Leonard right here. The next column is written by my colleague Mark Searby highlighting British cinema previous and current. Please get pleasure from A Little bit of Crumpet.
I’ve at all times been a sucker for movies about Robin Hood. Possibly it’s as a result of I used to be born & bred in Nottinghamshire, so the legend of Robin looms giant in each nook of the county. Over the many years many Robin Hood movies have tried, and most have failed, to seize the true spirit of the outlaw. The excessive watermark of Robin Hood movies remains to be Disney’s animated journey from 1973.
Virtually twenty years previous to Disney’s sing-a-long Robin Hood, Hammer Movies launched their very own Robin Hood movie. Males of Sherwood Forest got here 4 years earlier than the studio would cement itself as one of many nice horror movie studios of all time with Christopher Lee’s unnerving tackle the Dracula legend. However Males of Sherwood Forest is a way more light-hearted take from the studio.
Set in direction of the tip of the twelfth Century, whereas Richard the Lionheart is imprisoned in Germany his depraved brother John plans to steal his throne. Robin Hood disguises himself as a troubadour in-order to make plans to rescue Richard. However Robin is captured and his Merry Males should formulate a plan to avoid wasting him whereas additionally saving the King.
If you happen to’ve come for the swashbuckling, then you definately’ve come to the mistaken place. This isn’t a movie full of sword play. There’s a transient, and entertaining, sword battle throughout the citadel that see’s Robin and Friar Tuck do battle in opposition to loads of henchmen. There are a couple of swings of swords and plenty of throwing of weaponry round. However that’s about your lot on the subject of actual motion. As an alternative, many of the movie see’s Robin ducking n’ diving across the citadel. He’s principally enjoying a giant recreation of Cover N’ Search with John’s military. How anyone doesn’t see him is past me, particularly within the tightest and reddest pair of tights you’re ever more likely to see. Neither is it probably the most ingenious of concepts to disguise oneself as a troubadour once they put on Garibaldi Pink, you possibly can see that brilliant color from the coast in Lincolnshire, let alongside being in the identical Nottinghamshire citadel. Robin doesn’t even change his hair type or voice. He seems to be precisely the identical besides he’s sporting crimson, and but no one in John’s military notices it’s the outlaw they’re meant to be capturing. It’s the Clark Kent glasses syndrome.
Nonetheless, there may be some leisure available on this jovial film. And it belongs to Friar Tuck. A person so crafty on the subject of being with John’s military that you’d say he was depraved had been it not for him truly being on the great man’s facet. One such second entails Tuck enjoying an early model of roulette, however with star indicators, with the henchmen. Every time the ball spins within the cup it lands on a star signal that the henchmen haven’t wager on. So, Tuck rakes within the items of Gold. A sly, outdated wily character that’s making up the principles as he goes alongside. Giving just a little wink to Robin… sorry, the troubadour… and the delightfully upbeat Maid Marrion as to his ruse. Friar Tuck wins the sport, and steals the movie.
Today we’d name this movie a “campy affair,” but again in 1954 it might have been seen as a state-of-the-art motion/journey flick. This was Hammer’s first foray into color movies. Utilizing the little-known Eastmancolour movie inventory to shoot. It is a vivid movie that has loads of pop to the colors. Sherwood Forest could be very inexperienced, and Robin’s crimson tights are very, Very, VERY crimson. Hammer actually pushed the boat out when it got here to financing their first color movie, and whereas the precise film is an inoffensive, daytime TV romp that may evenly entertain, it’s the color within the movie that basically brings all of it to life.
So, whereas Males of Sherwood Forest doesn’t fairly have the legend of Robin Hood doing the working & leaping that we’d hope for (additionally, the much less stated in regards to the so-called “Nottingham” accents, the higher), this launch is fairly stacked with new bonus options. One such additional characteristic that’s effectively value declaring is an opportunity to see a long-thought-lost TV pilot that was ultimately became a movie.
Wolfshead is a really completely different try on the Robin Hood story in comparison with Males of Sherwood Forest. It is a grittier tackle Robin of Loxley, and it’s all the higher for it. Opening on a large, expansive shot of a person working throughout hills with jagged mountains within the background, this earthier starting is indicative of the remainder of the movie because it very a lot makes use of the areas – hills, forests, streams, wood shacks, crumbling castles – to the story’s benefit because it reveals the barebones that the peasants had been residing beneath, even Robert (not Robin on this model) himself struggling to discover a place he can name residence. It doesn’t assist that Roger of Doncaster is searching Robert after he protected a person & his two kids from the depraved Geoffrey of Doncaster (Roger’s extra athletic brother). So units off a sequence of occasions that sees quick, sharp bursts of violence coupled with lengthy scenes of dialogue that characteristic a few of the greatest Nottinghamshire/Yorkshire accents of any Robin Hood movie ever made. The scheming Doncaster brothers are the movie’s profitable hand as they plot a option to kill Robert and proceed their ascent to the throne within the absence of King Richard. Nasty, conniving and devious, it’s a deal with to see the villains of a Robin Hood story be performed with out camp or tongue-in-cheek. It provides an air of worry to all of it. Nonetheless, to maintain Robert upbeat the fresh-faced, and quite pleasant Woman Marian Fitzwalter does hold making an attempt to sneak off into the woods with him. A slight tinge of romance glints from the off between these two with out it getting sentimental or mushy.
There may be far more realism on this movie than many of the different Robin Hood outings. Its tone is downbeat (though Friar Tuck’s snort is one to lighten the temper), but that provides to the movie having a significantly better total really feel to being a grittier tackle the legendary outlaw. It’s a disgrace Wolfshead didn’t result in it being commissioned for a TV collection, because it was devised to do, as a result of primarily based on this movie, the TV present might have been an actual stand-out.
Males of Sherwood Forest (together with Wolfshead) is on the market in 4k UHD or Blu-Ray from Hammer Movies.
