Mark Of Zorro, The

VHS, Not Rated, 91 minutes, Republic Pictures Home Video

Wielding his razor-sharp rapier against the forces of greed and corruption, the mighty Zorro carves his name in the annals of American legend just as Douglas Fairbanks established his reputation as cinema's premier swashbuckler in "The Mark Of Zorro." In this, his first full-blown effort at the costume thriller, Fairbanks portrays Don Diego Vega, a comically effete young nobleman with a taste for tasseled sombreros and juvenile silk-hanky magic tricks. But when danger calls, Diego swathes himself in black, straps on a well-honed sword and storms the countryside as the mysterious Zorro, slicing his initial into the faces of the "sentinels of oppression," pausing only to boldly romance the woman (Marguerite De La Motte) to whom his shy alter-ego can hardly summon the courage to speak. Fairbanks brought to the role of Diego/Zorro the same graceful agility and wholesome charm that made him Hollywood's most adulated movie idol, translating these qualities into sequences that roar like a duststorm across the screen -- especially the climax, where Zorro leads Governor Alvardo's (George Periolat) men on a cyclonic chase across the rooftops, haystacks, prison, homes and church of a picturesque Old California village.