YMMV / Zorro, the Gay Blade

• Critical Dissonance: Critics saw it as a lot of wasted opportunities and a so-so general idea. Audience receptions were far better, and further improved over the years.
• Cult Classic: The reviews were lukewarm, and the box office was a failure, but the film quickly gained a cult following.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The movie poster has the promo text going "Zexy, Zany, Zensational!", needing to insert a Z to make the wordplay two times out of three. In the mid-2020s, "zesty" started being used akin to "fruity", so if this had happened earlier "Zesty" would have fit right in, no extra Z needed.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • The Camp Gay rubs the wrong way today, but it's worth remembering that for all that, Bunny is the hero of about two-thirds of the film, and the Big Damn Hero of the climax.
  • While the gay jokes abound, Bunny's also the more heroic of the brothers. Don Diego took up the mask as a lark, but Bunny Jumped at the Call.
  • The use of brownface was at the time intended as a joke about George Hamilton's famous tan. Today, it would be both horrifically offensive and unlikely (as a landed gentleman of Spanish Californian descent, Don Diego would likely be nearly as pale as Bunny).
• Once Original, Now Common: Period reviews were almost uniformly confused and/or complained about the idea of making a Zorro movie as a comedy. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, numerous other classics got their comedic make-overs, making the idea far more common and also acceptable.

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