Director Simon Wincer
Starring Billy Zane, Kristy Swanson, Treat Williams
Rated PG
Score 3/6

The Phantom, descendent of a line of African superheroes, travels to New York City to thwart a wealthy criminal genius from obtaining three magic skulls which would give him the secret to ultimate power.

For those of you who might be interested the first appearance of The Phantom in a comic strip happened in February of 1936. Okay, another ‘Comic Book’ movie from the 90’s and the first movie starring Billy Zane, the last movie I have reviewed Starring Zane was Blue World Order. Even though The Phantom wasn’t very well received at the box office, its still an okay movie to watch. I’d say that The Phantom is an epic movie, in a Saturday morning kind of way. With this Saturday morning feel it should be noted that the action sequences have Xena or Hercules feel to them which is only to be expected considering the movie’s PG rating.

Both Billy Zane and Treat Williams who were cast as The Phantom/Kit Walker and Xander Drax both have the suaveness that you would expect from a pulp adventure hero and villain and Kristy Swanson gave a great performance as Diana Palmer. James Remar is always a joy to watch on screen, I just love listening to the man talk. The gangster Charlie Zephro (portrayed by David Proval) has a death that would easily be on my list of top 5 funniest deaths of a villain.

The biggest problem that I have with The Phantom was its ending and the climatic fight between The Phantom and Drax, I got the impression that the filmmakers had a specific run time that they had to hit and they had to get something up on to the screen. The effects that were used for the skulls did not age well and I got the impression laser effects used were bad even by 90’s standards. The stupidest thing about the ending was the realisation about the fourth skull came out of nowhere and no track was laid by the filmmakers for the audience or the characters to be able to arrive at the realization.