U.S.A. - Australia | 1996 Directed by Simon Wincer Starring Billy Zane Kristy Swanson Treat Williams Color | 100 Minutes | PG Format: Blu-ray (Region A) Lionsgate Music from the film The Phantom MP3 - 13 MB   THE PHANTOM (1943 Serial)

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		Review by Brian Lindsey Film:6 BD:5

The only superhero with the cojones to wear a bright purple suit in a live-action movie.

Now to be fair, the Phantom has a long and venerable history — Lee Falk's jungle crimefighter was really the first of the modern masked superheroes. Falk may have borrowed from Tarzan here and there but the costumed paladins who followed, chiefly Batman, certainly stole ideas from his "Ghost Who Walks". As scripted by Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), this modestly budgeted 1996 film does a fine job of upholding the Phantom's traditions, presenting one of the smoothest superhero 'origin' tales among the many such pics made in the last two decades. We're introduced to the necessary backstory, then the hero himself, with a minimum of fuss that segues effortlessly into the main plot (which is pure '30s-style pulp hokum)... An evil business tycoon plots to take over the world using the Skulls of Touganda, mystical artifacts said to bestow awesome power upon whomever possesses all three. With his pet wolf Devil at his side our purple-clad crusader sallies forth to stop him, romancing an old college flame along the way.

Unfortunately some of the action set-pieces don't quite deliver — or are just plain ridiculous, such as one in which the Phantom's horse outruns a low-swooping plane! — and the special effects, especially the CGI, list to the cheesy side. Keeping things afloat is the cast, fully embracing the campy spirit of the thing, notably Billy Zane (Dead Calm, Titanic) in the title role. (Only Treat Williams, as chief villain Xander Drax, occasionally goes overboard into outright hamminess.) Since the Phantom costume has no room for padding a la the modern Bat-suit, Zane had to get in tremendous shape to be physically convincing, which he is. He plays the Phantom totally straightfaced, albeit with a wry sense of humor, staying true to the comic strip character in every respect. In one of his last roles, the late Patrick McGoohan (TV classic The Prisoner) appears to be having fun as the ghost of Zane's father, the previous Phantom, popping up unexpectedly to offer sage advice. A young and then-unknown Catherine Zeta Jones provides a splash of eye candy as a femme fatale air pirate; Kristy Swanson (the original vampire-slaying Buffy) brings some spunk to her role as the blander love interest/heroine. Some nice period detail and a grand score by composer David Newman also contribute to the positive side of the ledger, as does the splendid use director Simon Wincer makes of exotic Phang Nga Bay, of Thailand's Phuket Island (Scaramanga's lair in the James Bond film The Man With the Golden Gun).

Unabashedly cornball, The Phantom is a seriously flawed yet still highly entertaining throwback to the juvenile adventure yarns of yore. If you have a fondness for those old cliffhanger serials and/or pulp heroes of the 1930s you'll be on the right wavelength for this. Makes for a great family-friendly double bill with Disney's The Rocketeer (1991).

One of the Paramount catalog titles distributed by Lionsgate, The Phantom arrives on Blu-ray some two years after the standard-def DVD went OOP. It's only a marginal improvement (at best) over the DVD in terms of visual quality, looking not much better than the original release does when screened upscaled on an HD TV. Certain details stand out a bit more — the swirly patterns on the Phantom's costume, for example — but that's about the extent of it. As for sound, the film's audio has been given a 7.1 DTS-HD makeover which to my ears, on my equipment, doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference. The only extra is the theatrical trailer. 2/12/10

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