By JOE WINTERS

Far beneath the Paris Opera House amidst winding corridors and forgotten catacombs a young woman silently creeps up behind her masked benefactor as he plays the organ. In her curiosity to see the face of this man with whom she may be in love, she defies his instructions and removes his mask. At that moment, horror history is made.

Since 1925 and Lon Chaney’s Phantom Of The Opera, masks have concealed an added extra that genre fans anticipate with a combination of fascination and dread. Phantom and its many imitators offer mystery and suspense prior to and after the unmasking, but it is that moment when the mask comes off that provides the horror highlight.

The image of Erik the Phantom’s unmasked visage is even more unforgettable than his unforgivable deeds. Haunting the Paris Opera, poisoning, murder, kidnapping, and torture--not to mention unauthorized chandelier tampering!

To create the face of a fiend that would do all these terrible things, Chaney extended his cheekbones using cotton and collodion. The up-tilting of the nose was done by gluing a strip of fish skin onto the top of his nose with spirit gum and pulling it upward, while the rest of the strip was glued to the bridge of the nose and lower part of the forehead.

Dark color liner helped provide the hollowed-out look of the eyes. The jagged teeth were made of gutta-percha. Gluing the muslin edge of the skull cap (with the wig sewn into it) would blend that into the forehead, while his ears were glued back with spirit gum. Combine all this with the right lighting and you have a ghastly cadaverous countenance that has yet to be equaled.

Erik’s successors include the once-kindly violinist Erique Claudin portrayed by Claude Rains in Universal’s 1943 Technicolor remake of Phantom Of The Opera. Unlike his predecessor, Claudin wasn’t born ugly, but a pan of acid tossed into his face threw his already sensitive nature irrevocably out of control.

Universal and makeup wizard Jack Pierce probably knew that Chaney’s original makeup could not be topped, and since Rains as the Phantom would be masked most of the time, Pierce applied some make up that wouldn’t pack the wallop of the original, but still provided a sufficient shudder during its brief moments on screen.

When equally kind composer Professor Petrie (Herbert Lom) met a similar fate from acid-induced flames, the Phantom rose again, albeit a kinder, gentler phantom whose hunchbacked assistant did all the killing, now set in England in Hammer Films production of Phantom Of The Opera (1962).

Not only was the Phantom’s face a creation of Hammer’s resident make-up man Roy Ashton, but he constructed the mask as well. On shooting day he created it on the spot using "a piece of rag, some tape, bits of string and rubber, and in about five minutes I had a mask," said Ashton.

Over the years, the Phantom’s mask, madness and mission have been taken up by Maximillian Schell, Robert Englund, Charles Dance, Julian Sands, and on Broadway by Michael Crawford. James Cagney re-enacted the part of the Phantom briefly in the Lon Chaney biopic Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957).

In 1974’s Phantom Of The Paradise, directed by Brian DePalma, the story is modernized and a rock musician (played by William Finley) gets his face caught in a record press. A full set of metal teeth were but part of his frightful face. Equally bizarre is the Phantom’s mask, a silver bird-type helmet that covered the upper half of the head. For some scenes, the actor had to place a tiny transmitter in one ear so he could hear the director’s instructions!

Musicians weren’t the only artists to take refuge behind a mask when the going got ugly. Lionel Atwill was the fire-scarred proprietor in 1933’s Mystery Of The Wax Museum (with convincing makeup by Perc Westmore), and Vincent Price (whose burn makeup was supervised by two doctors) starred in the 1953 remake House Of Wax.

In these films the actors’ actual faces represented their "masks" to be cracked open near the end of each picture by the soon to be helpless heroines.

Peter Lorre’s character of a poor, but hopeful immigrant burned by fire, had to buy his new look in 1941’s The Face Behind The Mask. At that point he pursued his own twisted take on the American dream as a master thief while falling in love with a beautiful blind woman who inspires him to reform, although too late.

Equally poignant was the unfortunate accident victim played by Edith Scob in Eyes Without A Face (1959) whose sad mask and eyes would accurately reflect her frame of mind while her surgeon father searched for new and unwilling face donors.

Then there’s the case of Mr. Sardonicus (1961 and played by Guy Rolfe) whose opening of his dead father’s grave left the son with a fiendishly fixed grin that made it necessary to purchase both a mask and the title of Baron. It still didn’t improve his eating habits.

In 1971 Vincent Price was behind the mask again as The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and so was Herbert Lom in Murders In The Rue Morgue. As Phibes, Price’s own face was the "mask," which when pulled off revealed a skull-like face, while Lom wore a half-mask to cover acid burns similar to Claude Rains’ Phantom makeup from ’43.

For Horror Hospital (1973) Michael Gough’s own face proved to be yet another mask hiding yet another hideous lunatic who had to lobotomize young ladies just so he could have his way with them!

Going back to 1958 for a campy look at the future was Queen Of Outer Space with Laurie Mitchell playing for high stakes as the radiation-burned Venusian vixen out to destroy earth itself, only to be foiled by (gasp) Zsa Zsa Gabor!

In almost every instance, the mask gives its wearer the self-assurance to push their affliction aside long enough to carry out his or her agenda, whatever it might be.

Some killers need not even be disfigured physically, but for them the mask represents an alter ego empowered to do the unthinkable. In 1932’s Behind The Mask, a surgeon who happens to be a crime boss commits murders "legitimately" on the operating table, adding fuel to the old joke about doctors being untrustworthy ("why do you suppose they wear masks?").

The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932), actually the mask of Genghis Khan, would give a certain Oriental mastermind (played by Boris Karloff) an added boost in his plans for world dominion.

And from 1932’s Doctor X (with makeup by Max Factor) and the "faceless" killer of Blood And Black Lace (1964) to the Halloween, Friday The 13th, Scream pictures, madmen are driven by their own desperation or by some hellish force to commit acts so shocking that only a mask can hide them from…themselves.