Cinemecca Animated: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

By Terry Cleveland

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a criminally overlooked film from the early nineties that is as good as the current set of Christopher Nolan films that have been dominating the box office for the past few years. I remember watching this film as a kid until I literally wore out the VHS copy that I owned. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had lost none of the magic that I remember as a child.

The film starts out with a group of gangsters meeting to discuss business in a typically gangster fashion. Batman then breaks in and dispenses some serious ass kicking on all of the mob types. One of them escapes and runs away to the parking garage and comes across another solemn caped vigilante (the Phantasm) who tells him that he is the angel of death. After some death defying maneuvers the mobster ends up driving out the window and plummets to his death. (And that’s just the first five minutes.)  The rest of the plot unfolds with liberal flashbacks from Batman’s memory of a lost love, some political corruption, and a series of grisly murders.

This film really sets itself apart from animated kids films as well as other Batman films. The maturity of the story coupled with a twist ending that would give M. Night Shymalan a run for his money make every part of the film an engrossing experience. The voice acting is also superb especially with Mark Hamill reprising his role as the Joker from the animated series of the same era (with Kevin Conroy, of course, returning as the Batman). The film does a great job of portraying the tortured soul of the Bruce Wayne/ Batman persona. There is an especially poignant scene of a young Bruce breaking down into tears in front of the graves of his parents and asking them for forgiveness that actually moved me in a way that few animated films have ever accomplished.

If there was to be any part of the film that I would complain about it would be the painfully short run-time which clocks in at an agonizingly short eighty minutes. But overall there are few Batman features, with the exception of the Christopher Nolan ones, that have ever been even half as good as this film. If you like Batman or animation you can’t really go wrong with this one.

5 out of 5 Stars

© Terry Cleveland, 2011