Eight years after Book II of North And South was released, a third volume of the Main and Hazard family saga was released. A whole lot of the cast returned and a whole lot of roles were also played by different actors. Among other things Patrick Swayze's character is murdered right at the beginning by Philip Casnoff whom we thought had been blown up in his warehouse filled with guns and explosives, blown up along with his plans to overthrow Jefferson Davis and establish a military dictatorship for the Confederacy. I'll say this for Casnoff's Elkannah Bent character the man dreamed big.
No way he should have survived, but they brought him back just like in the old movie serials you see someone who should have died, but back he comes for the next chapter. The second thing about Book III is that the whole saga is based on the enduring Damon and Pythias friendship between Orry Main and George Hazzard from South Carolina and Pennsylvania respectively. Although the friendship went through a lot of stress it endured as the country endured.
But now Yin has been eliminated from being in tandem with a Yang making Book III somewhat off balance. Bent kills Swayze and then kills Hazzard's wife allowing James Read and Lesley Anne Down to comfort each other.
But Casnoff is not finished with his villainy. He kidnaps the young son of Kyle Chandler who plays Main cousin Charles Main and takes him into the wild west and awaits Charles Main to attempt a rescue. That was always Casnoff's weakness in the first two books, he thought he was the smartest guy around and no one was shrewder. Helps when you also think your destined to be an American Napoleon Bonaparte.
In fact my favorite scene in the film is when Read tells Chandler that back at West Point he and Swayze actually saved Casnoff from drowning in an icy river. Goes to show no good deed goes unpunished.
Meanwhile back at the old Main plantation of Mont Royal Lesley Anne Down tries to bring the estate back to life with some mining as well as planting. But she's faced by a new character, an old brother we didn't know about Cooper Main played by Robert Wagner. He's fallen in with a lot of the poor white trash that have formed a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He wants to get the property away from Down who is shunned by proper southern society because to use the language of the day she's an Octaroon, meaning she is one eighth black.
As for that noted southern belle and nymphomaniac Ashton Main, she's fallen so low that she's know working as a whore out west. But Terri Garber marries well to a husband who says he'll aid in her quest to get Mont Royal back. But things don't quite work out there either.
Book III isn't bad, but it's not up to the grand pageant standards of Books one and two.
No way he should have survived, but they brought him back just like in the old movie serials you see someone who should have died, but back he comes for the next chapter. The second thing about Book III is that the whole saga is based on the enduring Damon and Pythias friendship between Orry Main and George Hazzard from South Carolina and Pennsylvania respectively. Although the friendship went through a lot of stress it endured as the country endured.
But now Yin has been eliminated from being in tandem with a Yang making Book III somewhat off balance. Bent kills Swayze and then kills Hazzard's wife allowing James Read and Lesley Anne Down to comfort each other.
But Casnoff is not finished with his villainy. He kidnaps the young son of Kyle Chandler who plays Main cousin Charles Main and takes him into the wild west and awaits Charles Main to attempt a rescue. That was always Casnoff's weakness in the first two books, he thought he was the smartest guy around and no one was shrewder. Helps when you also think your destined to be an American Napoleon Bonaparte.
In fact my favorite scene in the film is when Read tells Chandler that back at West Point he and Swayze actually saved Casnoff from drowning in an icy river. Goes to show no good deed goes unpunished.
Meanwhile back at the old Main plantation of Mont Royal Lesley Anne Down tries to bring the estate back to life with some mining as well as planting. But she's faced by a new character, an old brother we didn't know about Cooper Main played by Robert Wagner. He's fallen in with a lot of the poor white trash that have formed a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He wants to get the property away from Down who is shunned by proper southern society because to use the language of the day she's an Octaroon, meaning she is one eighth black.
As for that noted southern belle and nymphomaniac Ashton Main, she's fallen so low that she's know working as a whore out west. But Terri Garber marries well to a husband who says he'll aid in her quest to get Mont Royal back. But things don't quite work out there either.
Book III isn't bad, but it's not up to the grand pageant standards of Books one and two.