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The body of a woman is found at a doctor's place, so horribly mutilated
that positive identification is impossible, but documents found in her
clothes suggest she's Lady Beltham (Renée Carl), lover of the escaped
murderer Gurn ... and that alarms inspector Juve (Edmund Breon) quite a
bit, because according to his deductions, Gurn is indeed none other than
Fantomas (René Navarre). But instead of relying on tiresome
investigations that lead to nowhere, Juve and his friend, the journalist
Fandor (Georges Melchior) decide to shadow above mentioned doctor - but
the doctor gives them the slip and turns out to have been Fantomas, who
has long since assumed another identity. But Fandor trails a girl Fantomas
posing as the doctor had dealings with, Joséphine, who apparently has an
affair with a rich winedealer - who is robbed of all his money in a train
Joséphine has lured him into, and then his wagon was wrecked to obscure
the trails. Fandor was on the train as well, but did manage to get off
just in time. Still, believing Fandor has died in the crash, Fantomas
poses as him to lure Juve into a trap ... which almost succeeds, if it
wasn't for the real Fandor showing up in time. Eventually, Juve and
Fandor take a page out of Fantomas' book and put on a disguise to check
out the mansion of Lady Beltham that's presently for sale ... and discover
that it's actually in use. You see, Fantomas has never actually killed
Lady Beltham, she has been hiding in a monastery, but now he has tracked
her down and wants to make her his slave again for further crimes, using
her mansion as their meeting place. But Juve and Fandor witness one such
meeting. With that as evidence, they return with a legion of policemen to
arrest Fantomas ... but he manages to give them the slip and blow up the
castle ... This second of five films in Louis Feuillade's Fantomas-series
is another masterpiece in early pulp filmmaking, as Feuillade gets the
most of the then limited filmmaking techniques, moves things along at a
steady pace, with all the action and suspense you would expect from a film
like this, plus many a pulp mainstay accompanied by plottwists that might
demand quite some suspension of disbelief but make perfect sense within
the story. Now of course, the film is over 100 years old, but that said,
in its approach at least it appears to be fresh as ever.
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