Lady in the Iron Mask
                    
Director: Ralph Murphy
Year: 1952
Rating: 6.0
Rousing B adventure with our Musketeers once again saving France. Every time I think that I have run out of Musketeer films, I come across another one. That isn't really a problem as there have been loads of Musketeer films produced - many during the silent era of which most are lost and many made outside of America that are elusive. This one though was a nice surprise as I had never heard of it until I stumbled on it last week. It only runs 70-minutes and I imagine used sets from previous Fox films - but it is filled with romance and the clashing of swords. A few very nice action scenes. From the title, one can guess that this is a twist on the Dumas novel of The Man in the Iron Mask with a gender switch.

 

Of some interest to film fans is that the actor who played The Man in the Iron Mask in the 1939 film is D'Artagnan in this one - and the actor who plays Porthos here is the son of the actor who played Porthos in The Man in the Iron Mask. Those would be Louis Heyward and Alan Hale Jr (most famous of course for being stuck on Gilligan Island). The actress who plays the twin princesses is Patricia Medina who was matched up with Hayward in a few adventure films around the same time - Captain Pirate (1952), The Lady and the Bandit (1951) and Fortune of Captain Blood (1950). I caught her last week for the first time in The Beast of Hollow Mountain and was curious enough to watch her in a few other films. She was born in Liverpool to a Spanish father and English mother and went off to Hollywood where she was fairly successful as a B plus actress and managed to marry Richard Greene and later Joseph Cotten.

 

D'Artagnan and his three friends are called upon by the Prime Minister (Lester Matthews) to rescue the Princess Anne who has been kidnapped by the evil Duke of Valdek (John Sutton) and replaced by her twin sister who upon birth was taken into the countryside and never told who she was. This sister has been set up to marry Philip of Spain who will then rule over France. A foreigner! D'Artagnan is able to rescue her just as she is about to be thrown into a pit of molten fire by the great Tor Johnson. Need I say that they fall in love, but she is a Princess and he a mere Musketeer. Cute ending.