The Three Musketeers

After a hiatus from filmmaking, Lester revived his reputation with this spirited hybrid of slapstick and satire. Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed, and Frank Finlay are Alexandre Dumas’s immortal trio, with Michael York as aspiring musketeer D’Artagnan. Together they must foil a plan by Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) and the wicked Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) to convince King Louis XIII that his Queen has been unfaithful. A return to the insolent hijinks that made Lester’s name, The Three Musketeers boasts a sense of swashbuckling adventure on par with the classics of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, and hearty humor—much of it supplied by Raquel Welch, in the best role of her career, who earned a Golden Globe for her antics as the Queen’s klutzy but loyal dressmaker.