THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974) ** I thought that Oliver Reed got rid of Faye Dunaway in The Three Musketeers, so imagine my surprise when here she is ruining the film every time it ever gets any momentum going. Which isn't often. There's some controversy surrounding the two films-they were supposed to be one long film, but the studio broke them up into two, and reprised the worst plot threads. The actors then sued the studio, not because the second film is so bad, but because they didn't get paid for it. They won, but didn't get paid as much as for a normal film, which is fair. It's not so much that this one is a sequel of the first one as a collage of scenes not good enough for inclusion, and then sewn together by a very awkward seamstress. Kind of a cinematic parallel universe of feeble reflections. I mean, in a swashbuckler featuring Reed, Michael York, Richard Chamberlain and Christopher Lee...how does it turn out that the only really good moments are comedic turns by Raquel Welch and Roy Kinnear? The sword fights are uneventful and drawn out, like a drum solo from a bad metal band. Charlton Heston plays a guy betraying great values, like when he became President of the Constitution-mutating NRA.
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