samkydd

Having just got The Three Musketeers film on DVD I've just watched it for the first time in years. It brought back fond memories of when I went to see it at the cinema in Norwich with several school friends, frighteningly too long ago!

It was very funny, particularly Spike Milligan and Roy Kinnear, and we sat on the back row at the flicks and laughed the sort of laughter guaranteed to make you physically exhausted and tearful. It was also full of swashbuckling adventure that everyone loves, and it has stood the test of time and it is still a brilliant film today.

A very good cast and excellent sets and definitely a favourite film of mine.

I haven't seen the sequel, in case I'm disappointed with it I suppose (as is often the case) but didn't Roy Kinnear die during the making of it? He was one of those actors you just had to look at and you'd start grinning! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clapping.gif[/img]

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

AndrewLA

Very sad about Roy Kinnear. He did fall from a horse when it stumbled. Ironically, at first, it seemed as if he had only injured his hip and would recover. Dick Lester said he lost confidence in himself afterwards, even though the stunt people had okayed the scene and it was nobody's fault. That's a pretty extreme reaction, but perhaps Kinnear's death coincided with a general feeling of malaise that Lester was having about his career at the time....

sanndevil

I seem to remember the UK inquest was VERY critical of the Spanish hospital facilities. The suggestion was with greater care and diligence Roy would still be with us today. There was a helluva stink about it which strained relations between the two countries.

Perhaps Dick Lester shouldered some of the blame because Roy had zero horse skills, it was late in the evening, everyone was tired and Roy probably should not have been on the nag in the first place.

AndrewLA

Interesting about the Spanish hospital facilities. I always wondered how a "simple" hip injury could result in death, but there's nothing deadlier than a careless hospital. My reference was more to the stunt itself, which apparently was considered a simple scene.

Lester does seem to have taken the death personally, and the reasons you indicate could well have contributed. In his book-long interview with Stephen Soderbergh ("Getting Away With It"), Lester says that ultimately it was his responsibility to have placed Roy Kinnear in that time and situation, and he was deeply affected by the pain and grief felt by Kinnear's wife.

There's an intriguing comment about Lester by Soderbergh at the end of the book, that he was "in possession of a kind of ruthless expediency." Soderbergh quickly goes on to say that this is only a hypothesis and, even if true, is hardly a crime. So he's not criticising Lester, far from it, he obviously admires him. But it does suggest that Soderbergh picked up a quality in Lester that maybe all great directors need to a degree -- a willingness sometimes to cut corners and put their actors at risk.

Hackett

Did't Oliver Reed get stabbed through the shoulder in the same film?.

jacobean

I saw that about 5 or 6 years after the film was made, Roy Kinnear's widow won a large settlement after suing the films producers for negligence. They showed a video of him falling off the said horse at speed. I think they argued that he should not have taken part in the stunt in the first place