EL FANTASMA DE LA OPERETA (1960)
aka The Phantom of the Operetta
Article 4480 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-20-2014
Directed by Fernando Cortes
Featuring German Valdes, Ana Luisa Puluffo, Luis Aldas
Country: Mexico
What it is: Horror comedy

A buffoon and his girlfriend plan to reopen a closed opera house, only to discover that the place is haunted by a masked phantom.

I’ve already covered the 1955 version of this story, though I would be hard-pressed to compare the two, since I’ve only been able to catch either one in a Spanish language print without English subtitles. It’s pretty much what you’d expect for a comic version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and though it looks fairly well-made, it doesn’t seem anything particularly special. Granted, it might be a lot funnier if I could follow the dialogue, but the visual humor doesn’t offer a whole lot in the way of surprises. As is often the case when I watch Mexican comedies under these circumstances, the musical numbers turn out to be the highlights, largely because they can be enjoyed regardless of the language problem. But then, musical numbers in Mexican horror comedies tend to be pretty strange.