Erik (The Phantom of The Opera) - Erik's Deformity

Erik's Deformity

In the Leroux novel, Erik is described as corpse-like with no nose; sunken eyes and cheeks; yellow, parchment-like skin; and only a few wisps of ink-black hair covering his head. He is often described as "a walking skeleton", and Christine graphically describes his cold hands.

Lon Chaney, Sr.'s characterization of Erik in the silent film (released in 1925) remains closest to the book in content, in that Erik's face resembles a skull with an elongated nose slit and protruding, crooked teeth. In this version, Erik is said to have had his disfigurement from birth. Chaney was a master make-up artist and was considered avant garde for creating and applying Erik's facial makeup design himself. It is said he kept it secret until the first day of filming. The result was allegedly so frightening to the ladies of the time, theaters showing the movie were cautioned to keep smelling salts on hand for the women who fainted in shock.

Several movies based on the novel also vary the deformities (or in the case of Dario Argento's film, the lack thereof, where Erik was a normal, handsome man raised by rats). In Universal's 1943 adaptation, a poor musician tries to publish his music, and then wrongly accuses the publisher of trying to steal his music. The Phantom character then murders the publisher by strangulation and tries to retrieve his music, only to have his face burned by having etching acid thrown in his face by the publisher's female assistant. The rock opera Phantom of the Paradise has Winslow (the Erik character) get his head caught in a record-press and 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 (taking a tip from Universal's 1943 spin on the story), only half of Erik's face is deformed (thus the famous half-mask often associated with Erik's appearance.) His show was originally planned to have a full mask and full facial disfigurement, but when the director, Hal Prince, realized that it would make expression onstage very difficult, they halved the mask. The logo featuring a full mask was publicized before the change. The deformity in the musical includes a gash on the right side of his partly balding head with exposed skull tissue, an elongated right nostril, a missing right eyebrow, swollen lips, different colored eyes, and a wrinkled, warped right cheek. The lyrics in the Phantom's final scene in his lair have sometimes been interpreted to mean that the deformities affect his ability to engage in intercourse since having been questioned by Christine if she had been taken to become "Prey for lust of flesh?" he responds "That fate, which condemns me to wallow in blood/Has also denied me the joys of the flesh." However this has been clarified; the line instead refers to the Phantom's lack of sexual experience as a result of his face. His ability to engage in intercourse is further demonstrated in the sequel to Lloyd-Webber's show, Love Never Dies, in which it is revealed that the Phantom and Christine had sex the night before her wedding, resulting in her pregnancy. It originally took roughly four hours per performance to put the prosthetics on in the original London productions. On Broadway, it was cut to roughly three. More than one Phantom has described make-up disasters onstage. Michael Crawford recounts a story where he pulled away from the kiss at the end only to see that " lower lip was now hanging off Sarah 's face!". To cover the flub, he pulled her back for another kiss and "took back the lips" and kept that side of his head turned away from the audience.

In the 2004 film adaptation, Erik's makeup was made to look much less gruesome. Film Critic Roger Ebert commented that he thought Gerard Butler was made to be too good-looking for the film, and that his masks were more of a fashion accessory than an attempt to hide his deformities.