Cheap Zorro's Fighting Legion: Golden God (DVD) (William Witney, John English) Price

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Customer Reviews of Zorro's Fighting Legion: Golden God

Republic sure knows how to make a serial!
I watch a lot of serials, and Republic's are the ones by which all others are measured. This particular serial is in very good archival condition. The quality of the transfer to DVD is excellent. I'm guessing, but it probably looks about 85-90% as good as it did when it was first shown in the theaters. The production values are first rate, as I have come to expect from Republic. Hadley makes both an excellent fop/dandy and Zorro. The golden god is nicely costumed, well-voiced, sufficiently mysterious and menacing. The special effects are excellent, as are the soundtrack and photography. The plot is easier to follow than those serials that come from the school of "more is better", and feel it necessary to throw in everything except the kitchen sink. After awhile, you're buried in plot devices and far too many characters. It can be headache-inducing. Not so with this serial. Very enjoyable and very well done! Future western feature films and TV series owe some of their success to this 1939 Republic serial.

Raider of the Lost Stagecoach
This is easily the best of the several Zorro serials, and one of the best serials of any kind. The cliffhangers are superb, and William Witney and John English's direction is superb as usual. Reed Hadley appeared in films for 35 years, often as a Western bad guy--I've noticed him in that kind of role with Hopalong Cassidy. In his career Hadley also did a lot of radio acting, including Red Ryder on the radio. In this film he strikes just the right combination of fop and daredevil as Don Diego and Zorro, respectively. <
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>Sheila Darcy (1914-2004) plays Volita, who is always disgusted with Diego because he's such a wimp. She appeared in just one other serial, "Terry and the Pirates," in which she played the Dragon Lady, and about 30 other films from the mid-1930's to the early 1940's. <
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>One reason for the excellence of this film is the work of the world's best-known stunt man, Yakima Canutt. His most famous stunt was pulled off in this very film, where he (doubling Zorro) falls under the hooves of the racing horses pulling a stagecoach, slides under the coach, pulls himself up on the back of it, and punches out the driver. Canutt also did this in "Stagecoach," and Steven Spielberg stole it for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," using a truck instead of a stagecoach. You'll find it in Chapter Seven; look closely and you'll see that Canutt bounces a little under the coach, and they had to do it twice to complete the scene. It really was death-defying! <
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>The only negative I could find was the silly ending, where the villain is revealed and he almost unaccountably falls into his own firepit. You'll get a little tired of hearing that opening song in every chapter, but in case you want to sing along here are the words: <
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> We ride <
> With wind over hill, over dale <
> With a spirit that cannot fail <
> Men of Zorro are we. <
> We ride! <
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