Fantômas is one of the great fictional characters that no one outside of fandom has ever heard of.

And one of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction. Fantômas was created in 1911 Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre for that greatest of all inspirations, some quick cash. They alternated writing chapters and ground them out at the rate of about one a month for 32 novels, then Allain wrote another 11 volumes after Souvestre’s death.

The character was the rage of Paris, particularly the avant-garde and the surrealists, who loved the impossible plots and escapes, as well as the iconic covers by Starace.

Over the years, Fantômas has appeared in films, on television, and in comic book adaptations, not all of them French. Alan Moore has mentioned him as a member in the French version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. David White has recently novelized the lost American serial of 1920 as Fantômas in America.

Arsene Lupin predates him, but then Lupin was known as the Gentleman Thief, and also worked on the side of the law in some cases. Fantômas is just a bad guy, the baddest of the bad. He revels in it. He’s sadistic and psychotic. Just the sort of character to capture the imagination of a nation and lands beyond.

I don’t know where or when I first became aware of Fantômas; the novels had not been in print in the U. S. since the 1920s, and even then, the whole series was never translated.  My first shot at reading one didn’t come until 1986, when William Morrow published the first two books in new translations. I was hooked. The series never went any farther.

But more so than the books, Louis Feuillade’s 1913 film version(s) were even more intoxicating to think about. I’m sure I read about them during that period when I first fell in love with silent films, back in the 1960s.

Information on the film, however, was scarce, sketchy  AND confusing. It was a serial –it was a series of features–it was a serial presented as a series of features–it was five different short serials. Everybody had a different story, largely because no one had seen the films for decades. They might even be lost. This, of course, added to the allure.

The market for silent films on DVD is small, but some years ago two other Feuillade serials were released, Les Vampires and Judex, and they are fantastic. At least one other, Tih Minh, still exists and has been screened in France and America a few times. Fantômas, however, remained elusive……until this last summer, when I found the film(s) on Amazon.uk.  I can’t even describe how quickly I ordered the film. Miraculously, it arrived in less than a week. After thirty years of waiting, I set aside everything except feeding the cats and plunged in.

Wow. It was worth the wait. Not as good as Les Vampires or Judex technically, but inspired nonetheless.

Before we get into the film itself, let me clarify, for all those other fans out there who are still wondering, that Fantômas is….all of the above. Kinda. No wonder everyone was confused.

The 15-20 chapter cliffhanger that we know as a serial is a different beast from European serials. Though the idea of the continued story and the daredevil action is largely the same, the French, Germans and Italians tended toward longer chapters, generally 40-60 minutes in length. The stories are a bit slower paced, a bit more complex. And each may be watched as an entity unto itself.

In other words, Fantômas is a serial, but in the sense that Star Wars is a serial: five related, feature-length films with continuing characters and some overlap of story arcs.

Of course, Fantômas escapes at the end of every one of the five films, but only the second films ends with a true cliff-hanger: Juve, Fantômas’ nemesis, is lured into a house and a bomb goes off as Fantômas watches gleefully from a safe distance.

The confusion over the “serialness” of the films, I think, comes from the fact that each of the feature length movies is separated into 4 or 5 numbered, titled segments within the feature. This wasn’t so uncommon in the early days of film, and was often used as a transition device, as they are here. But none of the ‘chapters’ have cliff-hanger or even particularly dramatic endings, and all the chapters of a given feature were shown together on the same evening, not separately.

As soon as I finished the DVD set,  I immediately put all this up on Wikipedia, and now repeat the same for you here:

* 1. Fantômas I: A l’ombre de la guillotine (Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine) (1913)

1. Le vol du Royal Palace Hotel (The Theft at the Royal Palace Hotel)

2. La disparation de Lord beltham (The Disappearance of Lord Beltham)

3. Autour l’echafaud (By the Guillotine)

* 2. Fantômas II: Juve Contre Fantômas (Juve vs. Fantômas)(1913)

1. La catastrophe de Simplar-Express (Disaster on the Simplar Express)

2. Au “Crocodile” (At the Crocodile)

3. La Villa hante´e (The Haunted Villa)

4. L’Homme noir (The Man in Black)

* 3. Fantômas III: Le Mort Qui Tue (The Murderous Corpse)(1913)

1. Le Drame du rue Novins (The Tragedyin Rue Novins)

2. L’Enquete de Fandor (Fandor’s Investigation)

3. Le collier de la princesse (The Princesses Necklace)

4. Le Banquier Nanteul (The Banker Nanteul)

5. Elizabeth Dollon

6. Les gants de peau humaine (The Gloves Made Out of Human Skin)

4. Fantômas IV: Fantômas contre Fantômas (Fantômas vs. Fantômas)(1914)

1.Fantômas et l’opinion publique (Fantômas and Public Opinion)

2. Le Mur qui saigne (The Wall that Bleeds)

3. Fantômas contre Fantômas (Fantômas vs. Fantômas)

4. Réglement de compes (Getting Even)

* 5. Fantômas V: Le Faux Magistrat (The False Magistrate) (1914)

1. Prolog (The Theft at the Chateau des Loges)

2. Le Prisonner de Louvain (The Prisoner of Louvain)

3. Monsieur Charles Pradier, juge d’instruction (Charles Pradier, Examining Magistrate)

4. Le Magistrat cambrioleur ( The Burglar Judge)

5. L’Extrade´ de Louvain (The Extradited Man)

Watching the films, beautifully restored by Jacques Champreaux, it is easy to see why the surrealists delighted in them. Although typical of the period, the sets are largely painted flats, which adds an air of unreality to the proceedings, especially when contrasted with the on location filming.

Absurdities abound.: Juve grabs Fantômas by the shoulders only to find that the master criminal is wearing a fake set of arms, which come off and confuse Juve long enough for Fantômas to get away; as Juve and Fandor, the newspaper reporter who may just be Fantômas’s son, have the evil one cornered at gunpoint, Fantômas ducks into a secret spring panel which locks after him.

Fearing an attack by Fantômas, Juve puts on a weird spiked girdle contraption over his pajamas, as Fandor takes up his vigil in a wicker basket. Presumably it is only the weird gizmo and Fandor’s quick action that keeps Juve from being strangled by the ‘silent executioner,’ a trained boa constrictor. When a businessman sends half the money he owes by train, Fantômas and company steal the loot only to discover that it is literally half the money – each of the big bills have been cut cleanly in half

René Navarre, a popular and handsome French leading man plays Fantômas, mostly disguised as Gurn the Banker, Tom Bob the American Detective and many other aliases. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, he wears a hooded, all-black costume Only once, in a fantasy of Juve’s at the end of the first film, does Fantômas appear in the guise that had been made famous by the posters and book covers. All in all, Navarre does a great job.

Less successful is Edmund Breon as Inspector Juve. Although played straight, his disguises are a bit on the silly side, at least from the perspective of almost 100 years. But he is definitely a hero, not the bumbling fool of the 1964 Fantômas movies.

Jérôme Fandor, reporter for the Capital newspaper and Juve’s collaborator, is played by Georges Melchior , and Lady Beltham, Fantômas’ mistress, is essayed by Renée Carl .

An American serial, now lost, was made in1920 and there were other French Fantômas films madein 1932, 1932,, 1946 and 1948, and then the best known Fantômas films of all, the trilogy made in the mid-1960s starring Jean Marais as Fantômas and Fandor. The films were updated, and infused with the flavor of both James Bond and the camp craze. As such, they were largely vehicles for the comic Louis de Funès as a relatively incompetent Juve. They are maddeningly available only in French.

There was a four part television production in the 1970s, I think, and presumably there is a new film on the docket for 2011. I’ll see it, but no matter how good it is, it will never equal the wonder of that original excursion into terror.