Stars: Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Candace Hilligoss, Herk Harvey, Frances Feist, Mary Philbin

Director: Wallace Worsley

Summary: This collection includes three eerie films: CARNIVAL OF SOULS, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. See individual titles for more details.

WIN DVDs by rating this DVD

Average User Rating:

WIN DVDS by being amongst the first to review this DVD. Reviewing DVDs earns you bonus entries and lets you WIN DVDs!Please login before reviewing this DVD. If you're a new user, register for free and enter to WIN FREE DVDs!

It's difficult sometimes to fathom how compilers think. This Chiller Theatrethreesome consists of two classic silent horror films, plus a low-budget B-movie from the early 1960s. The connection? You decide! Yet these are films that belong in any self-respecting collection, and this package is a good way of acquiring them.

Of those featuring Lon Chaney, it's the original 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Damethat comes across best. Chaney's grotesquerie is shot-through with pathos, and Patsy Ruth Miller's Esmeralda has enduring freshness. Wallace Worsley handles crowd scenes and cathedral stunts with aplomb, and there's an atmospheric "posthumous" soundtrack, though anyone looking for accuracy in the depiction of medieval French society is in for a shock.

1925's The Phantom of the Operais slow-moving and uneventful by comparison, with Rupert Julian's direction never escaping the narrow Gothic trappings of the novel. Chaney cranks (or is that camps?) up his range of gestures to the limit, and Mary Philbin is an eye-catching heroine, but the denouement in the Paris sewers seems endless--with looped extracts of Schubert and Brahms as a hardly appropriate soundtrack.

Cut to 1962, and The Carnival of Souls--made in Kansas for under $100,000--is an undeniable cult classic. Herk Harvey sustains the increasingly surreal narrative with ease, Candace Hilligoss is striking (if a tad gauche) as the young organist caught on the cusp of this world and the next, and Gene Moore's organ soundtrack is a masterly backdrop for the motley assemblage of ghouls who pursue her around the seaside pier in a memorable closing sequence.

On the DVD:Chiller Theatreis very acceptably remastered--with 1.33:1 aspect ratio and 12 chapter headings per film--and decently if minimally packaged. --Richard Whitehouse

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 0
Subtitles:	None
Year:	1923
Release Date:	February 3, 2003
Runtime:	291 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	S I R E 1006
Keywords:	Theatre, Opera, Box, General, Carnival, Chiller, Dame, Three, Hunchback, Set, Phantom, Souls, Thriller, Discs, Notre, Features
Genre:	Thriller