Before there was Batman or Superman, before Captain America or The Hulk, there was The Phantom – the purple-clad righter of wrongs who, along with his white horse, Hero, and his grey wolf, Devil, would fight injustice wherever he found it, no matter how far the never-ending battle against bad guys and their wicked deeds would take him.
The Phantom was created by writer-cartoonist Lee Falk in 1936, just two years after Falk’s Mandrake the Magician proved to be such a huge comic-strip success. But the Phantom was a new kind of character – a superhero without superpowers whose sole purpose in life was eliminating the darkness and cruelty that surrounded the world in those pre-World War II years.
According to the back story, the tale of The Phantom began almost 400 years earlier with a small boy at sea, observing the grisly murder of his father by a band of pirates called the Sengh Brotherhood.
When the boy made it ashore days later near the Bengalla Jungle, he made a solemn vow to fight the kind of senseless evil that had taken his father.
Thus, the first Phantom was born, and the oath – and the purple tights – were passed from father to son for 20 generations.
Of course, since the Phantom was always masked, nobody knew he wasn’t the same man for those 400 years, which is why the jungle natives thought him immortal and called him “The Ghost Who Walks”.
The Phantom finally made it to the big screen in 1996.
As the film begins, it is the late 1930s, and the search is on for the fabled Skulls of Touganda. Legend has it that if the three skulls – one of silver, one of gold, and one of jade – are ever put together, they will create an energy source that will give the owner mastery over the entire planet.
The silver skull is located in the Bengalla jungle, the jade skull is in the Museum of World History in New York, and the gold skull is located in the Devil’s Vortex . . .
In hot pursuit are the always-evil Pirates of the Sengh Brotherhood and just-as-evil New York businessman Xander Drax (Treat Williams) – a cross between Howard Hughes and Adolf Hitler – who blinds a librarian by hiding spring-loaded needles in a microscope!
But when their hunt for the skulls takes the bad guys to the dark and mysterious Bengalla Jungle, they run headlong into The Phantom.
Before you can say “The Oath of the Skull,” The Phantom is forced to leave his Skull Throne in the Skull Cave and travel to New York, where he immediately assumes his secret identity as the aristocratic Kit Walker.
Kit is frequently aided by ethereal appearances from his late father (Patrick McGoohan) and enjoys the advances of socialite Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson), who cares more for adventure than for formal dinner parties. But just as she and Kit begin to get juicy together, Drax and his goons kidnap and use her for Phantom bait.
Unfortunately, the film essentially amounts to good actors on beautiful sets with not much to do. The action set pieces seem stagy and contrived (it cribs ruthlessly from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and the plot is pedestrian and derivative.
The Phantom/Kit Walker
Billy Zane Diana Palmer
Kristy Swanson Xander Drax
Treat Williams Sala
Catherine Zeta-Jones Quill
James Remar The Great Kabai Sengh
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Uncle Dave Palmer
Bill Smitrovich Morgan
Casey Siemaszko Charlie Zephro
David Proval Ray Zephro
Joseph Ragno Lily Palmer
Samantha Eggar Jimmy Wells
Jon Tenney Phantom’s Dad
Patrick McGoohan Capt. Philip Horton
Robert Coleby Police Commissioner Farley
Al Ruscio Mayor Krebs
Leon Russom Falkmoore the Butler
Bernard Kates Al the Cabby
John Capodice Dr Fleming
Alan Zitner Cpl. Weeks
Dane Carson Zak
Chatpong ‘Jim’ Petchlor Breen
Dane Farwell Styles
Jared Chandler Guran
Radmar Agana Jao Boy Phantom
Austin Peters Shaman
Victor Madrona
According to the back story, the tale of The Phantom began almost 400 years earlier with a small boy at sea, observing the grisly murder of his father by a band of pirates called the Sengh Brotherhood.
In hot pursuit are the always-evil Pirates of the Sengh Brotherhood and just-as-evil New York businessman Xander Drax (Treat Williams) – a cross between Howard Hughes and Adolf Hitler – who blinds a librarian by hiding spring-loaded needles in a microscope!
