Zorro (1975)

Eleven years after La tulipe noire, Alain Delon took the role of Zorro. Duccio Tessari, who worked with Delon a couple of years before in Tony Arzenta, directed the project.

The movie begins with the scene of Don Diego on his horse in a desert, while the opening credits roll and the funny theme song by Oliver Onions played. [The theme song is as much fun as 1980's Flash Gordon theme song by Queen.]

Here's to being free, here's to you and me.

Here's to being free, la la la la la la Zorro's back!

Don Diego's childhood friend, Miguel, becomes the new governor of Nuevo Aragón, which has been ruled under the corrupted Colonel Huerta (Stanley Baker). Colonel Huerta sends assassins to kill Miguel who, in his dying breath, manages to appoint Don Diego to replace him, by giving him his ring, and makes him promise not to use any violence. To please Huerta, Don Diego pretends to be his puppet governor, weak and sometimes pansy; but secretly becomes the masked hero, Zorro, to help the suffered people, aided by his mute servant Joaquín (Enzo Cerusico). 

The story can be funny at times and I like the stunts. Moustache, who plays Sergeant Garcia, looks a lot like the character in Disney. I've never seen such huge hamburgers! The plot gets better when Colonel Huerta has a suspicion about who Zorro is. The movie culminates with 11 minutes duel between Zorro and Colonel Huerta.

My DVD is only 118 minutes, but thankfully has English subtitles. I actually wanted the 124' full version, but the only ones I could find were either in Italian or with German subtitles - and I don't speak both languages. I would feel much better if the version I have has the original format instead of 4:3, which cuts the left and right sides of the images.