D'Artagnan contro i 3 moschettieri (1963) User Reviews

entertaining dubbed European costumed swashbuckler with Fernando Lamas

[django-1 · 8/10 · 21 November 2004]

One of the many European costumed historical adventures of the early 1960s, REVENGE OF THE MUSKETEERS stars Fernando Lamas (but, alas, NOT his fine voice as he is dubbed by someone else) as D'Artagnan, who is reunited with his old musketeer comrades (though not willingly at first!)to help Charles II, who is in exile in France during the Cromwell regime in England. There's also a subplot about a man and his young daughter who are scheming to interest Charles in the young lady so she will marry him and thus get England to move toward alliances with their corrupt friends in other European countries. Charles is depicted here as pasty looking and a bit of a fop (perhaps that is how people on the continent view the British?). Lamas makes an excellent D'Artagnan--had we heard his fine, rich voice on the soundtrack, he would have been even better. But, alas, it's too late to do anything about that now, so we must just enjoy the film we are given. And that is easy for fans of this genre as REVENGE OF THE MUSKETEERS has a lot of action (though not as much swordplay as one would anticipate), colorful settings, and colorful interpretations of the musketeers. As usual for a Musketeers-related film, this is played with a light touch, with a number of comic sequences slipped between the intrigue (and with a bassoon on the soundtrack reminding us of the comic nature of the scene in case we couldn't figure out otherwise). Worth finding for fans of these dubbed historical adventures, as I am. (NOTE: By the way, my video copy (which seems taken from a 16mm TV print) has some very brief but odd edits in it. The soundtrack doesn't seem to jump, yet it seems as though a second or two of visual is missing. If some projectionist at a TV station had clipped a few frames from the film, or spliced a broken film back together resulting in a few missing frames, I'd think the soundtrack would have a gap or at least there would be a pop. You could watch the film inattentively and not notice this, but it happens a few times in the transitions between scenes and makes me wonder what if anything I am missing.)