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Nuttiest Zorro Song Ever Written, and More...

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Question: I remember seeing a Zorro movie, probably in the late '70s or early '80s, that featured a song I remember distinctly. I haven't been able to find the title, but I believe Zorro's alter ego was either the king or some other aristocrat. The song lyrics are something like, "He used to be the king/Fa la la la/Zorro's back." Please help me get this question answered so I can get this song out of my head! — Everett

FlickChick: The movie was a Spanish version of Zorro made in 1975 with French actor Alain Delon as "The Fox." The song is "Zorro Is Back," written by Maurizio and Guido De Angelis and someone called "S. Duncan Smith," which sounds like a pseudonym but could be for real, I have no idea. The De Angelises, who contributed to a number of European movie soundtracks in the 1970s, also recorded under the name "Oliver Onions" (named after a 19th-century English writer whose work included several classic horror stories, including "Widdershins" and "The Beckoning Fair One"). The song is on the Bottle Rocket (1996) soundtrack, and you can click here for a clip of it. Or maybe not, if your goal is to get it out of your head. Oliver Onions also has a website: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!

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Question: Where does the name of the movie The Departed come from? — Miller

FlickChick: "The departed" mean "the dead," and Martin Scorsese's The Departed is in part about the hold the "dearly departed" have over the living. The title of Mou gaan dou, the 2002 original Hong Kong film (not Japanese, contrary to what was said at the Oscars) from which it's adapted, translates as "The Nonstop Way," and apparently alludes to the Buddhist religion's most miserable level of hell.

Clearly "The Nonstop Way" isn't a catchy title for a mainstream American crime thriller, and while Infernal Affairs, the U.S. release title of the original film, is a clever play on "internal affairs," it suggests something other than a gritty crime thriller, something with supernatural implications. So Scorsese and his collaborators opted to rethink the title entirely.

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Question: I remember seeing a movie in the late 1970s about a plane crash. The only survivor was a young teenage girl; I remember her falling from the sky still strapped to her seat. She ate cake from the plane but it had salt in it and made her thirsty, and she squeezed out bugs from her legs before being rescued at the end of the film. Was this based on a real crash? I always think I'll see it some late night while I'm up, but I haven't seen it for years. — Jacqueline

FlickChick:
This is a question I've answered before, but you're not the only person with vivid memories of the Italian film I Miracoli Accadono Ancora/Miracles Still Happen (1974), which seems to have started airing on U.S. TV in the late 1970s/early '80s. For more details and an odd Werner Herzog connection, click here.

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