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was a press screening in Salford for French journalists (so help me, it’s true), and then there was the London premiere, attended by the Duke and Duchess of York, and the reviews, which were pretty unanimously unfavourable.
    I wasn’t surprised. Roy’s death had overshadowed the making of the picture, and the aftermath of recrimination and litigationwas no encouragement to the viewing public. But there were other reasons why the film wasn’t a success. Dick had fallen seriously ill before shooting began, and while he made an excellent recovery, the pre-production had been affected, not least because he and I had not been able to go over the script as meticulously as we’d done with the earlier films, and I’m sure the picture suffered in consequence; we never got our usual happy ping-pong of ideas. Talking it over years later we agreed that we could have done better—with hindsight, I should have strengthened Christopher Lee’s part and put more venom into his father–daughter relationship with Kim Cattrall; that would have worked well. And there were other areas I could have improved, too.
    Yet I wonder if the concept itself wasn’t the chief flaw. Do people want to see heroes grown old? One can be sentimental about comebacks, but they’re seldom joyous affairs; the contrast with the youthful zest of the past is all too evident, and it could not be said of the third movie, as it was of the M3 and the M4, that they were “one for all, and all for fun.”
    Well, you can’t win ’em all, and it’s enough to have done what I believe we did, and make the definitive version of Dumas’s story with the first two pictures. I’m probably biased, but they seem to me to be the last of the swashbucklers in the old Fairbanks–Flynn tradition, and I’d sooner have my credit on them than on Citizen Kane .
    * Inevitably there was a third reaction, but not until much later, when I found myself wondering if the scene in which Roy had been killed (a link in which he and the Musketeers had to ride through an archway) had been strictly necessary. Could I have omitted it from the script, or done it a different way? Yes, probably; on the other hand, it had been a perfectly proper scene to write, and the script called for it. Heart-searchings of the “if only” kind are pointless—which doesn’t stop them from crossing your mind, of course.

INTERLUDE

Law for Sale?
    N EVER MIND PEERAGES , can law-making be bought? If an animal rights organisation were to contribute to a governing party’s funds, would this assist the passage of a bill against parrot-kicking or butterfly-baiting or some similar blood sport? And if the Fruit of the Month Society made a similar donation, would this win government support for lowering the age of consent for homosexuals? I ask these questions in all innocence, and am ready to be told that it is disgraceful even to mention them—which usually means that the question has hit uncomfortably close to home.
    On this head, I was an interested observer of the campaign to ban fox-hunting, deer-hunting, coursing, etc., and found myself wondering whether the proposed bill was the result of judicious investment or just mental derangement. I have never hunted, and never would, but I have a foolishly sentimental affection for it which comes of reading Surtees and Trollope and singing at school hearty songs like “Drink, Puppy, Drink”, and “A-Hunting We Will Go”, and of course “John Peel”, and I should be sorry to learn that they were no longer sung in this politically correct age.
    This is very wrong of me, but there it is. I haven’t shot an animal since I was nine, when I nailed a rabbit and promptly burst into tears. And once I had my copy ruthlessly spiked when I was sent to write an article celebrating the Waterloo Cup, and turned in a passionate denunciation of coursing.
    So I understand the position of the anti-blood-sports people (and would gladly shoot those of them who commit evil acts