Royal Flash

A great fan of The Flashman Papers, a series of novels by George MacDonald Fraser about the exploits of rakish 19th-century soldier Harry Flashman, Lester sought to make a film of the first book, which detailed Flashman’s misadventures in Afghanistan. The project was shuttered, but the success of Lester’s Musketeers films (scripted by Fraser) and the similarity of the second book to cinematic evergreen The Prisoner of Zenda enabled that story to reach the screen—the only Flashman tale filmed thus far. Malcolm McDowell plays the titular cad, forced by Otto von Bismarck (Oliver Reed) to impersonate a Danish prince and marry a German duchess (Britt Ekland). Shot partly on location in Bavaria, the film retains the irreverent tone of the books and introduced Bob Hoskins (cast as a police constable) to a global audience.