Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Le Chevalier Tempête / Los Plateados

When I was a boy, Saturday mornings were often livened up by a French-made serial called Le Chevalier Tempête which the BBC re-fashioned (and along the way made a whole lot sillier) as The Flashing Blade.

Interestingly, they never got round to dubbing and broadcasting the final episode. It is something of an epilogue, but unless you've seen it you won't realise that a) one of the lead characters doesn't die in the final battle and b) the French version was actually intended as serious drama.

The general idea was that in 1630 the nasty pointy-bearded Spaniards were beseiging the unlaundered French defenders of Casal, a fort in Italy...but the historical geo-politics escaped us.

Perhaps the best thing about this show was its opening title sequence. It gives you a pretty good idea what the appeal of it was to the immature male imagination.



Ditto, the opening titles of much more recent Mexican telenovela Los Plateados.

One can never underestimate the importance of a cheesey theme song.

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