Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Guy HamiltonRelease Date(s)
1985 (April 14, 2026)Studio(s)
Dick Clark Productions/Orion Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: B
- Audio Grade: B-
- Extras Grade: B
Review
FOR THOSE WHO CAME IN LATE...
While the short-lived superhero boom that followed the release of Tim Burton’s 1989 blockbuster Batman was still in tenuous motion by the middle of the next decade, Lee Falk’s 1936 creation The Phantom was always going to be a bit too anachronistic for that era. It was really the stuff of serials, and to be fair, it had already been adapted into a 15-part serial all the way back in 1943. It just wasn’t the kind of thing that audiences wanted in the post-Batman moviegoing environment. Disney had fizzled when they took a shot at Dave Stevens’ retro comic The Rocketeer in 1991, and Universal took an even bigger bath in 1994 when they tried to revive the pulp hero The Shadow. The Phantom had been in development at Paramount at the same time, with Joe Dante and writer Jeffrey Boam working on a script that would have treated the character satirically, if not openly parodically. While it’s fun to imagine what Dante would have done with the material, that’s arguably the wrong approach for an earnestly old-fashioned character like the Phantom, and in any event, it simply wasn’t to be.
That wasn’t the end of the project, however (or the Boam script, for that matter). Enter Simon Wincer, the Australian director who had already displayed a deft touch on adventures like Quigley Down Under and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and he also veered into comic book territory with the underrated Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. That, plus the man sure as hell knew how to handle horses after films like Phar Lap, The Lighthorsemen, The Lonesome Dove, and yes, Quigley Down Under, so Hero was in damned good hands. Wincer understood that whimsy works best when there isn’t any cynicism involved, and that a tongue-in-cheek approach doesn’t have to involve open mockery. There’s absolutely nothing cynical in Lee Falk’s conception of the Phantom, which is one reason why he suits the earnestness of classic serials much better than the sardonic nature of postmodernism. Wincer grabbed that earnest bull by the horns and never let go.
Wincer makes the serialized nature of his version of The Phantom abundantly clear from the opening sequence, with an adventure through the jungle featuring mercenary grave robbers, ancient artifacts, fedoras, a vintage truck, and a rickety suspension bridge (with the latter two elements ending up combined in a way that recalls William Friedkin’s Sorcerer). All of that is an obvious nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark, but there’s a key difference: while that film was also inspired by classic serials, it never really seems like one, at least from a tonal perspective. The Phantom doesn’t just look and sound like an old serial; it actually feels like one, with a sense of common decency that’s always been lacking in the Indiana Jones films. The Phantom is an inherently decent character, which isn’t something that can be said about Henry Walton Jones, Jr.—the line between his own mercenary endeavors and those of the villains is tenuous at best, if not openly blurred. That’s not to say that The Phantom is a better film than Raiders of the Lost Ark; far from it. It’s just that it lacks the postmodern cynicism that has always been part and parcel of the Indiana Jones franchise.
The rest of the story for The Phantom is also the stuff of classic serials, with ancient mystical skulls that hold the key to unlocking unimaginable power (sorry, George, The Phantom beat you to the punch on that score); a wealthy industrialist (Treat Williams) who will do anything to gain that power; an aviatrix (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who does his bidding, but isn’t immune to the charms of the Phantom; an even less scrupulous minion who takes care of things on the ground (James Remar); an ancient secret society, the Sengh Brotherhood; and the underground lair where the Sengh leader (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) lurks. Williams has a field day as the cheerfully amoral Xander Drax, and the rest of the cast is picture-perfect down to the smallest role, with various supporting characters filled out by familiar faces like Patrick McGoohan, Samantha Eggar, Bill Smitrovich, David Proval, Al Ruscio, John Tenney, and John Capodice. Still, none of that would have mattered if Wincer hadn’t found the perfect Phantom in the form of Billy Zane (although to be fair, Zane was the one actor who had already been cast when Wincer took over the project).
Billy Zane was born to play the Phantom, but make no mistake: he also did his homework, both physically and mentally. He eschewed the foam rubber muscle suits that were de rigueur after Batman, spending extra time at the gym in order to pack on muscle of his own. Yet perhaps counterintuitively, the fact that those real muscles are clearly visible under a thin layer of spandex helps to make the character seem more vulnerable. The Phantom may be a superhero, but he’s a very human one—this Ghost Who Walks is no ghost at all, but rather the 21st in a long lineage of all-too mortal Phantoms. Zane is equally good as the Phantom’s current alter ego Kit Walker, displaying the perfect combination of faux befuddlement with furtive observational skills. Yet it’s what he does while wearing the mask that’s so crucial to capturing the right tone for The Phantom. Zane studied the comics (and, one suspects, the 1943 serial) in order to devise the ideal physicality for the Phantom, performing with his entire body in theatrical fashion, almost like a character in a silent film. He intuitively grasped the inherent earnestness of the character, and didn’t rely on the dialogue to convey it—he lived it. Billy Zane is the Phantom.
Yet every good hero needs a great heroine at his side, and Wincer scored in that regard by casting Kristy Swanson as Kit Walker’s love interest Diana Palmer. Swanson delivered on the unfulfilled promise of previous female characters like Marion Ravenwood and Princess Leia, both of whom started out as tough, independent heroines, but who ended up having to be rescued while wearing slinky dresses and metal bikinis. Oh, the Phantom does end up rescuing Diana, twice, but he quickly realizes that she can handle herself, and more importantly, he stands back and lets her do it. He never once drags her by the hand, and when he swings over on rope to rescue her the second time, he just hands her the rope and trusts her to make her own escape. The first time, she had sarcastically told him “Fine, go ahead, it’s your rescue,” but this time, he took the lesson to heart.
Put all of that together, and The Phantom is the right kind of adaptation of Lee Falk’s comic, with the right tone, the right director, and the right cast (and we haven’t even mentioned yet that it also has the right kind of score by David Newman). So, what went wrong in 1996 when the film bombed even harder than The Rocketeer and The Shadow had? Well, to begin with, the Batman superhero boom was already over at that point, so it was definitely the wrong time. Worse, audiences and critics alike didn’t know what to make of it. The Tarantino indie boom was already in full swing by 1996, so viewers who were craving postmodern irony weren’t in the mood for an earnestly whimsical film about an earnestly decent superhero. As a result, The Phantom never stood a chance at the box office.
Joe Dante offered his own post-mortem to Den of Geek in 2011, telling them that after he left the project, “It was put back into production... only nobody seemed to notice it was written to be funny, so it was—disastrously—played straight.” Yet while Dante may have been right about what audiences wanted in 1996, his analysis proves that he was dead wrong about the character. Lee Falk’s Phantom didn’t need Police Squad style parody; it needed to be taken seriously, even when it was being humorous. Oh, The Phantom is indeed amusing, but contrary to what Dante may have believed, that’s quite intentional. It’s just that the humor is droll and witty, not farcical. Instead of mockery, it offers something far more satisfying: pure joy. You watch The Phantom with a smile on your face, delighting in the way that it re-creates the earnest decency of classic serials—which is exactly what Lee Falk had in mind. Audiences in 1996 may have been baffled by it, but The Phantom has stood the test of time as a superhero classic. Sit back, let go of your cynicism, and enjoy it for what it was always intended to be: good clean fun.
Cinematographer Andrew Laszlo shot Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins on 35mm film using spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version is based on 4K scans of the original camera negative, cleaned up and digitally remastered. Well, most of it was scanned from the negative, anyway: there are shots throughout the film that appear to have been scanned from dupe elements instead. That’s obvious during any optically printed sequences like the opening titles, but there are other random shots sprinkled here and there with fine black scratches and/or speckling, while the negative footage has white blemishes instead. To be perfectly clear, any such damage marks are minimal and only visible if you go looking for them, but the difference definitely points to different source elements. Otherwise, detail levels, colors, and contrast are all generally good, but there are some elevated black levels during the opening scenes that fortunately improve as the film goes along. Overall, it’s a step up from Kino Lorber’s previous Blu-ray version, although it falls a bit short of their new 4K.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. Remo Williams was released in Dolby Stereo, and while the 5.1 track seems to mostly be a discrete encoding of the original four matrix-encoded channels, it definitely has some bass sweetening added for the LFE track. It’s immediately noticeable with the synthesized kick drum in Craig Safan’s opening title theme, and it really stands out during the bombardment in the film’s climax. Overall, the 5.1 is preferable due to deeper bass and better channel separation, but both tracks do suffer from having the top end rolled off, and they sometimes sound a little muffled.
Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray release of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins comes with a slipcover that duplicates the theatrical poster artwork on the insert. The following extras are included:
- Commentary by Larry Spiegel and Judy Goldstein
- Commentary by Brandon Streussnig
- Lessons in Popcorn Villainy (HD – 25:09)
- Created, The Destroyer (HD – 17:09)
- Unarmed and Dangerous (HD – 21:51)
- Secrets of Sinanju (HD – 8:46)
- Balance of Power (HD – 15:05)
- Assassin’s Tune (HD – 13:46)
- Radio Spot (HD – :31)
- Remo Williams Trailer (SD – 2:18)
- UFOria Trailer (HD – :57)
- The Final Option Trailer (SD – 1:47)
- The Phantom Trailer (SD – 1:23)
- Hudson Hawk Trailer (HD – 2:05)
Kino Lorber has added two new extras for this remaster. The first is a commentary with film journalist Brandon Streussnig, who calls Remo Williams one of the most ill-advised and ill-fated attempts at a star making franchise, in all of its racist glory. That sets the tone for the entire commentary, with him opening up by praising Fred Ward as an actor but saying that he was completely miscast in the film, and then Streussnig lights into Guy Hamilton for his “leaden” direction. Maybe he has more positive things to say as the commentary goes on, but that’s the point at which I shut it off. Commentaries certainly don’t have to be hagiographies, but no one who shells out the money for physical media wants to hear about how terrible that their taste is.
On the upside, Kino also added a new interview with Patrick Kilpatrick, who says that he was happy as a clam to do Remo Williams, and has nothing but praise for Hamilton, Fred Ward, and the rest of the cast. (He’s okay with the Joel Grey playing Chiun, too.) He feels that the best movies lead you to your better angels, and everyone involved with Remo Williams led him to his.
The rest of the extras are archival, starting with a commentary featuring producers Larry Spiegel and Judy Goldstein that was recorded for the 2014 Region B Blu-ray from Arrow in the U.K. (It’s also been included on various releases in the U.S.) They cover the making of the film from the writing to the casting and the direction, and tell plenty of stories about the globe-trotting production (a substantial amount of it was shot in Mexico). And yes, they address the casting of Joel Grey, too, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they defend it.
The rest of the extras were originally produced by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures for the 2016 Blu-ray from Twilight Time. Created, The Destroyer focuses on the book series, with Devin Murphy (son of Warren) and film historian Chris Poggiali discussing the nature of the series and which parts of it were utilized in Remo Williams (as well as which ones weren’t). Unarmed and Dangerous is an interview with Spiegel and Goldstein, who offer another recap of how the project was put together and more stories about making the film. Secrets of Shinaju is an interview with Joel Grey, who gives his thoughts about the role and having to work under piles of makeup. Balance of Power brings in production designer Jackson De Govia to address the challenges of blocking out what they could shoot on the real Statue of Liberty and what had to be shot on the mockup that they built in Mexico. He also covers the rest of the locations and his frustration with having to do things on the cheap. Finally, Assassin’s Tune is an interview with Craig Safan, who says that the trick with Remo Williams was to satisfy the Eighties requirement of a John Williams-style orchestral score while still doing something different. He ended up mixing research on Korean music and instrumentation with synthesizer work.
The most significant omissions here are the rest of the extras from Arrow’s 2014 Blu-ray, which included different interviews with Grey and Safan, as well as an interview with makeup effects artist Carl Fullerton. It also included the documentary Remo, Rambo, Reagan and Reds: The Eighties Action Movie Explosion. (Both the Arrow and Twilight Time discs also included an isolated music and effects track.) But this is certainly the broadest collection of extras to date, so if you’re a Remo Williams fan who hasn’t yet made the leap to 4K, Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray version is your best bet.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).