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Sword of Sherwood Forest
UK 1960
produced by Sidney Cole, Richard Greene, Michael Carreras (executive) for Hammer
directed by Terence Fisher
starring Richard Greene, Sarah Branch, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco, Nigel Green, Niall MacGinnis, Jack Gwillim, Edwin Richfield, Oliver Reed, Patrick Crean, Vanda Godsell, Dennis Lotis, Derren Nesbitt, James Neylin, John Franklin, Desmond Llewelyn, Anew McMaster, Adam Keane, Charles Lamb, Aiden Grennell, Jack Cooper, Barry De Boulay, John Hoey, Reginald Hearne, Maureen Halligan, Brian Rawlinson
written by Alan Hackney, music by Alun Hoddinott
Robin Hood, Robin Hood (Richard Greene), Hammer's Robin Hood
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Robin Hood (Richard Greene), on the run from the Sheriff of Nottingham
(Peter Cushing) as usual and trying to court Lady Marian (Sarah Branch)
while at it, makes the acquaintance of the Earl of Newark (Richard Pasco),
who wants to hire him as assassin, yet refuses to tell him who he has to
kill. Being a bit on the curious side, Robin tags along, until he finds
out that the Earl is friends with the Sheriff, upon which he hightails it,
naturally. Eventually, Robin finds out that his supposed victim was the
Lord Chancellor (Jack Gwillim) himself, who's also the Archbishop of
Canterbury and one of the few righteous politicians in the country. Robin
and his men rush to his rescue, but find all of the Chancellor's men
slaughtered, and he has only survived because he has found refuge in a
nearby convent. The Sheriff is not pleased with the way things have
turned out and tells Newark, who's in his employ, so in no uncertain terms
- and is killed by Newark's own son (Oliver Reed) for that. Then Newark
and his men manage to bribe their way into the convent to take matters
into their own hands, but Robin and men have already found their way in as
well, dressed up as monks, and now guard the Lord Chancellor with their
own lives - however, it's the Chancellor who ultimately has to fight,
defeat and kill Newark himself in a duel. Though filmed with an
entirely different cast (apart from Richard Greene of course), this movie
feels like a continuation of the series The
Adventures of Robin Hood inasmuch as it tells not the
larger-than-life tale of its lead character (like so many other Robin
Hood big screen adaptations but merely some episode in the life of
Robin and his merry men that starts with no origins-story but has the
characters well-established, and ends with tieing up nothing more than the
story at hand, as if another adventure with Robin would follow the very
next week. All of this though doesn't necessarily mean Sword of
Sherwood Forest is a bad film ... but in this case, the movie is just
that nevertheless, a very boring adventure movie that seriously lacks in
pacing, features next to no proper action scenes and those it does feature
are unexciting, and it shows that while director Terence Fisher, who by
the way has directed several episodes of The
Adventures of Robin Hood, was a master of horror and
atmosphere, was more a fish out of water when it came to swashbuckling
entertainment.
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