R0BTRAIN's Bad Ass Cinema: Swords of Doom – The Adventures of Robin Hood

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There is certain sense of exuberance and lighthearted charm that exists in the best work of George Lucas and Steve Spielberg. Usually they site serials such as Adventures of Flash Gordon or the Republic Serials of the 1930’s and 40’s. A few Hollywood productions were also ale to keep up this spirit of adventure. One of the most influential of these pictures is undoubtedly The Adventures of Robin Hood. The tale of Robin Hood has been to the screen several times, though never as entertainingly as this 1938 production. The Adventures of Robin Hood is a land mark epic with a lot of zest for pageantry and romance. The film may seem kind of silly today, but for its time, no film had more exciting action or battle scenes.

In the 1930’s each studio had its own style of picture that it produced. While other studios were producing musicals and epics, Warner Brothers was the home of hard hitting crime dramas such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Angels with Dirty Faces. While the success with the genre would continue through the 1940’s, the studio wanted to try and expand its audience. Success would come in 1935 with Mutiny on the Bounty, which scored the Best Picture Oscar for the studio. Another project that met with success would be a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which featured the studio’s stock company including James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, and Olivia de Havilland. The film got a Best Picture Nomination as well as a win for Best Cinematography.

When the studio acquired the story of Robin Hood, the original plan was to again have the stock company in the film’s major roles. Leading the way would be James Cagney as the swashbuckling hero. Unfortunately for the studio, Cagney walked out of the studio around the same time, and production was halted for three years. In that time, another star would rise at the WB. With the 1935 release of Captain Blood, Errol Flynn came out of nowhere to become a huge star. Enjoying even more success with Charge of the Light Brigade and The Prince and the Pauper, Flynn established himself enough to be considered for Warner Brothers’ ambitious Robin Hood adaptation. The move would turn out to be an inspired one, but The Adventures of Robin Hood would go on to hold many interesting stories. The film is now considered a classic, but the road to its status was not an easy one.


The Adventures of Robin Hood Starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains. Directed by William Keighley and Michael Curtiz.

The film begins with title cards telling us that the England’s beloved leader, Richard the Lionheart, has left his realm in his famous attempt to reclaim the Holy Land. His leaving has stirred a hornet’s nest of struggle between Saxons and Normans for control of England. Making matters worse is the King’s underhanded and greedy brother Prince John (Claude Rains). The Prince has wrestled control of the country away from Richard’s appointed Regent. A Norman, John is a tyrannical ruler, taxing his Saxon subjects to the brink of starvation and using the troops of his friend Sir Guy of Gisbourne to rule with an iron fist.


The only nobleman to stand up to John is Sir Robin of Loxley. Robin openly defies the Prince, making him the target of Gisbourne and his cohort the Sheriff of Nottingham. To illustrate his feelings for the new ruler, Robin bursts through doors of the castle’s great banquet hall, a newly poached deer thrown over his shoulder. In an open act of defiance, Robin throws his weight around, openly calling out the Prince’s laws as treason while eating the Norman’s food. Before Gisbourne can spring his men into action, Robin has already declared he will be an eternal thorn in the Prince’s side, leapt to his feet and made a daring escape. Also important to the scene is the introduction of Robin and Maid Marion (Olivia de Havilland), while she adamantly refuses to believe Robin’s claims of John misusing his power, his roguish nature does catch her attention.

Robin’s promises to John come true, as scene after scene Loxley and his men are seen rescuing falsely accused Saxons and giving John’s riches to the poor of Nottingham. Robin inspires loyalty in his band of outlaws including traditional faces Will Scarlett (Patric Knowles), Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette), and Little John (Alan Hale). When Robin learns of a ransom for Richard’s life that John refuses to pay, Robin takes even further action. Robin Hood and his merry men swarm a royal procession, taking the riches with them in order to secure Richard’s freedom. With the procession is Maid Marion herself, who finally learns firsthand of the hardships the poor are facing every day. Her opinion of Robin changes when she learns of his plans to free Richard.

The three villains use this info against Robin, by capturing him at an archery tournament by enticing him with a moment with Marion. The maiden is able to alert Robin’s men in time and stop the outlaw’s execution. Cementing her feelings for Robin, Marion herself is made outlaw by Prince John and the jealous Gisbourne.

The film comes to a climax with Robin and his men storming the castle, trying to stop the coronation of Prince John and Marion’s subsequent hanging for treason. The scene erupts in a huge battle as Robin’s men and Gisbourne’s soldiers fight it out while Robin and Gisbourne duel, the fate England in their hands. The scene eclipses any battle scene up to that point.

While eclipsed in notoriety the following year by the release of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, no film up that point had even attempted to display as much showmanship as Robin Hood does. But the film was not without its problems before coming to the screen. Aside from the first obstacle of finding the film’s star, the film ran into an issue that would have killed a lesser film.

After a few weeks of shooting the film on location, Producer Hal B. Wallis noticed the film was going way over budget, and over schedule. Worsening matters, Wallis was completely unsatisfied with the film’s pace shown in the daily rushes. When the crew finished its location shoot at Lake Sherwood, CA, Director William Keighley was promptly fired. While this is not uncommon, most of the time this spells disaster for a production. Veteran Director Michael Curtiz was brought in to salvage the production.

Curtiz was known for his talent for pumping up action sequences in films and The Adventures of Robin Hood is no exception. Everything from sword fights, to battle scenes, to horse riding, to the most minute stunt looks absolutely incredible in the picture. Flynn’s stuntmen can be seen climbing vast walls, leaping on and off horses, swinging from vine to vine, and fighting off dozens of guards without breaking a sweat. Amazingly enough the film avoids the tendency to feel disjointed or uneven that often plagues productions where there is a changing of the guard in the Director’s chair. While Robin Hood’s pace feels leisurely at times, the film’s action never fails to get the heart pumping.


Much of the credit for the film’s action has to go to the actors involved and the work of two men behind the scenes. Fred Cavens, the fencing instructor for the film choreographed fights that still stand the test of time today. While early swashbuckling adventures from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and others vary in quality from quaint to ridiculous, Robin Hood’s fight scenes shimmer with action and suspense. The choreography works stupendously as Cavens matched Flynn’s boyish ferocity with Basil Rathbone’s red-blooded fury.

Also one cannot understate the extraordinary work of professional archer Howard Hill. Hill’s feats in the film are amazing as he is on target over and over without the use of trick photography. As Loxley goes to win the archery tournament in the middle of the picture, it is Hill’s archery skills that allowed him to split the arrow of Robin’s opponent (also played by Hill). To add to this every time a stunt man takes an arrow in the picture, it was Hill’s pinpoint accuracy and a lot of padding that kept the stunt men from being injured. Each stunt man would actually be shot by Hill with a real arrow with padding; a steel breastplate overlaid with some balsa wood to stop the shot.


Adding to the film’s pomp was the fact that The Adventures of Robin Hood was the first film in the studio’s history to be shot in three strip Technicolor. The film was one of only 25 films in that year to be shot in color. Never had colors ever been so bright on the big screen before. Costumes of every luminous hue made the film a beautiful sight to see. Exteriors were even painted to add even more color to the screen to catch the eye. This is one of the elements of the film that really set it apart from other big films of the time. Few films today can even attempt to match Robin Hood’s beautiful color pallet. This is amazing considering the film predated several of the film’s people associate with being the landmark color films of the period, such as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. If any film was ever a Technicolor masterpiece, it was this one.

If any character has been perfectly cast, it was Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood. Flynn is able to pull off the character’s boyish charm. Even with modern film making technology, and bigger budgets, no portrayal of the character has ever been more memorable. Helping also is not only Flynn’s timing with a sword, but his quick-witted quips. The word exchange during the final sword duel as Rathbone’s Sir Guy of Gisbourne asks “Do you know any prayers?” To which Robin answers “I’ll say one for you!” is one of my favorite lines ever. It’s so hard to imagine the role going to the vertically challenged James Cagney as it was originally cast. Flynn is as perfect in the role as Connery is as 007 or Christopher Reeve as Superman. Others may claim to inhabit the role, but no one will ever take their iconic places.

The amazing thing is that the rest of the cast is just as wonderful. Olivia de Havilland is the picture of innocent beauty in her portrayal of Maid Marion. Her scenes with Flynn’s Robin are direct and sincere, but so fairytale-like that it doesn’t matter how easily she falls for him. The love scenes are beautifully filmed and the chemistry is so good between the leads that they are almost beyond criticism.

The villains of the piece are equally as dastardly as they are entertaining. Each is able pull off a different type of villain successfully, with seemingly little effort. The lovable Claude Raines is pitch-perfect as the loathsome Prince John. His quips are quick and effete, and characterization of John as a pompous wimp elicits anger as well as pity for the man at times. Melville Cooper’s Sheriff of Nottingham is a buffoonish oaf, but is enormously funny in each of his scenes. The real star of the villainous trio is Basil Rathbone’s Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Everything from his body posture to his oral sparring with Robin makes the film in so many ways. His villain here is the best of his career. Gisbourne seethes with malice and steals many of the scenes he is in.

An amazing story to come out of the film’s production deals with the film’s composer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Korngold was said to be the greatest child prodigy since Mozart. The composer had initially turned down the opportunity to do the film’s score because he felt he could not do the picture justice with his score. Action films were not the forte of the classical composer, who was more suited to operas. Persuaded to come out to California to give the project one more glance, the composer’s native Poland was invaded by the forces of Nazi Germany. If the man had not come out to work on the film, he would have been forced to stay in Poland and forced to live under the Nazi regime.

Re-energized by the circumstances of the event, Korngold’s score is amazing. The brilliant composer constructed his music around the tones of the actor’s dialogue! One amazing sequence illustrating the genius of the music involves a scene after Robin and his men have captured the royal procession in order to raise King Richard’s ransom. A moment between Robin and Marion speaking about the Norman oppression of Robin’s Saxon brothers turns into a scene of love simply because of the score in the background. Robin and Marion speak no dialogue pertaining to love, but you can feel it growing within them just because of the score music.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a classic from top to bottom. From the sets, to the performances, to one of the screen’s greatest sword fights, Robin Hood is a film that stands the test of time. Never has a film dazzled with such abundance of beautiful color, dialogue, action and boyish charm. No other Robin Hood will ever be able to match it.

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Robert Sutton feels the most at home when he's watching some movie scumbag getting blown up, punched in the face, or kung fu'd to death, especially in that order. He's a founding writer for the movies section of Insidepulse.com, featured in his weekly column R0BTRAIN's Badass Cinema as well as a frequent reviewer of DVDs and Blu-rays. Also, he's a proud Sony fanboy, loves everything Star Wars and Superman related and hopes to someday be taken seriously by his friends and family.