Fantômas

Discovered via Mike Patton's band of the same name, I quickly became obsessed with the world of Fantômas, the fantastic French super-villain, a character featured in the pulp crime novels written by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain in the early 20th century. A completely evil and malicious villain with no real redeeming qualities, the mythology is nonetheless fascinating. Closely related to that other great French contribution to the 20th century, The Grand Guignol Theater, especially in its use of poison, horrible torture, acid and cruelty, Fantômas is likewise difficult to study in the USA as little of the literature is translated and the films aren't available in NTSC format.

The authors were pulp-fiction hacks, cranking out 32 novels in just under three years (1911-1913). Even so, they managed to capture the imaginations of the French - their books were immensely popular with the working class, the intellectuals, high society, and artists. The Fantômas phenomenon was hugely influential on the Surrealists and I was surprised how many well known paintings are connected to the master criminal. "The Menaced Assassin" by Rene Magritte is based on an image from one of the Feuillade Fantômas movies for example.

In 1914, Louis Feuillade filmed a Fantômas serial, which to this day is considered not only germane in the development of the adventure film but the definitive version of Fantômas. More about him and his films are on this page.

The best source of information on Fantômas on the web is The Fantômas Website. That's where I copped all of these images. They've got all 32 book's covers and it's worth browsing them. Pretty ghoulish.

Only three of the books are available into English. Fantômas (1911, translation 1926), pretty clearly sets the mold for the next 31 books. An elderly Marquise is mysteriously and brutally murdered in her bedroom in a remote summer home with a house full of guests. And as it happens, they had been discussing the mysterious criminal Fantômas after dinner the very evening she was murdered. Enter Inspector Juve, master of disguise and doggedly on the heels of Fantômas. Hanging around is young Charles Rambert, suspected of murder, aid to Juve and possibly Fantômas' son. Or maybe Fantômas himself. Or maybe Juve is Fantômas. And so on for 300 pages.

The second available book is also the second of the series, The Silent Executioner (1911, translated 1926). Recently the seventh book of the series, The Daughter of Fantômas (1911, adapted 2006) was released with the promise of more to come. Formulaic to be sure, but great fun to read and full of bizarre twists and turns.

Also worth noting are two terrific, Fantômas influenced works - THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE, Fritz Lang's 1931 film, and the Matt Wagner's comic book character Grendel, especially the earlier Hunter Rose stories collected in DEVIL BY THE DEED. I'd argue that Patricia Hightower's Ripley and V IS FOR VENDETA, the Alan Moore/David Lloyd comic book, also cast Fantômas-esque shadows.

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