The 5th Musketeer (1977) from ICMS |
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The story takes place in France in the 17th century at the royal court in
Versailles. King Louis is set to marry a Spanish princess, Maria Theresa
(Sylvia Kristel), but it is obvious that he prefers the company of his mistress, Louise de la Vallière (Ursula Andress).
As it happens the king has a much nicer twin brother, Philippe, who was kept
hidden somewhere in the French Southwest and who is ignorant of his descent,
as is practically everyone except the four musketeers. This twin brother turns
out to be the aforementioned fifth musketeer. The king's advisors set up a
plan designed to get rid of this possible threat to the throne while making
the king more popular in the process. Needless to say, their plan backfires
and a battle for the crown ensues with each leading lady helping her favorite
twin. The good twin can also can count on his four aging musketeers, but they
don't achieve that much because they're getting too old for this kind of
shenanigans.
The 5th Musketeer doesn't seem to take itself too
seriously and perhaps that's why it is not a bad watch that I actually did
enjoy. The credits for that go on the one hand to the actors, who all believed
in what they were doing and put in solid performances (except Sylvia Kristel,
if you consider her an actress) and on the other hand to the beautiful
locations and the exquisite costumes. In the end, however, one concludes that
the film itself could have turned out much better than it is. The feeling remains that with an all star cast like Beau
Bridges, Ursula Andress, Ian McShane, José Ferrer, Rex Harrison and Olivia de
Havilland; and with some of the most beautiful castles around Vienna, including Schönbrunn; director Ken Annakin
somewhat underachieved in this one. If the story had been better
outlined from the start with some plot twists here and there, many of the problems would have been resolved. Some more
creative editing mightn't have gone astray either.
The biggest mystery of The 5th Musketeer is the DVD.
The only commercial DVD available is a Region One disk. It is a
beautiful transfer, remastered in HD and edited by Sony Pictures. There is
only one problem with it, but that is a very large one. They opted to
produce the PG-rated version (104 minutes) instead of the uncut version
which is shown on German TV (116 minutes).
In producing the shorter version, the editor not only removed all of the
beautiful nudity, but also eliminated several other scenes in whole or part.
(I watched both versions together.) I still have no clue why they spent so
much money on remastering the incomplete version instead of the original edit.
Obviously someone must have thought that this movie needed some speeding up, which it doesn't.
To me it goes without saying that those missing scenes should have stayed
in. Not only do they provide extra information on what's happening, they also
add flavor to the time period and the locations.
What is even sillier is that PG version, which retains none of the nudity, contains all the violence and profanity. Someone out there must think it is more harmful to see Ursula Andress and Sylvia Kristel naked in their prime than to see people getting killed or to hear a woman being called a bitch and a whore. Strange thing, certainly in my opinion.
So my advice is to stay away from this Region 1 DVD and wait until there is an
unrated full-length print available on DVD.
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