Le retour des frères corses

Bandits Of Corsica is a sequel to the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. classic The Corsican Brothers where Fairbanks played a pair of noble Siamese twins separated at birth and brought up separately to conceal their identities. At the conclusion of the Fairbanks film one had died and the other had saved the day and won Ruth Warrick and inherited the family estate.

I was looking forward to seeing a sequel as I had enjoyed The Corsican Brothers, but the premise was preposterous. Douglas Fairbanks,Jr. looked good and dead to me, but we find out that he did not really die. The twin roles now taken by Richard Greene has the dead twin unconscious for a long time and then waking up with no memory and now living with the gypsies. But the gypsies don't even know who their Greene really is.

I mean really. The only ones who had resurrections like these are the Universal monsters like Frankenstein, the Wolfman, etc.

In the meantime Corsica is facing a new tyrant. Raymond Burr with his aide and nephew Lee Van Cleef is bidding to take over the island and he'd like a governor generalship from the king. Burr and Van Cleef as always are excellent villains.

All I can say is preposterous premise.

But after all, is it really else than a western? It is finally a disguised western, an Alexandre Dumas's adaptation set in Europe and not in America, and long before the conquest of the West.... But if you watch closely, it is a western for me; and Ray Nazarro was the best choice for the producers to make this movie. Richard Greene is the recurrent lead role for such swashbuckler, cloak and dagger stuff: DESERT HAWK, LORNA DOONE, SWORD OF SHERWOOD FOREST, SHADOW OF THE EAGLE...only George McReady is missing here, but Raymond Burr and Lee Van Cleef as the villains are not bad either. It is a good time waster as an adventure, costume action film, very efficient, professionally made. Worth catching.

So THE CORSICAN BROTHERS ended with one dead and the other installed in a happy life? Think again! Such things don't happen in the movies when a sequel might bring in more money. And so we have Richard Greene and himself, with the one who supposdly died having come down with amnesia for five years, succored by gypsies, loved by the fiery Dona Drake, and th whose band is on Corsica, looking to pick up some money entertaining the people. Meanwhile, Raymond Burr has become a tyrant over Corsica, which is being opposed by the one with memory and his beautiful Countess, Paula Raymond They will confuse the heck out of. The bad guys, who wants Miss Raymond. So too will the gypsy Richard Greene when he inevitably gets his memory back.

It soon settles down into the usual swashbuckling tropes, as Good Richard Greene fights both Raymond Burr and Bad Richard Greene. It would all be bog-standard stuff, except for a few nice dueling sequences, and a really good performance by Raymond Burr. There's a reason he was in demand as a movie villain.

OK, I'll do one. Typical early 50's swashbuckler that Columbia and Universal were so adept at doing although this one's a United Artists effort. Richard Greene plays the familiar (to fans of the genre) Corsican Bros. and does a creditable job. I like him more the more I see him. He's no great shakes, mind you, but is more than suitable for roles like this. I guess he's most well known as the TV Robin Hood in which there was just bit more talk, unfortunately, than action (as with most TV adventure shows). The pace is good, the sets better than expected (some of the exteriors looked filmed in Europe- maybe Mexico) and there was added pleasure in seeing Raymond Burr and Lee Van Cleef as bad guys #1 and #2, respectively. If what I've written perks the interest of fans of this sort of thing (and you know who you are) then it's certainly not one to miss. This version compares favorably- but does not come close to surpassing- the '41 version with Fairbanks, Jr.-In fact I'm almost certain that I detected a few clips from the previous version inserted into this one (which does no real harm IMO).

Good brother Mario has an enemy in his own twin, Carlos (also Richard Greene), after Carlos tries to woo his wife, Christina, and plots his demise. But the brothers must come together to take down evil oppressor Jonatto, who rules their homeland of Corsica.

A sequel to the Corsican Brothers, this 1952 film stars Richard Greene, who is excellent in playing both twin brothers, their personality traits contrasting, and of course, one is good and the other not so. Well, he's flawed, complex, a bit on the edge of insanity. This causes much conflict, not that they have enough trouble with the terrible duo - uncle and nephew - played by Raymond Burr and Lee Van Cleef who are oppressing the natives and doing the usual fiendish stuff. The villainy is actually quite good here -watching these two are a treat. It's not as good as The Corsican Brothers ( Douglas Fairbanks Jnr) but it's efficiently made, has some decent derring-do and an interesting enough story.