You'll never see my real face. No one will ever see it under this mask.
In the early '60s, when Georges Franju wanted to do a remake of Fantômas, he was dismayed to learn that the rights to Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain's novels were unavailable. It's curious, then, that he managed to turn out his substitute, 1963's Judex, before the Fantômas remake surfaced the following year. Where Franju chose to film in black and white to evoke the haunting imagery of Feuillade's silent serials, though, 1964's Fantômas is a splashy, full-color affair with an aesthetic more in line with the Bond films of the era.
As it turned out, Franju's Judex was a one-off, but this Fantômas became the first part of a trilogy, all directed by André Hunebelle, who was responsible for a few of the original OSS 117 films (later spoofed by Michel Hazanavicius) being made around the same time. As it opens, the criminal mastermind (star Jean Marais, disguised as a rich old gentleman) makes off with several million francs' worth of jewelry, and Commissioner Juve (Louis de Funès) goes on television to assure the public that "The police are on the case. Fantômas's days are numbered." His response? To toss a bomb into the shop window where people have gathered to watch Juve, a moment echoed in the opening of Brazil. Then journalist Fandor (Marais again) weighs in with an article critical of both the police and Fantômas, which he follows up with a fabricated interview with a man he doesn't actually believe exists. Fandor even poses for the accompanying photo, taken by his photographer fiancée Hélène (Mylène Demongeot), donning an all-black ensemble complete with a cape and hood. Naturally, this doesn't please the very real Fantômas, who has Fandor kidnapped and taken to his underground lair for a face-to-rubber-mask chat. He also brands Fandor with his mark, which is all the evidence Juve needs to believe the reporter is in cahoots with the masked fiend.
Taking things a step further, the next time Fandor is taken off the streets, Fantômas robs a diamond show while impersonating him (I wonder if his flawless masks were the inspiration for Sam Raimi's Darkman) and screenwriters Jean Halain and Pierre Foucaud make Juve out to be a total buffoon, having him impotently cry, "I'll get you, Fantômas!" as the villain makes a clean getaway. At the same time, Hélène is kidnapped and given a Happy Potion because Fantômas plans to seduce her in the guise of Fandor, but only after he's taken care of some other business, including disguising himself as Juve to shoot up the marquee of a theater running a show about him and robbing a casino. Before he can get around to the seducing, though, his companion Lady Beltham (Marie-Hélène Arnaud, who's much younger than her counterpart in the silent version) frees Fandor and Hélène, leaving them a note that reads, "Go, and don't try to understand women." However, she also leaves them in a car with no brakes that careens down a winding mountain road before finally falling to pieces. That's just the warm-up, though, for the climactic chase involving motorcycles, a train, a car, a boat, a helicopter, and a submarine.
As "fun" as Hunebelle's Fantômas wants to be, I can't help feeling that it breaks the Goofy Meter a few times too many for its own good. Much of that has to do with the characterization of Juve, who starts out as an incompetent boob and only becomes more of a cartoon from there. He's also the character who's given all the fourth wall-breaking lines, like when he jumps onto the train and says, "Never thought I'd end this chase on a horse." And when "FIN" comes up, he shouts, "No, it's not the end! We'll meet again, Fantômas! You won't get away next time!" Sure, the first two parts of that were true (Fantômas Strikes Back came along the very next year, in fact), but Fantômas is the kind of criminal who always gets away.
