What a badass fucking movie guys. It had been a long time since I had seen this
one and I remember it being good but I forgot how ballsy Robin is. The guy walks right into villainous Prince
John’s castle all by his lonesome, throws a dead royal deer down on the table in
front of John, sits down, gnaws on some gamebird and makes incredibly
pugnacious remarks about how bad of a person the Prince is.
Robin doesn’t give a fuck and that’s why I love him. He doesn’t doubt his own ability or his morality
for a second. He believes it’s his
divine duty to protect the people of England. And his band of merry men are his cult
followers that keep the singular goal of defying Prince John at every turn
until King Richard returns from the Crusades at the fore.
To anchor this piece you have a marvelous trifecta of acting
talent. Errol Flynn (Captain Blood) as Robin Hood keeps you
on your toes with his sharp tongue and bold feats, Basil Rathbone (The Hound of the Baskervilles) as Sir
Guy of Gisbourne is a stuffy douche that serves as Robin’s main opponent, and
Claude Rains (The Invisible Man) is
the haughty and egomaniacal Prince John who plays it with just the right amount
of wimpiness so that you know he’s really some wiener behind all his power. And sure, you also have Olivia de Havilland (Gone with the Wind) as Robin’s love
interest who does very well and even saves Robin’s life at one point (in fact
she almost does it twice if it weren’t for that piece of shit Guy of Gisbourne). So a great cast all around.
Now I know what you’re all thinking, “this is from 1938,
it’s probably boring and filled with terribly staged scenes of nothing but
trite dialogue”. And that couldn’t be farther
from the truth. This thing is almost all
meat. There’s a ton of action including
several sword fights, a hand to hand tussle, a chase on horseback, arrows are flying
all over the place including into henchmen’s chests (for real too, they hired
an expert archer to shoot arrows into actors chests that were heavily padded, I
mean holy shit that’s a fucking crazy thing to do for just a movie) and there’s
an archery contest. It’s kinda
unbelievable how many people Robin kills throughout the film without thinking
twice. And the non-action stuff is
fantastic too because they’re always advancing the story and shit keeps
escalating.
Jeez, Robin's about to shoot that guy at point blank range with his arrow, what a crazy sonuvabitch |
I’ll fully admit that this is sort of a hammy picture. Errol Flynn especially tends to deliver his
lines in an over the top cartoony way.
But his performance is still cool because he backs his shit up with very
aggressive and athletic action. You
know, I was gonna mention something about having the mindset that this is like
a 30’s version of a comic book movie but fuck that. This is just an awesome film. I don’t care if it feels a little hokey at
times, it’s a fuckin’ balls out adventure and a beautifully vivid colorful picture
to look at. If you’re an action
connoisseur like I am then this is a must see.
what is a URL? I like your comments, but it seems that you haven't given reviews to interesting landmark films in our society. the 55-early 70's were filled with controvesial movies, i'd like to hear your take on them, not many comedies either. if i can ask for your reviews on some films that i really wish you would review. or maybe just a review of the body of work of stars or directors. a really good ride of a story is "The Vikings" Tony Curtis, Vivian Leigh, before tony and Kirk Douglas starred in " Sparticus" also it has all the action with each star gets Maimed and there is surprising intrigue. keep op the good work.
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