The Ghost Who Walks...my ass.

Watching random bits of TV on the weekend...it's the first time K and I could actually watch Channels 7, 9 and 10 in months...we apparently didn't miss much. Flicking over from channel to channel I caught the movie version of The Phantom, the adventure comic strip created by Lee Falk, starring Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and that guy who was with Samantha for a period of time in Sex and the City in an Indiana Jones hat. What a piece of crap that was. My God. I watched various parts of it and then kept flicking back to Easter Parade with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, which turned out to be miles ahead of the interesting accident that was The Phantom.

Sure, it's a daunting task taking a beloved comic strip that was close to 50-60 years old at the time the movie was made...but to come up with such a stinker. It came off as so tongue in cheek, I just didn't get it. Why do the movie from this angle? Why make the character played by Treat Williams so hammy...the action and fighting so fake...it just seemed so bland and drab. Now I admit that I am a fan of The Phantom, and considered the idea of transforming the 2D into a reality an impossible task (consider that when The Phantom is Kit, you still never really see his eyes) and making the Ghost Who Walks suddenly a flesh and blood creature who you knew was flesh and blood kind of takes the thrill away from it all...The Phantom has survived generations on legend, the Tom-Toms, and just pure brilliance...I just couldn't see how they could make a character that is so unattainable attainable. And clearly they didn't. Not that I didn't like Billy Zane, with a better director and script he would in essence be a very good Phantom...but in these surroundings, I just felt awkward and sorry for the whole venture.

Now The Shadow...that's a different thing entirely. I love that film. Not love as in worship. But love as in it's a great piece of fun, that has the right mix of what I think The Phantom was going for. True The Shadow died at the Box Office but it had Alec Baldwin as a perfect Lamont Cranston and John Lone formerly of The Last Emperor and M. Butterfly doing his version of villany. Watching it, you find yourself enjoying it, perhaps against your own better judgement, but it succeeds at what it's trying to accomplish. It's evocative, cheesy, slightly campy, self-referential...and The Shadow has the similar theme of The Phantom that would make it unfilmable...the Shadow has the ability to cloud men's minds and to know what evil lurks in the hearts of men...it's that unattainable thing again, it's something that can't really be captured on film...yet The Shadow does a good job at it...or maybe I'm just pissed that I saw Billy Zane's eyes all the time...I expected these pupil-less white eyes behind the black mask and under the shadow of Kit's fedora...but to no avail.

All this talk makes me wish they had made that film version of Mandrake the Magician that was purportedly to star Kevin Kline, I think that would have trumped these two merely on the star power of the lead. Ah well. We'll have to make do with Jonathon Rhys Meyers who I don't like based purely on his performance in Match Point...slimy worm that he is. Plus, he's no Kevin Kline.

The Ghost Who Walks Can Never Die; Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow Knows! and a Man in a Top Hat who wears a Cape...a Cape I tell you...chilling.