The Three Musketeers Volume 1 (Chapters 1-6)

This serial above everything else is the one I remember most about Saturday morning cinema. I was not to know for nearly 70 yrs that it starred John Wayne. Wild horses would not have stopped me seeing every episode. I was not good at getting up in a morning, but Saturday was different, out side the cinema half an hour before opening, Happy days!

Lon Chaney Jr and John Wayne together? Hey, in Hollywood anything is possible! 26 year old Lon is Armand Corday, a Foreign Legion officer who belongs to a secret group led by the masked "El Shaitan". Deciding the quit the gang, Armand is murdered and his best pal Tom Wayne (John Wayne) is framed for the killing! Tom spends the next 12 chapters on the run from the Legion trying to clear his name and find out who El Shaitan really is before the villain can massacre the entire Legion outpost.
The Musketeers of the title include some other famous "Jr's" like Noah Beery Jr and Francis X. Bushman Jr. The ubiquitous Bronson Canyon stands in for a trecherous location known as The Devil's Cauldron. John Wayne is quite good, in fact the only bad things he had to say about his days at Mascot Studios concerned his having to change his clothes so many times during the day because they shot every scene for a certain location at one time!
There is lots of action in this one, chases on horseback, fistfights, fires and "how are they going to get out of that?" cliffhanger endings.
You will not be disappointed by this one.

John Wayne is good in this very early action serial. The film from which the DVD was made was in excellent shape albeit a little grainy. Sharpness and contrast are excellent. The audio is very good with minimal background noise/hiss/hum.