Notes from Friends of Fantômas

David Cote writes: Many years ago, I recall having seen (and been fascinated by) an English-language Fantômas film, which caught my youthful imagination. This had to have been at least 25 years ago. Was there such a film?

One possibility is that you saw a dubbed version of one of the French Fantômas films from the 1960s, starring Jean Marais. See The Fantômas Films for more information.

Without a doubt one of these is what I saw, because that is the timeframe during which I would have seen it. Also I know that I saw it on television, and am sure it was dubbed. Also, are the books available in English?

Several of the Fantômas books have come back into print in English; see the Links and Resources page for details.

Several of the original translations from the 1910s and early 1920s are available through Google Books, including A Royal Prisoner, A Nest of Spies.

I would be willing to bet that the books are in the public domain and actually could be published on the website, as many public domain texts of similar vintage are.

Almost certainly the original translations (published more than 75 years ago) are public domain. Thanks for the suggestion about posting the novels themselves on the site. Robin and I have already talked about it, but that project will have to be put off until we have sufficient free time to scan them (a huge job). But we probably will start posting the novels at some point in the future.

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