GREAT DETECTIVES & PEOPLE OF MYSTERY #8

FANTOMAS

Fantomas was a criminal genius, ruthless and particularly elusive.  He was a merciless criminal who got away with his evil deeds by impersonating pretty much anyone (like every fictional detective or villain of this era, he was a master of disguise).  But where Raffles and Lupin drew the line at murder Fantomas had no such qualms.  He was a sociopath who enjoyed killing in a sadistic fashion.  Totally ruthless, he showed no mercy and was loyal to no one, not even his own children.  He was less a Gothic novel villain and more a modern day serial killer.

The biography of Fantomas is vague.  He might be of British and/or French ancestry and was born in 1867.  In 1892 he called himself Archduke Juan North and lived in the German territory of Hesse-Weimar.  He fathered a child, Vladimir, with an unidentified noble woman, and for reasons not revealed was arrested and sent to prison.  But three years later in 1895 he was in India, in 1897 the United States and Mexico.  In 1899 he fought in the Second Boer War in South Africa under the name of Gurn.  He fought in the Transvaal as an artillery sergeant and became the aide-de-camp of Lord Edward Beltham and fell in love with his younger wife Lady Maud Beltham.  Around 1900 they all returned to Europe where Gurn and Lady Beltham had a love nest in Paris, and where they were surprised by Lord Beltham.  He was about to shoot his wife when Gurn hit him with a hammer and then strangled him.  After this Fantomas began his criminal career and Inspector Juve of the French police was obsessed with the capture of Fantomas.  Juve captures Gurn, makes the case that Gurn and Fantomas are one and the same, but the evidence is too circumstantial.  Gurn is to be executed for the death of Lord Beltham.  On the eve of his execution Gurn escapes and covers his absence with another man who is guillotined in his place.  Juve is aided by newspaper reporter Jerome Fandor, who might actually be Fantomas' son.  And there is Fantomas' daughter Helene who is in love with Fandor, despite the fact that they may or may not be brother and sister.  Lady Beltham remains torn between her passion for the villain and her horror at his criminal schemes.  She eventually commits suicide in 1910.

Throughout the novels Fantomas is referred to as the Emperor of Crime, the Genius of Evil, and the Lord of Terror.  He carries out the most appalling crimes like substituting sulfuric acid in perfume dispensers at a Parisian department store, releasing plague-infested rats on an ocean liner, or forcing a victim to witness his own execution by placing him face-up in a guillotine.  He is the leader of a vast army of apaches (street thugs), and his spies and henchmen are everywhere spreading seeds of chaos and terror.  A rebellious henchman is hung inside a huge bell to become a human clapper, smashed side to side and raining blood and jewels to the street below.  He derails a passenger train and leaves scores of innocent passengers dead.  He makes a pair of gloves from the hands of a dead man in order to leave his fingerprints at the scene of a crime.  In one story a broken wall begins spewing blood from the many victims hidden within it.  Fantomas kills indiscriminately and ritualistically, and the graphic details of these violent scenes are described by the authors.

Popular French novelists Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre were responsible for the creation of Fantomas.  Allain (1885-1969) was the son of a Parisian bourgeois family who studied law before becoming a journalist.  He became an assistant to Souvestre (1874-1914) who was a lawyer, journalist, and businessman.  Souvestre owned a garage in Liverpool in 1898 and a second one in Paris in 1905.  He was a car and racing enthusiast who organized motor races.  The two men collaborated on their first novel in 1909.  They embarked upon the Fantomas series in February 1911 at the request of publisher Anthelme Fayard who wanted to create a new monthly pulp magazine.  The success was immediate and lasting as monthly sales approached 5 million copies!  Allain and Souvestre wrote 32 novels over the next two years.  Gaumont, the French film studio, paid them 6000 francs for the film rights to their character and worked in harmonious collaboration with the authors who were often present during filming.  Souvestre died in February 1914 of influenza and Allain married Souvestre's girlfriend in 1926.  Allain continued the Fantomas franchise on his own, writing another 11 novels from 1925-1963.

FILMS

Director Louis Feuillade was in charge of Gaumont Studios' entire output and personally directed all of the early films.  "Fantomas" was the first in 1913, followed by four more through 1914 - "Juve contre Fantomas", "La Mort qui tue", "Fantomas contre Fantomas", and "Le Faux magistrat".  The same cast was used in all five films - Rene Navarre as Fantomas, Breon as Inspector Juve, and Renee Carl as Lady Beltham, with Jane Faber and Georges Melchior in supporting roles.  The first film begins with Fantomas seducing Lady Beltham and murdering her husband.  In the end he manages to escape from the guillotine by sending someone else in his place.  The next films extend the chase between the ever-changing Fantomas and his implacable enemy Inspector Juve.

In 1920 a 20-chapter serial was made in the U.S. directed by Edward Sedgwick and starring Edward Roseman as Fantomas.  It bore little resemblance to the French stories.  John Willard played Detective Fred Dixon on the trail of Fantomas.

Hungarian expatriate Paul Fejos made a 1932 film starring Jean Galland with Thomy Bourdelle as Juve and Tania Fedor as Lady Beltham.  Jean Sacha made a 1946 film with Marcel Harrand in the title role and Alexandre Rignault as Juve.  And Robert Vernay did a 1949 film with Maurice Teynac as Fantomas and Rignault again as Juve.

In 1964 a new series was launched in France by director Andre Hunebelle starring Jean Marais as the evil villain and comic Louis de Funes as Juve.  This was followed by "Fantomas se dechaine" in 1965 and "Fantomas contre Scotland Yard" in 1967, all featuring the same cast.

TELEVISION

A Fantomas series of four 90-minute episodes was produced in 1980 with Helmet Berger as Fantomas and Gayle Hunnicutt as Lady Beltham.  The episodes were directed by Claude Chabrol and Juan Luis Bunuel.

COMICS

In France a weekly color comic written by Allain and drawn by Santini was published in 1941 but was interrupted because of censorship (German occupation).  A daily comic strip drawn by Pierre Tabary ran in newspapers from November 1957 to March 1958 resulting in 192 strips.  17 comic books were produced 1962-1963 that adapted the first five novels by Allain and Souvestre.  Another weekly color page in 1969 was written by Agnes Guilloteau and drawn by Jacques Taillefer and published in Jours de France.  A series of graphic novels written by L. Dellisse and drawn by Claude Laverdure were published 1990-1995.

In Mexico in the 1960s the comic book "Fantomas, the Elegant Menace" became popular throughout Latin America.  But the villain was rewritten as a masked hero to make the character more attuned to Latin American readers who craved justice avengers in their fiction as well as their national politics.

In America, Fantomas was a character in Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"