10 Banned Movies Now Considered Masterpieces

The original release of The Phantom of the Opera in 1925 was not one that went smoothly. Terrifying audience members into passing out, throwing up, and all that other hoo-hah that comes from PR companies to make you go and see their 'scary' films, it made its mark on the earliest of cinema audiences before there was anything else to compare it to.

Impressively however, the silent film still stands up against its modern counterparts, creating a truly frightening-looking character in keeping with the novel that has inspired countless classic adaptations. Centring around phantom haunts the Paris opera house, he causes death and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves famous.

The movie was banned for four years for being too horrifying to distribute, before being chosen for preservation by the US National Film Registry for being an important cultural work. There's hope for all us scary-looking people to be remembered forever, then.