "slasher" picture.
Robert Englund isn't bad as the masked composer who has literally struck a deal with the devil and had his face ripped off as a result. But in this case the mask is the skin of his skinned victims, used to sew patches onto his disfigured face (in graphic, closeup detail).
And his killings, of course, are mostly to further the career of Christine, with whom he is in love from afar. (He does, however, take a moment to knock off some thugs he meets in a pub.)
There is the eventual kidnapping so the audience can follow him under the opera house for a chase in the catacombs. But this is a phantom who never simply punches someone in the stomach when he can reach in and pull out a spleen, and who never slashes a throat when he can use that same knife to chop off the victim's head altogether.
In the end Englund is reduced to playing the phantom simply as Freddy without the wisecracks, and this latest "Phantom of the Opera" is just another dumb splatter movie that's a bit better dressed.
There's a disclaimer during the end credits that says, "This Motion Picture is not associated with any current or prior stage production or motion picture of the same title." That's so you won't think it's related to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Fat chance.
It is rated R, of course, for violence, some profanity and a nude scene.