One of the sure signs of desperation to any genre is when it begins to match up various popular figures to excuse one further trip to the well and, hopefully, double the intake at the box-office; where the "Peplum" was concerned, however, this ran hand in hand with pitting its various heroes in wildly unlikely surroundings (such as ZORRO CONTRO MACISTE from the same year)! To be fair to the film under review, the settings in which the titular characters operated were not that outrageously removed from one another – even if Zorro actually emanated from Los Angeles rather than Spain and he supposedly arrived onto the scene a couple of centuries after The Four {sic} Musketeers! For the record, this was the fifth effort I have watched during the current Epic Easter marathon to feature D'Artagnan et al (with an obscure 1966 British TV series, and perhaps even the 2001 THE MUSKETEER, still to be checked out!) but the only one that will be included with respect to Zorro – though I have at least eight other titles handy related to his exploits!! The main reason for this is that, judging by the contemporaneous 'vehicles' of his under my belt, they constitute among the most indifferent "Euro-Cult" ventures that emerged during the trend's fairly long tenure!
Anyway, what we have here is the Musketeers engaged in the war between the two countries – while Zorro (or, rather, his dandyish alter ego) is accused of being the traitor who sold his side to the enemy
naturally by the rival for the hand of the girl (being held hostage by the French) he loves and who, needless to say, is the true guilty party! Indeed, when we first meet the quartet, they are to meet with the villain towards this end – but it is the Spaniard (played by beefcake Gordon Scott) who turns up under this guise! Cue a number of shifting allegiances, as the Musketeers first antagonize then aid Zorro (who, by the way, only dons his traditional costume twice throughout!), after they discover that he has no sympathy for their old enemy Cardinal Richelieu (who is left strapped to a chair by Scott!). Eventually, they go to Madrid to retrieve the girl Zorro has returned safely home because only then will they be pardoned by the King over the affront done to Richelieu
but, in the meantime, their army has emerged victorious in the conflict and Scott sentenced to death for high treason – so, they decide to (literally) save his neck.
While normally, it is D'Artagnan and Athos who get the lion's share of attention, here they are the most anonymous since both were not even deigned of star presences; on the other hand, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart is Aramis and the ubiquitous Livio Lorenzon Porthos! Given its pedigree, the film does not take itself too seriously – with the best joke involving the Musketeers getting the executioners drunk on the eve of Scott's proposed demise but being themselves overcome by wine and almost missing their appointment in the public square! On the other hand, we get a quartet of comic-relief servants – one of whom is tongue-tied and even allotted a Sicilian accent redolent of lowbrow farces! – for the Musketeers (to go along with Zorro's own bungling sidekick) who turn up out of nowhere at one point but then just keep resurfacing for no very good reason!! Apart from being attractively set against a backdrop of large fountains in a palace garden, the climax reverses the typical formula of having a number of opponents to the lone protagonist by pitting the weak villain against our five heroes all at once! A measure of the carelessness involved, however, sees Aramis romance the female lead's lady-in-waiting throughout and then leave at the end of the picture without so much as a backwards glance! Given the below average results obtained here by director Capuano, I am somewhat wary now of the fact that I have at least four other similar efforts of his in my unwatched collection
