PopHorror Let's Get Scared
5. The Swashbuckle Killings (1983)
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode
Written by Y.T. Drake
Starring: Thomas Whitlark, Joe Pesci, Jennifer Beeswax
It’s almost embarrassing that we’ve so quickly forgotten about this bloody, gimmicky roller coaster of gore. Originally titled Zorroh My God, Look Out!, The Swashbuckle Killings is clearly a campy, schlocky cash grab. Back again after successful team up for Terror Train (1980), Roger and Y.T. strike quite an artery with this gem. The plot follows a young boy at the drive-in with his parents, eating popcorn as The Mark of Zorro (1940) flashes on the screen. Right as Zorro’s music swells, the boy, Tommy D’Artagnan, looks down into his popcorn and looks back up to see his parents speared in the necks by an honest-to-God Zorro-masked killer with a rapier! Evidently, a maniac decided to bring the movie to bloody, murderous life.
Despite this trauma, we flash years into the future and the boy has grown up (to be played by the fresh faced and aggressively blond Thomas Whitlark) and, in perfect slasher fashion, is training to be an Olympian…in fencing! Soon enough though, athletes begin to be found stabbed into human pincushions, and there’s reports of a killer in a fencing helmet and Zorro costume stalking the Olympic training center. It’s all our hero can do to keep it together long enough to find the killer and save his gymnast girlfriend (played by the buxom actual gymnast Jennifer Beeswax)!
This movie stands apart mainly for its obvious and silly gimmick. People are killed with all three varietals of competitive fencing weapons – most memorably the epee, driven right down through the skull of a beefy steroid dealer (that’s clearly an uncredited Rick Flair!)!
Add in an unexpected Joe Pesci performance as Tommy’s demanding and ornery fencing coach and you’ve got early ’80s gold.
