The Son of Monte Cristo (1940)

Director
Rowland V. Lee

Main cast
Louis Hayward; Joan Bennett; George Sanders; Florence Bates; Lionel Royce

Genres
Action, Adventure

Description
In 1865, General Gurko Lanen is dictator of "Lichtenburg" in the Balkans. Rightful ruler Zona hopes to get aid from Napoleon III of France. The visiting Count of Monte Cristo falls for Zona and undertakes to help her, masquerading as a foppish banker and a masked freedom fighter. The rest is rapid-fire intrigue and derring-do.


Similar movies

Louis Hayward, star of 1940's Son of Monte Cristo, returns to Alexandre Dumas territory in Columbia's Return of Monte Cristo. This time, Hayward plays the grandson of his namesake Edmond Dantes, who, it will be recalled, was cheated out of his fortune and falsely imprisoned, only to escape and wreak vengeance on his betrayers by assuming the guise of the Count of Monte Cristo. Just like grandpa, the younger Dantes is framed by a trio of connivers and shipped off to Devil's Island. Escaping with a fellow convict, political radical Bombelles (Steven Geray), Dantes adopts the bearded guise of an elderly man in order to destroy his enemies and reclaim his birthright. One of his principal antagonists - at least during the first half of the film - is haughty aristocrat Angele Picard (Barbara Britton), who because she wasn't a part of the original conspiracy genuinely believes that Dantes is a criminal.

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