The Men of Sherwood Forest, 1954.
Directed by Val Guest.
Starring Don Taylor, Reginald Beckwith, Eileen Moore, Ballard Berkeley, Patrick Holt, John Van Eyssen, Harold Lang, Bernard Bresslaw, and Leslie Linder.
SYNOPSIS:
The legendary outlaw Robin Hood is asked to rescue King Richard from capture but ends up getting captured himself.
In 1954 Hammer produced their first colour feature, that movie being The Men of Sherwood Forest, the studio’s take on the old English legend of the outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor. After World War II had ended, film studios became enamoured with the story and several Robin Hood movies were made, probably to cheer people up and offer a sense of adventure that audiences could enjoy from the comfort of a cinema seat, but timing is crucial in the entertainment industry, and whilst this first foray into colour was no doubt exciting at the time, perhaps Robin Hood was not the right movie to promote this with?
Because hindsight is a wonderful thing, we can look back now and see that the Robin Hood stories really took off with the 1955 TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Richard Greene in the title role. Most of that success could be put down to televisions in people’s homes being a new thing and people didn’t have to go out to get their fix of fantasy and adventure, but every few years someone would have another go at bringing the legend to life. Hammer themselves did it again in 1960 with Sword of Sherwood Forest, also starring Richard Greene, and it is that actor’s association with the role that means this earlier effort often gets overlooked.
But despite not having the star power of the Richard Greene series and movie, The Men of Sherwood Forest has its own energy that makes it a solid, if unremarkable, entry into the Robin Hood saga. Australian actor-turned-director Don Taylor – who went on to direct Damien: Omen II and Escape from the Planet of the Apes – plays Robin Hood, or to be more accurate, he impersonates Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood as there is so much swashbuckling going on here it is almost a pirate movie, but that is not a negative for Taylor as he does it very well and adds a much-needed playfulness to what could otherwise have been a very dull story.
Although it is quite dull when it comes to details, as the basics are that King Richard has been captured in Germany but has managed to sneak out plans of his return via a small wooden toy. Robin is asked to rescue the king, so he and Friar Tuck (Reginald Beckwith) go undercover but are betrayed, becoming prisoners themselves, meaning there now must be two rescues.
It isn’t a plot worth looking too deeply into – things such as why a king would write down where he is going to resurface after being abroad and then hide the details – and just go with the idea that Robin and Tuck need to be rescued so they can rescue King Richard. And who is going to rescue them? Why, the Merry Men of course, only this movie doesn’t pay too much attention to them, with only Friar Tuck getting more than a couple of minutes-worth of screentime (and Reginald Beckwith does milk it for all it is worth, putting in a very jovial performance). Hammer regular John Van Eyssen appears briefly as Will Scarlett and Leslie Linder plays Little John for about a minute longer, and there is no Maid Marion here either, although we do have the beautiful Eileen Moore as Lady Alys, a noblewoman who helps with Robin’s escape, so she is the nearest we get. Also notable by his absence is Robin Hood’s old enemy the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is here in basically a walk-on part, but he has even less screen time than Will Scarlett – perhaps he would have been more prominent in the sequel?
But it is a sequel we never got, despite the movie doing quite well at the time. However, television was on the horizon and despite this being notable for Hammer’s first colour movie, their next few were not and so the momentum seemed to go out of it, which is a shame as The Men of Sherwood Forest is a fun romp, albeit one that feels like an extended episode of a TV show these days, but you could put that down to 70 years of hindsight.
For this package, Hammer have crammed in some delicious extras, the most notable of which is Wolfshead, the pilot episode of a TV series from 1970 that never happened. Coming in at just under an hour long and starring David Warbeck as Robin Hood, Hammer bought the unaired pilot to show as a second feature to show in cinemas in the 1970s and it is a very different beast than The Men of Sherwood Forest, with Warbeck’s interpretation a lot dryer and a lot less frivolous than Don Taylor’s. Not essential viewing but it is nice to have it here as an extra, if only to see where Hammer’s minds were at as the decades changed.
There are also featurettes covering Hammer’s foray into colour films, the memorable score and Swashbuckler, a light-hearted feature covering how Robin Hood was interpreted by Hammer and beyond with contributions from critic and writer Allan Bryce and Barry Forshaw. As always, Hammer have packaged this all up beautifully, with a booklet featuring new articles and reproductions of classic posters, housed in a stylish rigid slipcase.
So, if you are collecting these 4K UHD box sets from Hammer then no doubt this will be on your radar already, and it is another sterling effort in terms of an overall package. As a movie, however, The Men of Sherwood Forest may be a lot of fun, full of derring-do, charm and a vibrant colour palette to show off Hammer’s new (for them) technology, but unless you are a Robin Hood fanatic it doesn’t really have much of a rewatch value, its strengths feeling more like curiosities for the uninitiated rather than a confident direction for the studio to go in.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
