Review of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) by Phil H — 24 Mar 2013

The greatest Flynn swashbuckler?? yes. Its got the lot, a princess, sword fights, dashing heroes, evil baddies, great huge battles and a soppy happy ending. The whole thing looks gorgeous, the colour like all oldies is gorgeous in Technicolour and the cast, again, like all oldies is perfect. Rains, Rathbone, Knowles, Hale, Havilland, Pallette etc...its pure gold in every sense and deserves to be remembered forever. I Love the costumes and their bright vivid designs and crests, the excellent matte paintings used for Nottingham Castle and with dare devil stuns without the use of CGI nonsense this is the best Robin Hood flick made period.

Of course the whole film is based on the Robin Hood fable which in turn is rather debatable, and naturally Hollywood makes the most of this by really boosting the artistic license factor. Every character and location is as you would expect, cliched to the max really, taking the historic legend and virtually making it into a cartoonish fantasy. But you can't look into this too much, this is a very old film which has influenced pretty much all 'Hood' adventures ever since, influenced itself by the classic black n white Fairbanks film. These films were made in simpler times.

The archery tournament also highlights more of the grand lavish scale that was shown in production/craftsmanship, its a rainbow of colours and beautiful designs in every field from the Norman troops to the fair ladies in the background, its all perfect. Lets not forget Howard Hill and his amazing arrow shooting talents hehe they actually did shoot the actors in this film. Hill had to hit a precise spot on the actor, any other spot and there would be a serious injury to deal with! can you imagine that happening today!.

Warner Bros were THE studio of the time and they knew how to make a rollocking good sweeping action epic, plus they had the men to direct them to, Curtiz being the best of the best for constant hits. The recent Bluray enchances this to beyond greatness, stunning!, probably Errol's most noted and most recognised work, maybe not the best in terms of his acting but its a legend of a movie that all ages can't fail to enjoy.