Oddity Archive: Episode 247 – The Warped Afterlives of Metropolis & Phantom of the Opera (Silent Movie Day 2022) (Patreon)

As promised for the last few weeks, here is this year's Silent Movie Day episode (which I thoroughly expect to tank in terms of viewership).  Nonetheless, this one started out as a look back at some of the cruddy Public Domain VHS tapes of silents, but developed into one of my now-patented "rabbit hole" episodes.  With that, this time around, we've got the ultimate collision of studio politics and preservationist frustrations.  Most famously, the films "Metropolis" and "Phantom of the Opera" (the Lon Chaney one, of course) strayed far from what moviegoers first saw almost immediately--and only got weirder--and only in more recent years have any attempts been made to start stitching back together the original cuts.

This is gonna be old news to silent diehards (all three of you), but hopefully I was able to add enough new(ish) information to make it worthwhile.

Also, I've received an E-Mail from Patreon regarding billing.  If I'm not mistaken, from your user settings, you can reset the day of the month that you are charged, so, check that out if the standard 1st day of the month doesn't work for you.