After the tremendous popular success of the Fantômas novels, both of the major French film studios — Pathé and Gaumont — vied for the rights to produce films based on the series. Gaumont won, and from April 1913 to May 1914 Louis Feuillade directed five Fantômas films which critic David Thomson has described as "the first great movie experience."Criminal mastermind Fantômas, a man of a thousand faces, is unhappy with Fandor, a journalist whose written a fictive interview of him. He kidnaps Fandor, threatens to kill him, but first goes about ruining the journalist's reputation by committing a sensational crime in Fandor's guise. Hot on the trail is police Commissaire Juve, so Fantômas commits a crime looking like him. Soon, our intrepid heroes, Fandor and Juve, with the help of Fandor's girlfriend Hélène, are on the mastermind's trail, but who's in control?
