Which 1925 silent film starred Lon Chaney as the deformed Phantom?

The 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney as the deformed Phantom was The Phantom of the Opera. Directed primarily by Rupert Julian for Universal Pictures, it adapted Gaston Leroux’s 1910 French novel about a mysterious outcast haunting the Paris Opera House and obsessing over singer Christine Daaé.

Chaney designed his own makeup, creating the Phantom’s famously skeletal, hollow-eyed appearance. Universal kept the look secret before the New York premiere, making the unmasking scene one of silent cinema’s most notorious shocks. Chaney’s performance relied on gesture, posture, and facial expression because the film used intertitles rather than spoken dialogue.

The film premiered at New York’s Astor Theatre on September 6, 1925. It is often confused with the 1943 Universal adaptation starring Claude Rains, but Chaney’s version is the 1925 silent classic. The elaborate opera-house sets and underground sequences helped make it one of the era’s landmark horror productions.