10 Movie Unmaskings That Shocked EVERYONE

When looking back through cinema history, it's fair to say that 1925's The Phantom of the Opera was the first time that film fans were really treated to a proper, shocking unmasking.

That masking would famously be of the titular Phantom, and it's the brilliant performance of the legendary Lon Chaney that serves to further amplify this big reveal.

Up until that point of Rupert Julian's movie, all we've seen from the mysterious Phantom is his masked visage a request to be known as Erik. But then, mid-way through the picture, Mary Philbin's Christine goes against the grain and shockingly pulls the mask directly off the Phantom's face, revealing an angered, twisted vision of terror.

What made this unmasking so particularly impactful, is in how the Phantom's face was so jarringly opposite to the mask we'd been presented with up until then. That mask was a largely expressionless image that was tinged with an element of sympathy and empathy, and thus that only served to make the big reveal of the Phantom's real form all the more powerful.

There have clearly been so, so many shocking unmaskings in cinema over the subsequent near-century since The Phantom of the Opera was released in 1925, but none of them can ever take away the Phantom's honour of being the very first to pull such a move.