Scaramouche
I have complained about Hollywood tweaking my nose recently. My horde of adoring fan (can one fan constitute a horde, if he is loud enough?) no doubt wonders what kind of movie I like, one that I feel does not offend my delicate sensibility.
Aha! How can you ask? My tastes are simple, and bloodthirsty. Swordfights.
Swordfights! Struck with a snickersnee, cut with a cutlass, hacked with a hangar, gouged with a glaive impaled with an epee!
SWORDFIGHTS!
This is from Sabatini’s SCARAMOUCH, my favorite of swordfighting scenes for several reason. One is that it is longer that most such scenes. The other is that just about every cliche is here: fighting on stairs, swinging on cords, precarious footing, falling sandbags.
A close second: any swordfight with Errol Flynn, music by Korngold. Here he is fighting my favorite movie villain, Basil Rathbone. The bad guy has to always be the better stage fencer, to make the good guy look good.
A close third. Wire fu in cyberspace. Is anything more thickly laved in Awesomesauce? I think that is Theodore Logan doing badass chopsocky on the cyberwerewolves.
And, of course:
This is the movie most often quoted in the Fourth Circle of Geekdom where I dwell, after Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
