I just saw a bit of this movie while flipping through channels (oh, INHD, why are you so crappy?), and I was amazed to learn that the whole movie actually IS a gay joke. I’d heard the title, and always assumed it was a movie from the 50’s back before “gay” meant gay; but no, it’s Zorro wearing pastel and having a limp wrist.
The things I missed by being too young to enjoy early 80’s culture…
Actually, George had a talent for comedy. His Love at First Bite is one of my favorite funny movies.
I did like the “twin brothers” bit in ZTGB, one straight and one gay.
*“Oh Diego, am I a good wife?”
“You are a wonderful wife!”
“Then why doesn’t my husband think so?”*
Two bits, four bits, six bits, a peso
All for Zorro, stand up and say so!
This is a very funny movie. After all those years of seeming like an untalented fop, George Hamilton finally displayed a good deal of comic talent. Who’d ‘a’ thunk it?
“Spread the news that he is back to help the helpless, to befriend the friendless, and to defeat the defeatless!”
I loved this movie as a kid! George Hamilton is very funny in it, and I had a big crush (one of my first movie-crushes) on Lauren Hutton after watching this.
It was also Brenda Vaccaro’s shot at getting un-typecast as a tampon spokesperson.
For some reason we had this movie on tape when I was a kid, and I bet I watched it a hundred times, totally oblivious to the gay jokes.
“… and this hat, which needs re-blocking.”
“Say something like a sissy-boy.”
This is one of my traditional Holiday films, along with Time Bandits and Mom and Dad Save the World.
Hurray! Christmas is coming!
The costumes! The bullwhip! The ships of the field, the little baa-baa-baas!
The pipples love “Zorro”! 
I adore George Hamilton precisely because he doesn’t take himself seriously.
VCNJ~
A great bad movie. Everybody looked like they had fun making it.
Charlotte Taylor Wilson: I’m Charlotte Taylor Wilson. I’m with the People’s Independence Committee.
Don Diego: Don Diego Vega. I’m with the greedy bloodsuckers.
It’s nice to see the love for this very underrated little lowbrow comedy. Hamilton and Vaccaro are great, but to me the film is owned by Ron Liebman – he’s priceless as the over-the-top Alcalde. His performance reminds me of a live version of Daffy Duck.
And even the soundtrack is fun, highlighted by selections from classic swashbuckling film scores. (Pretty sure they quote the score from Errol Flynn’s Don Juan.)
“Remember my people, there is no shame in being poor, only in dressing poorly!” Heh. Cute film that plays with stereotypes without being nasty about it. One of the few films of the era with a positive leading gay character, and part of the mini-wave of gay-themed movies that hit theatres in 1982 (along with Personal Best, Making Love and the horrible Partners).
Oh, just the opposite for me. I can’t stand his constant screaming and hollering. Ron, sweetie, we get that he’s a big blustery oaf, you don’t have to bellow every single syllable.
Just the other day I read about the Cisco Kid (a cowboy hero popular in the twenties to forties) and was amused to read the movie titles:
The Gay Caballero (1940)
The Gay Cavalier (1946)
The Gay Amigo (1949)
Cisko, is there something you’d like to tell us? Surely that must have been funny even back then. And, poking around the IMDB, I noticed:
Felix the Gay Dog (1921) (I picture a camp Goofy)
Gay Adventure, The (1936) (Time for a remake?)
Gay Bride, The (1934) (A movie so ahead of its time some of us still haven’t caught up)
Gay Divorcee, The (1934) (We can guess why they broke up), and of course simply
Going Gay (1933)
Perhaps time for a “gay” film festival that’s anything but? The working title for the project would be “The Gay Film Festival”.
“That is the letter Z.”
“No, my daughter, she goes to school. That is a number 2.”