Hello everyone,
Looking at the myriad Italo-Spanish Zorros from the 60s and 70s, I wondered if the character from the 1973 “Son of Zorro” (a.k.a. “Man with the Golden Winchester”) was the next generation of a previous Zorro, and I found this film called “Zorro at the Court of Spain” a.k.a. “The Masked Conqueror” (1962).
Both films are credited to writer Arpad DeRiso, and both feature an uncharacteristically blond Zorro (Giorgio Ardisson in the first and Alberto Dell’Acqua in the second). Several sources give the name of the 1962 film’s hero as Ricardo Di Villaverde (or Di Villa Verde), which is very close to the 1973 film’s main character, Don Ricardo Villaverde. The first film takes place in the 1830s, and the second takes place in the run-up to the overthrow of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, around three decades later. So it does look like the younger hero might be the offspring of Ardisson’s character.
However, when I listened to both an Italian dub and an English dub of “Zorro at the Court of Spain”, the name I heard was “Villareal”. Others say that there exists an English dub that gives him yet another name, “Señor Martin”. Has anybody seen a version of the 1962 film where the main character is actually heard being called “Villaverde”? And would it be a version that predates the 1973 film, or rather an alternate dub done to retroactively package the older film as a prequel of the newer one?
Thanks in advance for your contributions.