make a four-hour film and cast Richard Chamberlain as Aramis. It was later decided to turn the script into two films. Fraser says he wrote them as two films, but no one told the actors. Lester says Fraser wrote the scripts in five weeks and they were "perfect... just wonderful." "It's the journalism training," said Fraser. Casting Lester says the Salkinds left him alone creatively for most of the film apart from insisting that Raquel Welch and Simon Ward be cast. "Raquel is very big in all the small countries," said Ilya Salkind. "I did the picture because of Dick Lester," said Charlton Heston. In August 1973 Welch withdrew from the film due to creative and artistic differences. She announced she would instead make a film Decline and Fall of a Very Nice Lady. However Welch wound up rejoining the film. Filming The film was originally meant to be shot in Hungary. However after visiting the country Lester felt this would not be feasible, in part because of restrictions of the government on filming. The movie ended up being shot in Spain over seventeen weeks. Locations included Segovia, where Lester had made A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Lester says the producers assembled twenty minutes of footage and sold the film to 20th Century Fox. Lester says Michel Legrand "had about a week and a half" to write the music. Reception Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 83% based on reviews from 12 critics. Variety gave the film a positive review, and wrote: "The Three Musketeers take very well to Richard Lester’s provocative version that does not send it up but does add comedy to this adventure tale." They praised the various performances, but noted that although Dunaway is underused she gets to make up for it in the sequel. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Lester seems almost exclusively concerned with action, preferably comic, and one gets the impression after a while that he and his fencing masters labored too long in choreographing the elaborate duels. They're interesting to watch, though they are without a great deal of spontaneity." Awards and nominations Salkind Clause The film was originally intended to be an epic which ran for three hours including an intermission, but during production, it was determined the film could not make its announced release date