ZORRO AND THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1963)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


This is one of the many mediocre swashbucklers churned out in Europe during the fifties and sixties, and I review it here only because I wondered whether or not the presence of a faux "Zorro" in the film caused it to qualify as a film with an uncanny phenomenality.

Now, it's not an objection that the film takes Zorro, a character who originally appeared in the early 19th century, and plops him down in 16th-century France, so that he can mix and mingle with the Three Musketeers and their milieu. However, the naturalistic mythology of the Musketeers, as essayed by the filmmakers, overwhelms any uncanny propensities.

Former Tarzan Gordon Scott, the only recognizable name in the cast, appears in France at the time of a war with Spain, but there's not much history here: just the usual conflicts of the Musketeers and their enemy Richelieu. There's no real explanation of why Scott's character-- who isn't Don Diego de la Vega-- has chosen to wear a black mask and black attire in order to rob evil nobles, and for that matter the hero barely appears in his customary regalia except in one scene. It's true that there's a quick reference to Zorro's penchant for carving his initial in the skin of certain opponents, but this is no more than a casual toss-off before the film returns to more Musketeer hijinks.

I stated in this review of two SHADOW films from the late thirties that I didn't necessarily consider the second film to be uncanny simply because the main hero was vaguely associated with the mythos of the Shadow. In the case of that second film, 1938's INTERNATIONAL CRIME, the hero never dresses up in Shadow-regalia, and so it's easier to deem it as purely naturalistic, like a dozen other detective films of its type. In the case of ZORRO VS. THE THREE MUSKETEERS, we have a hero who does dress up like Zorro, albeit very briefly. Yet his costumed persona is seen so briefly that the impact is utterly nugatory, and so Scott's character might as well be a mundane masked bandit.

Aside from this classificatory conundrum, the film is largely devoid of entertainment value, even if one happens to like this sort of cheap Euro-adventures.