#sadly the most accurate versions we have are the 1925 silent movie and the 1988 animated movie

[ofbeautsandbeasts]

Okay, I want to know how the transition of the phantoms deformity happened? How did we start from Leroux full face corpse while being skeleton like thin to ALW half faced deformity and "normal" body?

Hi, thanks for asking me a question! (my inbox is barren these days, except for the occasional tumbleweed...or should I say tumblrweed?) 😂

Well, I think Leroux chose a very corpse-like Phantom because an "opera ghost" should look macabre and close to death...just based on the name/concept. I do believe he was a fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula because Erik and Dracula have a lot of things in common. For example, Erik sleeps in a coffin, he has no mirrors in his house, he lives in a secluded and mysterious house, he doesn’t eat when Christine dines, he gives her Tokay wine at her first meal, he keeps her as his prisoner for a time, his eyes blaze, etc. I'm not sure if Leroux was trying to make his readers suspect Erik's a vampire all along or if he was paying homage to one of his fave novels or if he simply thought it would be cool to give Erik these traits. Gothic novels of that time just tended to have supernatural villains and Erik is no exception. It makes sense that a truly horrifying phantom would essentially look like a zombie...because what's scarier than something that really shouldn't be alive and is missing a nose??

(sorry, I couldn't resist adding some of my & @fantomexnoir's art 😆)

As for ALW's half-deformity, @textsfromthefifthbasement has it right about Michael Crawford rehearsing with a full face mask and it being difficult to sing/emote well, so they switched to a half-mask. Regarding why it's not just a skeletal deformity, I think that would be underwhelming to modern audiences because we've collectively consumed so many horror movies since they were first made that we need something more contrasting and unnatural like this:

Trust me, the first time I ever saw this deformity, I was completely BOGGLED! Like...his head has a HOLE??? That somehow doesn't get infected or bleed out????? Don't even get me started on the version that has exposed brain 🤦:

As for the "normal" body, it would be difficult/problematic to only cast underweight actors for the Phantom...but I'd so love to see someone like Matthew Patrick Davis do a performance as ALW Erik! He's the 6'6" man who dressed up as Jack Skellington and performed as him for a youtube video (link here). Just imagine him doing Stranger Than You Dreamt It and the Final Lair with the same creepy/spidery physicality!

Alas...I don't know when we'll ever get a super accurate Leroux adaptation. Maybe one day Guillermo Del Toro will get around to directing one...and then we can all die happy 👻