But the most impressive creation of this serial is the person of Zorro himself. Reed Hadley was always a rather stiff actor, but this role suits him well because Don Diego is supposed to be pretending that he's a fop. ("Thinking bores me," he says when offered a position on the town council). So we go along with his not quite convincing performance because he's not supposed to be entirely convincing, or else we might actually start wondering about the actor himself. Hadley strikes just the right mixture of fop and daredevil. He's no Douglas Fairbanks or Tyrone Power, the two actors most closely associated with Zorro, but he gives us one of the better characterizations in the history of the serials.

Before taking the role of Zorro, Reed Hadley had virtually no experience riding horses, fighting with swords, or cracking a whip, but you might never guess it from the serial. Zorro emerges as an expert with a whip. He uses it to extract himself from several life or death situations--such as the cliffhanger that ends Chapter 1: Zorro appears to be trapped in a landslide. Rocks and dirt fall in a cloud of debris. How can he escape? Well, that whip's not just for cracking at his foes. And in another chapter ending, which contains one of the very best cliffhanger solutions in the history of serials, Zorro is trapped in San Nicholas Mission. He knows a bomb is ready to explode. He knows he has only seconds to escape. But he's trapped by the Yaquis who are firing at the exits. Carrying an unconscious friend over his shoulder, Zorro runs up the stairs, looking for a way out. What can he do? Where can he go? The camera cuts to a long shot of the mission. Suddenly, an explosion rips it apart. How could our hero survive? Typically serials would have the hero suddenly run out of the mission, suddenly oblivious of the enemy gunfire (or maybe the solution would show the enemies suddenly retreating). But, no, Witney and English have more respect for their audience. (SPOILERS coming in the next sentence.) In this case, Zorro slings his whip over a beam, and with his unconscious friend over his shoulder, he swings through a stained glass window. He shatters the window and swings right toward the camera!

Neither is Zorro a slouch with a sword. Several times, he takes on several Yaquis and defeats them all. In Reed Hadley's hands, Zorro becomes a believably wicked sword fighter, as when he slices a "Z" on the forehead of a particularly nasty sword-fighting foe. But Zorro usually attempts to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed. In one scene, he strips the buttons from his foe's pants until the pants fall to the floor. Or in another chapter, he pins an opponent to a wooden beam by throwing a knife and pinning the opponent's sleeve.

Under the guiding hand of Witney and English, with the magnificent stunt work of Yakima Canutt and the good performance by Reed Hadley, Zorro's Fighting Legion emerges as one of the all-time greats. "We ride / With wind over hill, over dale / With a spirit that cannot fail / Men of Zorro are we. / We ride!"