Western History | Man in the Wilderness (1971)

Continuing watching movies based on the mountain man period in the 1820s, I don't know anything about the true-life events that inspired this and Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant, but purely from a storytelling point of view, I can see why Iñárritu's version punched up the evil done to its main character.

In Man in the Wilderness, Richard Harris (A Man Called Horse and the first Dumbledore) plays trapper Zachary Bass who's attacked by a bear and appears to be mortally wounded. There are hostile Indians in the area, so Captain Henry (John Huston), the leader of the trapping expedition, orders the group to keep moving, but leaves a couple of men behind to either bury Bass when he dies or euthanize him if he's still alive after a couple of days.

Henry is unkind and a bit ruthless in his orders, but it's nothing like what Leonardo DiCaprio endures as Hugh Glass in his version. Harris is certainly pissed at Huston, but his survival mostly seems to be out of sheer toughness rather than an undying thirst for vengeance. 

Vengeance does still play a part of it, though, and my thinking it doesn't may have more to do with comparing Man in the Wilderness to The Revenant rather than anything in the film itself. Along with some other flashbacks to his life before joining Huston's group, Harris constantly relives his hazy memories of Huston's abandoning him. And there has to be some symbolism in Huston's battered, stovepipe Captain Ahab hat and the boat his party is trying to transport overland to the Missouri River. It's clear shades of Moby Dick (a story Huston knows something about), although in this case if Huston is Ahab, he's the hunted party and not himself the obsessed hunter. 

It's imperfect symbolism, so maybe I'm making it up, but I don't think so and the film has other issues that make me question its ability to get its story across. For instance, there's that group of Indians with mysterious goals. As in, I'm not sure the film ever explains what they're up to or trying to achieve. Either way, Man in the Wilderness isn't as strong as it could be.

But it's got some things going for it. Like The Revenant (which I'll be re-watching next), it's still a captivating survival story if nothing else as Harris uses his wits and skill to drag himself across the wilderness in pursuit of Huston's group. And while Harris' character arc is different from what I remember of DiCaprio's, he does go on a spiritual journey as he reflects on and reconsiders the family he abandoned (a nice parallel with what Huston has done to him) and the faith he never had (I mean, he comes back from the dead in this, almost literally "born again"). I imagine I'll have more to say about that once I've revisited The Revenant and can contrast the two stories.

Western History | First Cow (2019)

This is a recent enough movie that I think it's appropriate to warn that I'm going to talk freely (if not specifically) about its ending. In other words...

SPOILERS BELOW

After an interlude in California to check in on Zorro and the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, we're back to trappers. But instead of Eastern trappers like Davy Crockett and Georgie Russel, we're deep into the territory that Lewis and Clark claimed for the United States. Kelly Reichardt's First Cow opens with a guy (John Magaro) hired to cook for a group of beaver trappers in Oregon. 

No wait. It actually opens with a modern-day prologue in which a woman discovers a couple of skeletons buried near the banks of a large river. That was shocking and also troubling to me. I'm not opposed to Westerns being framed by contemporary scenes per se, but knowing that the movie is about a couple of guys trying to start a business in the West, I was afraid that Reichardt had revealed their fate much earlier than I wanted her to.

Back to Cookie, though: His trapping employers don't like him much and I immediately got the sense that he hadn't really found his true calling. But while they're still out in the wilderness, making their way towards the fort where they intend to sell their furs, Cookie meets a fugitive named King-Lu (Orion Lee) who's on the run from some Russian trappers that he's ticked off. The meeting is brief, but the pair reconnect at the fort and decide to partner up to face the hard life of surviving Oregon together.

Eventually - and the film moves super slow, so I do mean "eventually" - they hit upon a scheme to steal milk from the one cow in the territory and then use that to start a fried pastry business. King-Lu provides the business strategy; Cookie makes the treats.

Without going into detail about the rest of the story, I'll just say that it ends super abruptly. And it would be ambiguous if the ending didn't combine with the prologue to make the movie a bummer overall. But I was all in for everything between. Laid-back though it is, the film is beautifully shot, scored, and acted by its two leads. I love the friendship. And that's a pretty great cow.

The focus on partnership and working together is something I never get tired of, but do I feel like the deeper theme here has to do with property rights and I don't think the film explores that enough. Or maybe it's nuanced in a way I don't like by making the "criminals" really really likable and then punishing them harshly (though off-screen and with just enough uncertainty that you can write your own, different ending if you insist on it). I'm a fan of nuance, but the questions and distinctions raised by First Cow weren't the ones I was interested in. 

I really did like hanging out with Cookie and King-Lu for a couple of hours though.

Western History | The First 18 Minutes of The Mask of Zorro (1998)

The opening scenes of The Mask of Zorro take place in 1921. Zorro is middle-aged and though he's still active, he's considering hanging up his whip and rapier. It seems like a good time since Spain and its ruthless alcaldes and commandantes are being driven out by the Mexican War of Independence led by Antonio López de Santa Anna.

I like that the movie roots itself in history. Being set in California, it's fair that it'll skip the Texas Revolution that led to the Mexican-American War. But the mention of Santa Anna - like the Davy Crockett movie I watched before this - foreshadows the events around Sam Houston and the Alamo. 

Anthony Hopkins was a weird choice to play the original Zorro. I mean, it's understandable. Hopkins pretty much owned Hollywood in the late '90s and since he quickly gives over the mask to Antonio Banderas, his Welshness isn't as distracting as it might have been. Still, watching just the parts where he's playing younger and is the one and only Zorro... he doesn't exactly disappear into the role. 

It's all set-up though. We meet the young village boy Alejandro who idolizes Zorro and will take over the role in the future. We meet the evil Don Montero who has to leave thanks to Santa Anna's forces, but is desperate to do as much damage to Zorro before he goes as possible. We also learn that our hero Don Diego is now married and has a daughter, though that doesn't last long.

The opening glosses over how Montero has learned that Don Diego is Zorro. That's an important point and would be the whole plot if this was actually a movie about Don Diego. But Zorro is getting older and perhaps a little careless, so I'll let it go. On Montero's way out of town, he shows up at the De la Vega estate and confronts Zorro. It looks like Montero wants to kill Zorro, but he changes his mind when Diego's wife - whom Montero has always desired for himself - dies trying to protect her husband. That causes Montero to adapt his plans, so he simply arrests Diego, but kidnaps his daughter to raise as Montero's own child.

And that's where the story sits for the next 20 years, so I've decided to leave it alone for now and come back to it when the rest of this project's timeline has caught up to it.

Western History | Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956)

The Far Horizons begins and ends in the Eastern US, so Davy Crockett and the River Pirates makes a nice follow-up for my Western History film project. It takes place mostly on the Mississippi River as legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett (Fess Parker) and his trapping partner Georgie Russel (Buddy Ebsen) work to get their furs from Kentucky to market in New Orleans.

Disney's Davy Crockett movies follow a weird timeline. They started as five episodes on the Disneyland anthology TV show on ABC. The first three episodes aired in December 1954 and January and February 1955, covering the major events of Crockett's life: his conflicts with American Indians, his election into Congress, and his death at the Alamo. 

That was supposed to be it, but Parker's portrayal of him was so popular that Disney produced two more episodes at the end of 1955. And since it was impossible to do a sequel set after the Alamo, they set the new episodes in 1810 during Crockett's adventures as a trapper. This is also just a couple of years after Lewis and Clark returned from their Western expedition. So even though Crockett never goes West in these prequel episodes, they fit nicely in the chronology and introduce a character who's going to play a big role in Western history.

The first three Disneyland episodes had been combined in May 1955 and released in movie theaters as Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier. Following that model, the last two episodes were also combined to form the theatrical release, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates in July 1956.

River Pirates is a simple, fun adventure. Parker is super charming as the impeccably honest, relentlessly brave Crockett. And Buddy Ebsen makes a delightful, loyal, and competent sidekick.

And even though the film was edited from two different TV episodes, they're narratively connected and feel like part of the same story. The first half is Crockett and Russel's trip downriver and the second half is their trip back up. There is a clear break between the two parts though and the trip down is the more compelling. 

The first half is a race between Crockett and the self-proclaimed river king (and cheater extraordinaire) Mike Fink (Jeff York). A lot of it feels like a Bugs Bunny / Yosemite Sam cartoon in the best possible way with Fink constantly rigging the contest or otherwise sabotaging Crockett's team, but Crockett good-naturedly plows on and finds ways to catch up. It's a lot of fun.

The trip back up deals with the titular river pirates who appeared in the first half, but now have to be stopped before they start an all-out war. They disguise themselves as Indians when they attack, which is creating tension between the local settlers and the actual Indians who live in the area. It's a fine setup for a story, but most of it is a long battle and I got a little impatient by the end.

Still, I was excited to revisit Parker's Davy Crockett and River Pirates didn't disappoint. I'm looking forward to watching King of the Wild Frontier again soon. And even though it doesn't fit in with this Western History project, I think I'll also revisit some of the 20th Century Fox TV show Daniel Boone. 

The historical Boone was active during the Revolutionary War period and didn't actually wear the fringed buckskins and coon-skin cap that Crockett did, but Fox had set their hearts on a new Davy Crockett series starring Parker. When Disney refused to sell the rights to Parker as Crockett, Fox simply renamed the character and some of the locations, but kept everything else. And gave him a much better theme song.

Western History | The West: Empire Upon the Trails

Since I've wrapped up the films about early European encroachment into the American West, it's time to look at the early nineteenth century and the United States' taking over the area. I watched the second episode of Stephen Ives' The West (co-produced by Ken Burns) and was shocked at how little time it took for the US to lay claim to the entire territory comprised by what's now the 48 continental states. About 20 years.

One big effort was the liberating of Texas from the Mexican Empire, followed by its admission into the United States. That finished off the area south of the Louisiana Purchase. 

The other was the spread of US settlers into Oregon along the Oregon Trail. Once those folks succeeded in bringing the Pacific Northwest under US control, they turned their attention south to California, which was itself separating from the Mexican Empire and trying to figure out what to do next. 

For this part of history, I'm going to start my movie marathon with Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, covering some of Crockett's early adventures before he heads to Texas and gets involved with the Alamo. I'll also sneak in The Mask of Zorro, about the heir to the Zorro legacy a couple of decades after the original was running around.

With those connections to earlier times done, I'll watch some movies about the mountain men who first traveled into Lewis and Clark territory to trap and trade in furs. I have my eye on a few of these that I'll reveal as we go along.

Then there are about a dozen movies that cover the history of Texas. A lot of those are specifically about the Alamo, but a couple go into more detail about Sam Houston and his role in bringing Texas into the US.

Sadly, I wasn't able to find any cinematic depictions of the Trail of Tears outside of documentaries. As Texas was becoming integrated with the US, the country was kicking out as many Indians as it could find, sending them west to be dealt with later in the undefined Indian Territory that would later become Oklahoma. It's a heartbreaking story and an important one, so I'll be watching a documentary about that.

After that, I've got several wagon train movies in the queue, including a couple about the Mormon move to Utah. And that'll wrap up this section. I won't circle back to California just yet. The West's second episode ends with the discovery of gold, but mostly just teases the ultimate fate of the region, which won't fully be decided until the 1850s.

Western History | The Far Horizons (1955)

I've finished the Zorro section of my Western History movie project for now, exploring the time of the Spanish occupation of California. Meanwhile, back East, the barely-30-year-old United States is concerned that their new country is surrounded by not just the Spanish, but also the French. That's what sets into motion the events of The Far Horizons.

Thomas Jefferson (Herbert Heyes) has just pushed through the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring a bunch of French-controlled territory as well as France's promise that they won't compete with the US in taking a lot more uncontrolled land from the Indians who live there. Jefferson is eager to get the land explored and surveyed to cement US control over it. He appoints Army Captain Meriwether Lewis (Fred MacMurray) and his buddy Lieutenant William Clark (Charlton Heston) to do this.

The film never mentions Manifest Destiny. Jefferson's stated concern is that he wants to protect the US from the European powers that currently surround and threaten it. In Jefferson's opinion, the US will only be safe and prosper if it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so he orders Lewis and Clark not to stop their exploration at the border of the Purchase. They're to keep going until they reach the Western coast and claim it for the US. So while Manifest Destiny never comes up as a concept, it's there in practice with the US and European powers assuming that they have the right to take whatever they can get their hands on through negotiation, trickery, or outright violence.

I'm not an historian and can't comment much about the accuracy of this or really any of the films I'm watching for this project, but I assume that all of them are willing to sacrifice historical fact for good drama. That's not even a criticism; I would too. But I've done enough reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition to be surprised by the romance that Far Horizons forces between Clark and the Indian guide Sacagawea (Donna Reed). That didn't happen. 

But again, no judgment. I'd be okay with the fiction if the relationship actually worked in the context of the film. It doesn't though, and that's my big problem with the movie. There's no sweetness to the relationship or any other reason for me to root for the couple. In fact, there's every reason not to want to see them together since Clark is already engaged to a perfectly likable woman (Barbara Hale) back East. 

Another huge barrier to the Clark/Sacagawea romance is the casting of Reed. She's a fine and charming actor, but she's in no way the right person to play this role and it's painful to watch. They have her in thick, brown makeup and a bad wig and she's not for a second convincing as an American Indian. Not that the big issue is how convincing she is. She never should have been cast, period, even if the makeup had been better. But on top of that, her appearance is a constant reminder of how artificial the story (and its central romance) is. 

A third thing that keeps me out of the relationship is Clark's giving Sacagawea the nickname "Janey" because her actual name is "too long" for him. That's apparently historically accurate, but my understanding is that the real Clark called her that as slang for "the girl" and not as a European-sounding pet name for someone he's supposed to be in love with. It irritates me both ways, but it's especially damaging to any investment I might have in Clark and Sacagawea's relationship.

As far as I can tell, the romance is there for two reasons. First, it creates tension between Lewis and Clark. Lewis is in love with Clark's back-East fiancée and doesn't want her to be hurt by Clark's dumping her for someone he met on the trail. Despite the difference in Lewis and Clark's ranks, Lewis had promised Clark an equal position as co-leader of the expedition, but Lewis forgets all of that and orders Clark to sever his relationship with Sacagawea. This could have been a great dilemma if I cared about Clark and Sacagawea staying together. But I was more upset about Lewis' going back on his word and pulling rank.

The other reason for the romance is to sort of comment on the differences between Clark and Sacagawea's worlds. Everything is hunky dory out here in the Wild West, but what will happen when Sacagawea returns to Washington at the end of the journey? There could be something there if the film cared to dig into it, but it's only superficially interested. Or again, maybe I'm the one who's superficially interested, because I don't really care whether or not Sacagawea is able to fit in and stay with Clark. Instead, I'm rooting for him to honor his commitment to Barbara Hale.

On the positive side, the movie was shot in Paramount's VistaVision and there's plenty of gorgeous widescreen photography of beautiful country. And the score by Hans Salter is appropriately sweeping and epic. And there's also a lot of buckskin jackets and fur caps. Visually, it's a feast. 

It just needs a better story to drive it. I wish someone would make a mini-series that deals with the expedition more honestly while also exploring the various Indian perspectives on it. The Far Horizon does a little with the Indian point of view, but those who cooperate with Lewis and Clark are clearly the Good Indians and those who are suspicious of the explorers are clearly the Bad Ones.

Western History | Zorro: The Chronicles (2015)

Who's in it?: Johnny Yong Bosch (Akira, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) as the voice of Zorro.

What's it about?: Re-imaging of the Zorro legend with Zorro as a teenager.

How is it?: After watching so much Zorro for this project, the stories in this French-produced animated series felt very familiar. The evil captain has the typical tactics for oppressing the people of Los Angeles and Zorro uses his customary methods of fighting back. I only watched a few episodes before feeling like I had a good handle on what the show has to offer.

There are some new elements though and things it does well. Don Diego is a teenager in this version, as are his allies. He still has a mute servant named Bernardo (who also pretends to be deaf, as in the original Disney show and some other versions), but they're more like best friends than employer and employee. And like the 1997 cartoon, there's also a female ally.

In this one, her name is Ines and she's Diego's sister. And unlike 1997's Isabella, Ines doesn't have to figure out Zorro's secret identity, because Diego lets her in on it pretty much as soon as he creates the Zorro persona. I like her and Bernardo both, but the show's still called Zorro and he gets all the best stuff to do.

The animation is fine. Characters don't always move naturally, but the faces are pretty expressive. What the art does super well though is character design and backgrounds. The costumes are all highly textured and detailed, with Zorro's being especially cool with kind of gold-brown piping and accents as well as cool, scarlet highlights on his collar, sash, and cape. 

And someone spent a lot of time on the environments that the characters move around in. Every scene has a great sense of geography with wide shots that establish where everything is and the camera freely moving around to show where everyone is in relation to each other. That's especially helpful in big action pieces set around a fort or house or a remote location out in the country. Even if I'm not wild about the stories in Zorro: The Chronicles, I'd love to play a video game set in this world.

Rating: Three out of five rooftop leaps.

Western History | Zorro and Son (1983)

Who's in it?: Henry Darrow (Filmation's The New Adventures of Zorro, the '90s Zorro TV series), Paul Regina (Frank Nitti on the '90s Untouchables TV series), and Gregory Sierra (Sanford and Son, Barney Miller).

What's it about?: Disney makes a half-hour Zorro sitcom while still including some swashbuckling adventure elements.

How is it?: I wasn't going to include Zorro and Son in this project, frankly because Zorro as a sitcom sounded ridiculous. But after talking about the Filmation cartoon and The Family Channel's version, it seemed a shame not to at least check out Henry Darrow's other stab at Zorro. I did, and I'm surprised that I actually liked it.

It wasn't a big hit and only lasted five episodes before being cancelled by CBS. All five episodes are currently available on YouTube though, complete with the announcer asking you to stay tuned for Square Pegs and Magnum pi over the closing credits. I get why it didn't catch on. It's a weird combination of the adventure of the classic Disney series from the '50s and a situation comedy complete with laugh track.

But the jokes are only forgettable at worst, and often either not half bad (a friar is arrested for "selling wine before its time" and Zorro's nickname as "the Curse of Capistrano" is mistaken for a digestive condition) or actually made me laugh out loud (often involving a recurring gag around people being strung up in chains, but not too upset about it, or even just the way Darrow and Sierra deliver lines). 

The premise is that when Zorro misses a jump from a balcony to a chandelier, his faithful servant Bernardo (played by Bill Dana as neither deaf nor mute) is concerned that Zorro is getting too old to continue fighting for justice. So Bernardo sends for Diego's son Carlos (Paul Regina) to come home from college and take over the family business. Carlos agrees, but Diego isn't ready to give up his job, so unlike other versions that make Zorro into a legacy hero, this series now has two Zorros running around. 

Gregory Sierra plays the villainous Commandante Paco Pico who controls the village. And Richard Beauchamp (who played a recurring character on the TV show Hunter) is Pico's sergeant. Sgt Sepulveda is different from the traditional Gonzalezes and Garcias in that he's not overweight or even especially bumbling, but he's still very funny as a foil for the commandante. 

Probably my favorite gag in the whole show is when Commandante Pico orders Sepulveda to play Good Cop to Pico's Bad Cop with a prisoner. Sepulveda doesn't understand, so Pico explains that his job is to cozy up to the prisoner and make him think that Sepulveda is his friend. Sepulveda of course takes it too far and begins insulting the commandante as a way to ingratiate himself to the prisoner. 

The weekly adventures aren't meant to be that funny. The plots could have fit into a straightforward Zorro series pretty easily. For example, in "A Fistful of Pesos," someone else commits crimes while dressed as Zorro, undermining the community's trust in their hero. That's something that's been done in pretty much every TV version I've watched. Other episodes deal with a character's potentially learning one of the Zorros' secret identities. And since Disney produced Zorro and Son, they were even able to reuse the theme song from the '50s, modified slightly so that it refers to two Zorros instead of one (eg "The foxes so cunning and free; they make the sign of the Z.") 

So while I think that the combination of humor and adventure works, Zorro and Son is neither hilarious enough nor thrilling enough to be compelling or memorable as anything other than a weird experiment that I'm glad I got to watch.

Rating: Three out of five dad jokes.

Western History | Zorro (1997)

Who's in it?: Prolific voice actor Michael Gough (not the guy who played Alfred) is the voice of Zorro. Other recognizable voices through the series are by Ed Asner, Clancy Brown, Mark Hamill, and Ron Perlman.

What's it about?: A cartoon version of Zorro with supernatural and steampunk elements.

How is it?: Zorro '97 was a syndicated cartoon from the animation studio behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and James Bond Jr, so that should give you an idea of what to expect in terms of animation (it's not great, but it serves its purpose) and tone. It's about creating fun, after-school entertainment for kids, not reverence to anything that came before. And that's okay.

Zorro himself is a dashing enough Western superhero with the hidden cave and the secret identity, but the first big change is in his mute servant Bernardo. Instead of just a supportive companion on some of Zorro's more complicated missions, this Bernardo is an inventive genius who creates traps and wrist-mounted grappling hooks for his boss. He's basically a Western Q, like Artemus Gordon from The Wild Wild West. And then there are the episodes about cyborg bounty hunters and Sherlock Holmes analogs coming over from England to investigate Zorro's secret identity, which add to this version's steampunk quality.

There are also overt supernatural elements to the show. One recurring character is an Indian medicine woman with magical powers. An episode I watched (there are a limited number available on YouTube and I only watched a few of those) had her grandson mess with some of her magic powder and accidentally turn himself into a minotaur-like monster. There are also episodes with Sasquatch, evil samurai, and magic doppelgangers. 

Another big change to the Zorro legend is the inclusion of a character named Isabella. Most versions of Zorro have a woman whom Zorro is either in love or friends with. In this one, she begins as a Lois Lane-like character who's out to learn Zorro's secret identity. And surprisingly, she does. In the very first episode. How she does this is dumb, but I like that it gives Zorro another ally in his campaign and that she's a woman.

Isabella discovers the truth about Zorro and Diego when she accidentally ends up on his horse during a fight with some of the local soldiers. A fire breaks out that spooks the horse and sends him running back to Zorro's secret cave. So Isabella just hangs out there until Zorro shows up and unmasks. He deserves to get caught, but it's also disappointing that his horse isn't smarter than that. In the Disney show, Tornado was a wonder-horse along the lines of Roy Rogers' Trigger or the Lone Ranger's Silver. This one looks impressive, but doesn't have a lot going on between the ears.

The horse has also been renamed Toronado, for some reason. I forgot to mention at the time, but the Family Channel show from earlier in the '90s also made this change. I don't know why TFC decided to name the horse after an Oldsmobile or why this cartoon imitated it, but it sort of helps that if the horse is going to be this inferior to Tornado, at least he doesn't share the same name.

I'm also not crazy about this show's version of Sergeant Garcia (aka Gonzalez, in some versions). He's pretty mean. I like the sergeant character to be overweight, cowardly, and incompetent, but also friendly and apologetic when he has to carry out a despicable order. In this show, Garcia's a bumbler, but fully on board with whatever evil schemes his captain comes up with.

So this isn't exactly "my" Zorro, but the episodes I watched were all fun. And the ones I haven't seen sound like they are too, in the same bonkers way that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was. I was a big fan of the TMNT show at an age when I was older than its target audience, just because it was so over-the-top and genuinely funny. This Zorro has that going for it, too. Maybe it's not as funny, but how can I complain about Zorro vs cyborg killers and Bigfoot? There were only 26 episodes over a couple of seasons, so I wish it were available on DVD. I'd love to check out the rest of it.

Rating: Three out of five Toronados

Western History | Zorro (1990)

Who's in it?: Duncan Regehr (Wizards and Warriors, V, The Monster Squad), Patrice Martinez (¡Three Amigos!, Beetlejuice), JG Hertzler (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Efrem Zimbalist Jr (Batman: The Animated Series), and Henry Darrow (The New Adventures of Zorro, Zorro and Son).

What's it about?: Zorro returns to live-action TV on The Family Channel.

How is it?: I was initially skeptical about the quality of The Family Channel's Zorro. The money-making channel had legally separated itself from the non-profit Christian Broadcasting Network by the time this came out, but it was still being run by people associated with CBN and my perception was that it was going to be ultra- tame and family friendly. Not that Zorro is an edgy character, but I expected the CBN version to be especially cheesy and moralistic.

Contributing to my expectation of goofiness was the casting of Duncan Regehr as Zorro. Regehr is a good-looking guy, but he's more soap-opera handsome than ruggedly dashing. I expected a lot of mugging for the camera and Joey Tribbiani "smell the fart" faces from him.

Watching the show for this project, though, I enjoyed it quite a bit. There's a lot of quick editing to hide cheap stunt-work, but I'm used to that from other '90s adventure shows like Xena and Conan the Adventurer. And while the show can be cheesy, it's charmingly cheesy in the same way those other shows are.

There are 88 episodes if you don't count the pilot (and you shouldn't, for reasons I'll get into), so I didn't watch the whole series. But I watched the pilot and the first episode and then several other episodes from among the show's four seasons. These weren't really random; I picked them for particular storylines or guest-stars that I wanted to see. I got a good sense of the show and if it were more easily available to watch than just on YouTube, I'd be interested in going back for a complete look at some point.

The pilot is almost completely different from what the show would become. It stars an actor named Patrick James (this is his only acting credit), not as Don Diego, but as a new character who takes on the identity of Zorro after the aging Diego is mortally wounded in action. It's not good. Thanks to Zorro: The Gay Blade and the Antonio Banderas movies that we'll get to later, I'm used to the idea of Zorro passing on his mask to a younger hero. So the premise doesn't bother me, but James isn't charismatic enough to play a swashbuckling hero. The costume is also shoddy and I groaned when the climax had Zorro ride a homemade hang glider into battle.

Thankfully, the actual show recast almost everyone and even took a more traditional approach to the legend, so Regehr is actually playing our beloved Diego de la Vega. I say they recast "almost" everyone, because one actor from the pilot does return, although as a different character. That's Patrice Martinez, who was the aristocratic love interest in the pilot, but is now the owner/operator of the local cantina. Business owner Victoria Escalante is a much cooler role and gives the show the chance to explore some feminist themes as people (not Diego and his family) constantly underestimate Victoria and she stands up for herself.

Another character I like a lot is Felipe, Zorro's mute servant. He's basically the Bernardo character from the books, but borrows some elements from other, earlier TV versions. Like Bernardo on the Disney TV show, Felipe pretends to be deaf as well as mute in order to listen in on bad guys' conversations without their being suspicious. But he's also a young ward of the Vega family, like Miguel in the Filmation cartoon. He's a good-looking kid and an asset to Zorro's campaign. I like him a lot. He even mimes the Z-shape like his Disney predecessor did when he's asking Diego if Zorro will be going into action.

The rest of the characters are pretty traditional. Efrem Zimbalist Jr plays Diego's dad in the first season, but was replaced by Henry Darrow for the rest of the show. Zimbalist is fun, but Darrow is even cooler, especially considering that he'd been the voice of Zorro on the cartoon and played Zorro in the short-lived sitcom series, Zorro and Son.

The evil alcalde was played by Michael Tylo for the first two seasons until the character was killed off and replaced in season three by a new villain (JG Hertzler). Tylo and Hertzler are both great and their characters have slightly different personalities, so it's hard to pick a favorite between them. Tylo's character wasn't exactly bumbling, but he was a guy that Zorro could manipulate without too much trouble. Hertzler's character feels more deadly, but he's also given some unexpected background and motivation that makes him surprisingly relatable.

Finally, there's the Sgt Garcia/Gonzalez character, renamed Mendoza for some reason. He's played by James Victor and is rather unremarkable, but fills in just fine as the slightly overweight, incompetent leader of the alcalde's troops.

A very fun aspect of the show though is all the guest-stars. Jim Carter (Rustlers' Rhapsody, Downton Abbey) played an especially ruthless Spanish officer who was so nasty that he came back later for a second episode. And Daniel Craig was in a couple of fourth season episodes with all his James Bond intensity as the henchman to another villain. Philip Michael Thomas (Miami Vice) had an episode as a free Black man who has to endure bigotry from the alcalde and his men. Warwick Davis (Return of the Jedi, Willow) plays the leader of a dishonest circus in an episode. But my very favorite guest star was Adam West as an inventor named Dr Henry Wayne who is especially impressed when Zorro escorts him (blindfolded, of course) to his secret cave headquarters.

Possibly because an origin story had already been attempted by the never-shown pilot, the first episode of the series doesn't bother going into how Diego became Zorro. Which is fine. Fans already know that story and casual viewers likely don't care. But there is a four-episode origin story later in the first season, where a badly injured Zorro reminisces about how he became the hero. It's not bad and way more traditional than the unaired pilot, though some of the pilot's footage is used - including the hang glider!

Rating: Three out of five rapiers.

Western History | The New Adventures of Zorro (1981)

Who's in it?: The voices of Henry Darrow (a prolific character actor in the '70s and '80s who went on to play Zorro again in the short-lived CBS live-action comedy Zorro and Son - which I won't be covering - and also played Zorro's dad in the much longer '90s live-action series), Julio Medina (another busy character actor on TV in the '70s), and Don Diamond (I know him best as Corporal Reyes on Disney's live-action Zorro show in the '50s).

What's it about?: Filmation's animated version, originally ran alongside their Saturday-morning Tarzan and Lone Ranger cartoons on The Tarzan/Lone Ranger/Zorro Adventure Hour.

How is it?: I expected it be similar to Filmation's other adventure cartoons like Tarzan, Lone Ranger, and Star Trek, but Zorro is actually a bit different from those. It's the only one Filmation farmed out to another animation studio, which happened to be in Japan. The anime influences are really apparent, especially in the look and comedy antics of Sergeant Gonzalez (Don Diamond). And while the budget is kept under control with reusable action animation, it's not the same animation that I'm used to seeing in the other Filmation cartoons where Tarzan, Lone Ranger, Captain Kirk, and Flash Gordon all run in exactly the same way. The most noticeable reused animation is in the sword fights, but there are lots of different stock moves that the studio rearranges enough to keep interesting. And they're good, creative moves. Sometimes fights last a little longer than my older, short-attention brain wants them to, but when I was a kid, this is what I showed up for.

New Adventures of Zorro also uses some of the same music from those other Filmation shows (which I love, by the way; it's part of the soundtrack of my childhood), but it's rare. Most of the Zorro soundtrack is made of Spanish guitar and other Latin-inspired music. It's exciting and good.

The mythology is mostly the same as previous versions with one, huge exception that I'll get to in a minute. It's heavily inspired by the Disney show which played up the secret identity and Zorro cave to basically turn Zorro into a Western superhero.

Most versions have a female character that Don Diego is either engaged to or interested in, but Filmation's is remarkably chaste. Diego (Henry Darrow) hangs out with a woman named Maria whom I think is the daughter of the local governor. They may have said for sure and I missed it, but that's what I think I've figured out. At any rate, their relationship seems to be purely Platonic.

Like other versions, Diego lives at home with his father, but his dad isn't as exasperated with Diego's apparent laziness as he is in other versions. There's a certain amount of eye-rolling, but he seems to have mostly accepted Diego's flaws.

And like other versions, Zorro's chief adversary is the captain of the local guard who collects taxes for the greedy, selfish governor. The captain also has a fat sergeant, named Gonzalez. That character is right out of the original Johnston McCulley stories and appears in most adaptations. He was renamed Garcia in the Disney series, but Filmation uses the original name. And they have Don Diamond provide the voice in sort of a promotion from his role as Garcia's sidekick in the Disney show.

The big change to all earlier versions is that Zorro's sidekick is no longer a mute servant, but a bona fide costumed adventurer named Miguel (Julio Medina). Zorro frequently calls him Amigo in battle and I wondered whether that's his official superhero name. I don't think it is; I think Zorro's just not calling him Miguel when they're both in costume. But I wish that Amigo was his superhero name, so bad guys could say, "Oh no! It's Zorro and Amigo!"

It sounds silly, but it's no sillier than Miguel's pastel-colored costume, which looks like it was inspired by Zorro, the Gay Blade. He just needs little dingle-ball tassels hanging off the brim of his hat.

There are only 13 episodes of the series and they're all pretty good. The plots are generally Robin Hood style stories where the governor and Captain Ramon overtax the people, so Zorro and Miguel steal the taxes back. But there are always fun twists like Ramon hiring his own Zorro to defeat the real one, or natural disasters like flash floods and earthquakes complicating everyone's missions. There's also a great recurring character, Lucia, a swashbuckling pirate captain who uses her crew to either help Zorro or oppose him depending on her needs at the time.

Rating: Four out of five Miguels.

Western History | Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981)

Who's in it?: George Hamilton (Love at First Bite), Lauren Hutton (Lassiter, Once Bitten), Donovan Scott (Police Academy), and Ron Leibman (Friends)

What's it about?: A comedy sequel in which the original Zorro has died and his two sons have to carry on the legend. The first tries to do it in a straightforward way, but injures himself, leaving the job to his flamboyantly gay twin.

How is it?: Very silly and often very funny. George Hamilton is always a pleasure and I appreciate that (some stereotypes and the villain's bigotry aside) the gay character is every bit as heroic and awesome as his straight brother. Actually, he's more awesome with his colorful variations of the traditional costume and his preference for the whip over the sword. He uses the whip to carve his full name - not just his initial - onto walls and he also doesn't hurt himself.

Donovan Scott is hilarious as Don Diego's deaf-and-mute servant. He's clearly riffing on Gene Sheldon's character from the Disney TV show, who would communicate with Don Diego through pantomime, but Scott takes the charades game to ridiculous levels.

Ron Leibman plays the evil mayor in need of overthrowing and it's a bit much when he screams all of his lines, but even that leads to some really funny stuff. Brenda Vaccaro (whom I recognize, but I don't where from) is also great as Leibman's wife. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed this.

Rating: Four out of five smooth operators.

Western History | Zorro (1975)

Who's in it?: Alain Delon (Le Samouraï, Red Sun)

What's it about?: Zorro as a Spaghetti Western

How is it?: As great as I hoped as Spaghetti Western Zorro would be. It crosses over into slapstick and other general silliness a few more times than I'd like, but mostly it's very cool.

Alain Delon is an excellent, suave and dashing Zorro. This version of the story replaces the California West with a larger South American city called Nueva Aragón. (There's a current Nueva Aragón that's a suburb of Mexico City, but if I interpret the map in the movie correctly, the film version is not in Mexico.) Alain Delon's Don Diego is a friend of the new governor of Nueva Aragón, but when his pal is assassinated on the way to taking control of his post, Diego replaces him.

True to the mythology of Zorro, Diego pretends to be a frivolous fop while adopting the Zorro persona to fight the city's true power, the evil Colonel Huerta. This spices up the story with some cool variety while keeping true to the elements of Zorro that really matter. And Ottavia Piccolo is wonderful as an aristocratic woman who's much more than just a love interest for Zorro, but is also a badass revolutionary herself.

Rating: Four out of five bullwhips.

Western History | The Mark of Zorro (1974)

Who's in it?: Frank Langella (Dracula), Ricardo Montalban (Fantasy Island, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Anne Archer (Patriot Games), and Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters).

What's it about?: A TV remake of the 1940 Tyrone Power version.

How is it?: Poor Frank Langella can't catch a break on costumes. Between Dracula and this, he's a captivating romantic lead, but keeps getting stuck in outfits pulled off the Halloween aisle at K-Mart.

This is a very close remake of the 1940 Mark of Zorro. It feels weird that that's the one they went to, but by the '70s it was the definitive film version, not the old Douglas Fairbanks silent. The Disney show was also iconic at that point, but it a) would have been harder to adapt to a feature length and b) was already readily available on a lot of TV stations in reruns.

The production quality on the Langella version drops a lot from the original, being made for TV, but it tries to make up for that by putting Don Diego in costume as Zorro a lot more than Power's version ever was, including during the final sword fight.

And it's got some cool actors in the cast. Ricardo Montalban is the main villain (played by Basil Rathbone in the original), Anne Archer plays Diego's love interest, and Yvonne De Carlo is his mom.

It's not a classic by any stretch, but I enjoyed comparing it to the Power version and Montalban is especially enjoyable. I recommend it for fans of his.

Rating: Three out of five really sad masks.

Western History | Zorro (1957-61)

Who's in it?: Guy Williams (I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Captain Sindbad, Lost in Space).

What's it about?: Walt Disney adapts Zorro as a TV series.

How is it?: Williams is the definition of swashbuckling and perfectly plays the balance between dashing Zorro and passive Don Diego. Gene Sheldon is also delightful as Diego's mute manservant Bernardo and Henry Calvin is a joy as the good-hearted, but wrong-sided Sgt. Garcia

I expected most of that, having watched an episode or two as a kid, but what I'd totally forgotten was the amazing sets and matte paintings. Disney threw some real money at the show and created a wonderful fantasy landscape for southern California with all kinds of great cliffs and passes and skull-shaped mountains.

And I had no idea that the storytelling was so 21st Century. Each episode is more or less self-contained, but they also connect and build on each other to tell longer stories. In fact, the first eight episodes were packaged together to become a feature film release in 1960, The Sign of Zorro. And that's not even the entire saga of the ruthless Captain Monastario. The evil officer takes 13 episodes to bring down and I was actually shocked when Zorro eventually succeeded and the story line ended.

Then, just as Zorro's thinking of retiring, a new enemy shows up in the form of a secret society that uses eagle feathers to communicate. The group's leader, the mysterious Eagle, lurks in the background for a while, pulling strings behind a variety of other villains and plots as he works toward a takeover of the entire state of California. And while Zorro competently overcomes every individual threat, a growing sense develops that he's getting in over his head when it comes to the Eagle's larger organization. The stakes are raised nicely as the show heads toward the first season finale. And while Zorro manages to pull out some kind of victory each episode, the wins get smaller and smaller as the Eagle gains more and more power, even taking over Don Diego's home.

Sadly, the Season One finale isn't entirely satisfying. Zorro pulls out a decisive victory, but it's also apparent that it wouldn't have been as decisive if the Eagle hadn't grown impatient and tried to stage a final coup before he was ready. His allies knew it was a bad idea and withdrew, but he insisted on moving ahead alone, which was a bone-headed play and led to his downfall more than Zorro's skill did.

Still, the first season is a strong run of almost 40 episodes, even if it doesn't perfectly stick the landing. One of the MVPs of the series is Don Diamond as a late addition to the cast. He's brought in as a foil for Sgt Garcia; someone for Garcia to boss around, but who doesn't follow orders so well. The two of them are hilarious together and bring a needed, lighter touch to the show just as it's starting to look rather grim.

Season Two features a major change in location. Instead of taking place in Los Angeles, the action moves to Monterey where a patriotic trader is trying to gather money for a massive supply shipment. Spain is at war, so the Spanish citizens of California see it as their duty to support their homeland by keeping up business. The trouble is that shipments of investment capital from all over California are being intercepted by bandits, so Don Diego has traveled to Monterey to oversee delivery of the money from LA.

He's accompanied by Bernardo and is eventually joined by Sgt Garcia and Diamond's Cpl Reyes as well, so the best characters from the first season are still there. But the locations were such an important part of Season One and I wasn't ready to let them go. Happily, the relocation isn't permanent, but it takes a while to get Zorro home. Unlike the original novel and some other adaptations, the Californian government in the Disney show isn't depicted as completely corrupt. But the governor isn't as wise or careful as he should be either, so his underlings are often able to get away with cruel activities. When that starts to happen in Monterey, Zorro has to smother the oppression or occasionally deal with other rebels who are just as brutal as their oppressors. These are interesting conflicts, but they go on too long for me.

My interest was renewed though with the introduction of some cool guest stars. Richard Anderson (Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man) became a recurring foil for Don Diego. The two characters are old rivals and things get complicated when both men fall for a woman named Señorita Verdugo. I'm not usually crazy about these kinds of romance triangles where two people both like the third and the object of their affection refuses to make a choice. But it works in this case, because I feel like Verdugo actually makes a choice, but one of the men isn't paying attention. Whatever the case, Anderson adds a lot of fun to the cast and the plot wraps up in a really lovely way.

After that, Season Two abruptly and unceremoniously returns the main cast to Los Angeles in time for a few episodes with Cesar Romero as Don Diego's shifty, gold-digging uncle. There are still multi-episode story lines from there, but they don't flow from one to another the way earlier episodes did and there are a few that are just completely standalone.

The series never returns to the 13-episode arcs of the first season, but one of the best multi-part story lines stars Annette Funicello, who was given the role as a 16th Birthday present by Walt Disney. She plays a young woman who's come to Los Angeles to meet her estranged father. She's convinced that he lives there and she's even received letters from him postmarked Los Angeles, but no one has heard of the man. It's a cool mystery and Funicello brings a lot of conviction and spunk to her role.

Season Two ended in 1959, but Disney kept Guy Williams on salary and made four more episodes (hour-long this time) to run on the anthology series Walt Disney Presents. The first two ran in Autumn 1960 and formed a single story about a group of Mexican bandits who show up in Los Angeles to challenge Zorro's supremacy as local outlaw.

The next episode ran in January 1961, featuring Annette Funicello, who was back as a different character: a family friend of Diego's who's trying to elope with the wrong fella. And saving the best for last, an April 1961 episode had Ricardo Montalban and Wild Wild West's wonderful Ross Martin as a pair of scoundrels who know enough about Diego's past to suspect that he's Zorro. It's a great finale and makes me wish that there'd been a whole series just about those two characters.

Rating: Four out of five rapiers

Western History | The Mark of Zorro (1940)

Who's in it?: Tyrone Power (Jesse James, Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, The Black Swan), Linda Darnell (Blackbeard the Pirate, Black Spurs) Basil Rathbone (Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Son of Frankenstein, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), Eugene Pallette (The Adventures of Robin Hood)

What's it about?: The origin of Zorro

How is it?: Since Johnston McCulley's novel jumps in after Don Diego has already become Zorro, creating an origin story means deviating from the book in big ways.

This version opens in Spain to show Diego's (Power) prowess at swordplay and horsemanship, then has him called back to California by his father. He expects (and dreads) a life of relaxation and comfort instead of the carousing and adventure that he's experienced in Spain. But he quickly learns that his father has been deposed as mayor and replaced with a tyrant whose rule is enforced by a ruthless captain (Rathbone). Diego knows that his parents will be in danger if Diego rebels openly, so he creates the identity of Zorro to put pressure on the new mayor.

It's a cool strategy, actually. While Zorro interferes with the mayor's cash flow, Diego befriends the mayor's wife and plants suggestions that she'd be much happier back in Spain. The plan is to get the mayor to leave voluntarily, but Rathbone's character is a bigger problem than Diego anticipated. He's actually the power behind the mayor and he won't be intimidated so easily.

Adding a romantic complication to the story is the mayor's niece (Darnell).

As you may or may not be able to tell from that description, the 1940 Mark of Zorro is very focused on Diego and there's actually very little Zorro in it. When Diego does put on the costume it's exciting, but it kind of reminds me of superhero shows from the '70s where 90% of the show is the secret identity and then you'd get a couple of big scenes with the hero to make it worth watching. Not that the Diego stuff is boring. There's a lot of drama and intrigue and some great character stuff. And the swords fights are extremely good, even when no one in them is wearing black.

There are some nods to Douglas Fairbanks' version that are worth pointing out. Fairbanks' handkerchief tricks are replaced by Power's having a general love for magic and sleight-of-hand, but he actually says, "Have you seen this one?" at least once. And Power's Diego also has Fairbanks' tendency to embed his sword in the ceiling until circumstances demand that he need it again.

Except for those details and a couple of scenes with Diego in costume, though, this is a great swashbuckler, but not a great Zorro film. In other versions, the character of Fray Felipe is a quiet man who nobly endures the oppression of the government, but here he's played with blustery gusto by Eugene Pallette, who's pretty much just redoing his Friar Tuck performance from Adventures of Robin Hood a couple of years before. There's also no deaf and/or mute servant and no Zorro cave under his estate (though there are secret passages in the mayor's house that Diego makes good use of). Really like the movie. Wish it had more Zorro.

Rating: Four out of five rapiers

Western History | The Mark of Zorro (1920)

Who's in it?: Douglas Fairbanks (The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad, Don Q Son of Zorro, The Black Pirate, The Iron Mask)

What's it about?: When the Spanish governor of California becomes oppressive, a seemingly foppish nobleman puts on a mask to protect the persecuted.

How is it?: I've seen this a few times by now and it's a very faithful adaptation of Johnston McCulley's novel, The Curse of Capistrano, in which Zorro first appeared. There are a couple of big differences though.

The first is Zorro's assistant Bernardo, a character who's barely in the novel. McCulley's version is deaf and mute, but The Mark of Zorro allows him to hear and gives him a lot more to do. He's not a major character, but the sense is that he's a clever and capable helper in Zorro's subterfuge.

Another difference is how Mark of Zorro handles Zorror's secret identity. The novel surprisingly saves the reveal until the very end, so the reader finds out who he is at the same time as everyone else. Mark of Zorro lets viewers in on the deception right away.

That's cool because it means we get to peek at parts of Zorro's life that the book keeps hidden. Like how Zorro comes in and out of his house. Underneath his mansion, he's got a cave with a couple of hidden entrances. There's a shrub covered, horse-sized outer passage, and in the house there's a secret door disguised as a grandfather clock. Everyone knows that Batman was inspired by Zorro, but sometimes we forget how much. It's all based on this Fairbanks movie though, not the novel.

Batman could take some more lessons from Fairbanks' Zorro on playing the idle playboy, though. Fairbanks' performance as Don Diego is brilliant. He always looks exhausted and bored, only perking up when he's irritating someone with an unwanted handkerchief trick. Christopher Reeve rightly gets a lot of praise for creating separate performances when he's playing Superman or Clark Kent, but he wasn't the first to do that. Fairbanks does the same thing as Don Diego and Zorro and I totally see why people are fooled.

That impressive bit of acting is nothing compared to the unbelievable acrobatic work that Fairbanks pulls off in Zorro mode, though. He leaps around and climbs over sets like he's inventing parkour. The final chase between him and the Spanish soldiers is a stunning showcase for Fairbanks athleticism as well as just plain hilarious.

Rating: Five out of five rapiers.

Western History Project

I'm starting a new viewing project that I think I'll keep track of here. It was inspired by Stephen Ives' documentary series The West. I watched the first episode again recently and since the series takes a chronological approach to the history of the American West, I decided that in between episodes I would watch movies that take place during the time periods covered by the previous episode.

So, Episode 1 is titled "The People" and is mostly about the indigenous folk who lived in North America prior to the European invasion. I'm not aware of films that cover that, except perhaps The Daughter of Dawn (1920), which is a silent film with an entirely American Indian cast and features only American Indian characters. I like the movie, but it's not specific about its time period, so while I could use it as a starting point, it could also be a movie that fits later in the timeline.

In talking about European colonizers though, "The People" brings up a couple of periods that have been more definitively adapted by Hollywood. The first is the Spanish takeover of the California coast, in part to secure it against Russian settlers who were coming in from the North. The Spanish expanded from their hold in Mexico to build forts and missions all up and down California. And of course this is the period covered by the Zorro stories. So I'll be starting there. I'm not going to watch every single Zorro movie I can get my hands on, but I'll hit the big ones and that's what this project will be about for a while.

The other major European invasion covered in the "The People" is the Lewis and Clark expedition. There aren't as many Lewis and Clark movies as Zorro ones, but I plan to at least watch The Far Horizons (1955) starring Fred MacMurray as Meriwether Lewis, Charlton Heston as William Clark, and Donna Reed as Sacajawea. It'll be a while before I get to that one though. I've got about a dozen Zorro movies to watch first.

After The Far Horizons, I'll watch Episode 2 of The West and see where that leads me next. And that's how this project will go. Please feel free to recommend movies to me and I'll add them to my list. Especially if you know of other Lewis and Clark movies that I should watch.