Cinema of Swords
A Popular Guide to Movies about Knights, Pirates, Samurai, and Vikings (And Barbarians, Musketeers, Gladiators, and Outlaw Heroes)
By Lawrence Ellsworth
Welcome to the Cinema of Swords Substack! This series is a companion and expansion to my Cinema of Swords hardcover (Applause Books, 2023), which collects over 400 tasty mini-reviews of screen swashbucklers from the Silent Era through The Princess Bride.
This Substack builds on that foundation, continuing forward with reviews of swordplay movies and TV shows from the ‘90s to the present. Every week I’ll present two to four illustrated reviews on a common theme written both to inform and to entertain.
If you enjoyed the contents of the book, this weekly series will give you plenty more of the same. (And if you haven’t seen the book, look for it from wherever you do your book shopping!)
The New Zorro
Zorro, masked defender of the downtrodden in Spanish California, has appeared in so many forms in so many media in the last century that it’s hard to believe he’s not a composite creation. But Zorro was created, with all his hallmark attributes, by one man: Johnston McCulley.
McCulley (1883-1958) was born in Illinois, but spent his early years in New York City as a reporter writing for the Police Gazette, which specialized in sensational crime news. He began writing stories for the early pulp magazines, and by 1908 had given up journalism entirely for fiction. He moved to southern California, where he immersed himself in local history. One of the results was a novel called The Curse of Capistrano that was serialized in All-Story Weekly in 1919.
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., on his way to Europe on his honeymoon after marrying screen darling Mary Pickford, had brought a stack of All-Story with him to read during the crossing. He was struck by the hero of The Curse of Capistrano – Zorro, of course – and decided that he’d found the subject of his next movie. The next year Fairbanks played the starring role in the story he’d re-titled The Mark of Zorro; it was a gigantic hit, and Fairbanks was to spend the next ten years as a movie swashbuckler, appearing in lavish productions as Zorro, d’Artagnan, and Robin Hood.
McCulley recognized his debt to the actor, and when his first Zorro novel appeared in book form in 1924 it bore the movie’s title – The Mark of Zorro – and was dedicated to Fairbanks.
More movies followed throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s, but Zorro reached his popular-culture heights in the late ‘50s with the hit Disney TV show starring Guy Williams as the masked outlaw. Alas, that series lasted only two and a half seasons before it was done in by a rights conflict, but when Zorro was revived in a more modest fashion in 1990 for the Family Channel, it was received well enough to last a full four seasons. It was pretty good, too, as you’ll see below.
Zorro (or The New Zorro) TV show, Season 1
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1990
Director: Ray Austin, et al.
Source: A&E DVD
Produced for the Family Channel and also broadcast in Europe, this appealing show presents the Zorro legend for a younger audience; it’s superior children’s entertainment, but as an adult after a few episodes you may find that it doesn’t offer much in the way of depth or nuance. The first season has 25 half-hour episodes shot entirely in Spain: the locations are good, but the costumes are a bit gaudy and cheap-looking, and the acting is broad and unsubtle to match the simplicity of the stories. The violence is mild, but the swordplay, ably directed by Peter Diamond (Highlander, Princess Bride), is just fine.
The classic elements of Johnston McCulley’s Zorro stories are all here with only slight variations. Zorro/Don Diego de la Vega is played by Duncan Regehr (Wizards & Warriors), who is tall, broad-shouldered, active, and handsome enough for the part, and if he’s no Guy Williams, the role doesn’t ask it of him. In addition to the usual mastery of the Toledo saber and bullwhip, this Zorro also studied science in Madrid, has a laboratory in his hacienda’s secret basement resembling that of Sherlock Holmes, and uses chemistry, fireworks, proto-photography, and even a hang glider modeled on Da Vinci’s design in his fight against oppression. Said oppression is mostly supplied by Los Angeles’s wicked alcalde, Luis Ramon (Michael Tylo), who revels in cruelty and has a fine haughty sneer.
Zorro also has a love interest in the person of the proprietor of the town inn, Victoria Escalante (Patrice Camhi, later Martinez), a spirited woman who leads the town’s resistance to the alcalde when not professing her devotion to Zorro, who makes eyes at her through the holes in his mask. Resistance by the wealthy ranchers is led by Diego’s father, Don Alejandro (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), while Zorro’s unspeaking-and-presumed-deaf sidekick in this case is a young lad named Felipe (Juan Diego Botto). The cast is rounded out by Zorro’s wonder horse Toronado (up-voweled from Tornado), who is smarter than the alcalde’s lackey Sgt. Mendoza (James Victor).
The series starts with Zorro already in the pueblo of Los Angeles romancing Victoria and opposing the schemes of the alcalde, but eventually they get around to telling his origin story in four parts, “The Legend Begins,” in episodes 8 to 11. This presents the outlaw hero’s standard history told in flashback, as he writhes in delirium in the bottom of a ravine after having been shot by the alcalde’s troopers. It does add one new element in that Diego is taught his swordsmanship while attending university in Madrid by an English fencing master played by Peter Diamond himself.
Summary: A solid kid’s show that does credit to the Zorro legend and is only occasionally cringeworthy. Zorro fans will enjoy it.
Zorro (or The New Zorro) TV show, Season 2
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1990
Director: Ray Austin, et al.
Source: A&E DVD
In case you weren’t aware, Zorro, the black-clad crimefighter with a secret identity as a mild-mannered wealthy playboy, was a direct inspiration for the creation of the Batman by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. The first episode of this series’ second season, “The Wizard,” pays homage to that connection by casting Adam West, the 1960s TV Batman, as inventor Dr. Wayne (get it?), who is hired by the alcalde to help capture Zorro. But Zorro shows Dr. Wayne the error of his ways, and in his secret lab in the Zorro Cave, persuades Wayne to use his scientific methods for good. Want to bet Wayne will have a son named Thomas and a grandson named Bruce?
Season 2 is another series of 25 gentle but clever adventures for the younger set. There are some stinkers in the mix: it grieves me to tell you that one, “Kidnapped,” involves pirates, one of our favorite subjects, while another is the two-part “One for All” that sends Zorro to France to meet the grandsons of the Three Musketeers. Ugh, they’re awful, but they’re balanced out by winners like episode 2, “Master and Pupil,” directed by and starring the series’ sword-master Peter Diamond returning from season 1 as Diego’s fencing trainer. Two other episodes with standout guest stars are 16, “Big Brother,” which features André the Giant, and the particularly well-written episode 20, “The Jewelled Sword,” in which Warwick Davis (yes, Willow himself) comes to Los Angeles leading a troupe of traveling entertainers out to steal a begemmed blade from the alcalde—and put the blame for the theft on Zorro.
Zorro (or The New Zorro) TV show, Season 3
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1991
Director: Ray Austin, et al.
Source: A&E DVD
The third season of Zorro is self-assured, the show-running team seemingly confident they know exactly what they’re doing and delivering on it, and the cast comfortable with each other and invigorated by a change in the masked hero’s chief opponent. The Alcalde of Los Angeles is played in the first two seasons by Michael Tylo, who was fine in the role, but the character as written is a one-note villain who became tiresome after 40+ episodes and is killed off at the end of season two. His replacement, Ignacio de Soto (John Hertzler), is more interesting: smart, capable, and unscrupulous, he cheats to attain the position of alcalde and is ambitious to use it to vault him to political prominence in Spain. This is all introduced in the excellent first episode, “A New Broom,” which sets the standard for the season to follow.
That season isn’t entirely made up of winners: episodes 6 and 7 are an awful two-part story that bring cartoon buccaneers back to California (why can’t this show ever get pirates right?) primarily in the person of their captain, played by ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura, who gives ample evidence of why he was about to give up his acting career and become a politician. Fortunately, most of the rest of the season is quite watchable, standout episodes including 16, “Test of Faith,” in which a far-flung Japanese fisherman (Soon-Tek Oh) washes up on the shores of Los Angeles in a case of mutual culture shock, and 23, “Blind Man’s Bluff,” in which the alcalde acquires a mount that’s as fast as Zorro’s Toronado so that, for once, the outlaw can’t easily escape on his wonder horse. This episode is the season’s most sharply directed, which makes sense as it was overseen by Peter Diamond, the show’s fencing master.
The season ends with “The Word,” which finally puts the spotlight on Don Diego’s unspeaking assistant Felipe (Juan Diego Botto), revealing the childhood trauma that stole his voice while fleshing out his character and ambitions beyond being a hero’s sidekick. In short, another solid season, albeit still aimed at a younger audience.
Zorro (or The New Zorro) TV show, Season 4
Rating: ****
Origin: USA, 1992
Director: Ray Austin, et al.
Source: A&E DVD
Zorro had passed its peak, and only 13 episodes were ordered for the fourth and final season, so the showrunners decided to go out with a bang—or as much of a bang as they could manage for a TV show with a modest budget.
To start with, in the early episodes the simmering romance between Zorro (Duncan Regehr) and tavernkeeper Victoria Escalante (Patrice Martinez) is finally brought to a boil; it reaches a mini-climax in the Zorro Cave and is then put on a back burner to percolate for the rest of the season.
This is followed by some average episodes that are a little tired, but with one standout, “Like Father, Like Son,” which finally gives Diego’s father Don Alejandro (Henry Darrow) a swashbuckling star turn.
Then we get to the bang-up conclusion in episodes 10 to 13, which are arguably the best of the entire four seasons. For a basis the writers turn to one of the oldest tropes in swashbuckling fiction, the tale of twins separated at birth, as they flashback to Madrid in 1588 and the birth of Diego de la Vega—two minutes after the birth of a fraternal twin, Gilberto, who is spirited away by a vengeful servant. This is no spoiler, it’s exposed at the beginning as the setup (and believe me, this sort of thing happens all the time in old school swashbucklers). Diego’s father is away and his mother is drugged, so no one knows about the elder twin.
…Until 25 years later, when he arrives in the Pueblo of Los Angeles as a royal emissary backed by veteran troops and vague but encompassing authority. (He’s also backed up in episodes 10 and 11 by the cruel Lt. Hidalgo, played by none other than Daniel Craig—yes, James Bond crosses swords with Zorro.) Gilberto Vincenzo (James Horan) has been raised to believe that he was rejected at birth by his family and now lives for their humiliation and destruction. Of course, the clever and ruthless Gilberto is opposed by Zorro, and things get complicated. Sadly, Horan doesn’t make nearly as strong a villain as John Hertzler the Alcalde, whom he temporarily sidelines, but the installments are tightly paced and escalate well toward the final episode of the series, “The Discovery”—a title that says all it needs to, I think.
Next Week: The Swordsman Trilogy, Tsui Hark’s landmark wuxia series from 1990-1992. Don’t miss it!
About Lawrence Ellsworth
Lawrence Ellsworth is the historical fiction nom de plume of Lawrence Schick, author of The Rose Knight’s Crucifixion and editor of The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure. See my website at swashbucklingadventure.net.
My current ongoing project is compiling and translating new, contemporary editions of all the books in Alexandre Dumas’s Musketeers Cycle, a series that when complete will fill nine volumes. Volume 7, Devil’s Dance, is currently being published in serial form on the Substack platform. Volumes 8 and 9 are forthcoming. Check the series out at musketeerscycle.substack.com.
As Lawrence Schick, I’m a writer and game designer primarily associated with narrative or role-playing games, a career I’ve pursued for over forty years, starting in the late Seventies working for Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax, moving into video games in the Eighties and then online role-playing games in the Nineties. I was lead writer and “loremaster” for The Elder Scrolls Online for over nine years, and I’ve now returned to the worlds of D&D as a narrative design lead for Larian Studios’ massive Baldur’s Gate 3.
