While based upon the French anti-hero created in 1911, the 1964 incarnation of Fantomas seems more influenced by 007. As portrayed by Jean Marais (Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast), the master criminal trades the top hat for a proto-Blue Man Group visage as a man-of-a-thousand-faces supervillain set to rival Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger in all things deadly and dastardly.
Arriving with a pair of OSS 117 secret-agent flicks already under his belt, director André Hunebelle gets the hardly gauche Gaumont picture going with a prologue ripped straight from the pulps, as a disguised Fantomas makes off several million francs of jewelry by “paying” with a check written in disappearing ink.
Two people in particular are intrigued by this brazen crime. One is the hotheaded, bald-headed Commissioner Juve (the delightful Louis de Funès, The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob), eager to bring the madman to justice. The other is Fandor (also played by Marais), a newspaper reporter eager for a good story — eager enough to make it up, complete with fake photoshoot, with the help of his decorative girlfriend (Mylène Demongeot, The Giant of Marathon).
Unamused at the front page that follows, Fantomas has the journalist kidnapped and brought to his underground lair, laden with high-tech spy-fi gadgetry (where do these evil masterminds find their contractors?), and explains a few things to his captive:
• He wants to control what the press writes about him. (How prescient!)
• He can re-create human skin, from face to fingerprints, which he dons to perpetrate felonies under the guise of upstanding citizens — like, say, Fandor.
• He “may kill people, but always with a smile.”
For fans of crime thrillers coated in camp, that smile may prove contagious throughout, as Fantomas-as-Fandor pulls a daring diamond heist during a rooftop beauty contest in broad daylight. As Fantomas-as-Juve terrorizes Paris with acts of random violence. As Fantomas gives Tom Cruise a run for his face-switching, Mission: Impossible money. As James Bond-ian submarines and helicopters come into play. As a silly slapstick car chase grows increasingly inventive until it’s nearly worthy of Buster Keaton.
Full of action, light of heart and swift of feet, Fantomas begins and ends as a good caper should: fun. One could argue it doesn’t end at all; rather, it presses pause on its own cat-and-mouse tale, as if awaiting the projectionist to switch reels and start the sequel (Fantomas Unleashed, unleashed the next year by the same team), but assuming you’re already “in,” you’ll hardly mind the inconvenience. —Rod Lott