Richard Greene returns as Robin Hood in Sword of Sherwood Forest, bringing his television incarnation from The Adventures of Robin Hood to the big screen for Hammer Films. Directed by Terence Fisher, the film trades the television series’ half-hour adventures for a compact feature-length conspiracy involving crooked nobles, a threatened Archbishop and Peter Cushing looking magnificently evil. It is Robin Hood by way of Hammer, although anyone expecting the studio to suddenly discover the production values of Ben-Hur is going to have a rather long afternoon.
The film opens with Robin Hood (Richard Greene) rescuing a badly wounded man (Desmond Llewelyn) who is being hunted through Sherwood Forest by the Sheriff’s men. Before expiring, the stranger presses a mysterious gold medallion into Robin’s hands, giving our hero both a clue and the sort of mysterious jewellery that invariably means trouble. Robin then has a rather pleasant meet-cute with Maid Marian Fitzwater (Sarah Branch), who later leaves him a note asking him to meet her at a local inn.
Sherwood Forest is great for these kinds of hook-ups.
Unfortunately, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Peter Cushing) is also there, offering Robin a full pardon in exchange for information about the mysterious outlaw. Robin quite reasonably refuses to sell himself out, at which point the Sheriff’s men emerge from hiding, and he has to fight his way out. Marian, who knew absolutely nothing about the treachery, had actually arranged the meeting because she wanted Robin to obtain his pardon, thereby making him respectable enough to become eligible dating material.
Medieval romance apparently comes with paperwork.
The Sheriff responds to this setback by leading a large armed contingent into Sherwood Forest, where Little John (Nigel Green) and fellow Merry Man Martin (Derren Nesbitt) spot the soldiers approaching. Little John rides back to warn Robin while Martin stays behind to keep watch, which turns out to be an exceptionally poor career decision. The Sheriff catches Martin and offers him the usual medieval employee-benefits package: reveal Robin’s whereabouts and receive a pardon, or keep quiet and die. Martin gives up the location of Robin’s current hideout, only to be murdered anyway because apparently the Sheriff considers promises optional. Marian later discovers the dying Martin and is understandably horrified, while the Sheriff continues his campaign against Robin and anyone unfortunate enough to have met him.
“Sheriff, I’m getting the impression that you are…not nice.”
While visiting Friar Tuck (Niall MacGinnis), Robin encounters Edward, Earl of Newark (Richard Pasco) and Lord Melton (Oliver Reed), who are impressed by his skill with a bow and decide to recruit this talented stranger for a spot of assassination. Their intended victim is Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Jack Gwillim), who is acting as regent for King Richard the Lionheart while the king is away on crusade. The Archbishop is blocking the Sheriff’s plan to confiscate the estate of the late Lord of Bawtry, who has conveniently died overseas, so the Sheriff and his noble accomplices decide that murder is an efficient way of resolving the legal dispute. Robin, naturally, has no interest in murdering an innocent Archbishop, although the Earl and Melton initially have no idea that the suspiciously capable archer they are courting is the notorious Robin Hood.
“Should we split arrows? I’m really good at that.”
Maid Marian, meanwhile, seeks out the Archbishop for her own reasons, hoping to secure the land that rightfully belongs to Martin’s family despite the Sheriff’s insistence that she stay out of “outlaw dealings.” As the Earl continues testing Robin’s archery skills, the Sheriff eventually arrives and exposes Robin’s identity, forcing our hero to escape. Robin soon learns that Marian is on her way to meet the Archbishop, putting her directly in the path of the Sheriff’s schemes and the Earl’s increasingly murderous ambitions. From there the film barrels through ambushes, disguises, sword fights, escapes and the appearance of a suspiciously evil prioress, because apparently no Robin Hood adventure is complete without at least one member of the clergy who looks like she has been waiting years for an opportunity to betray somebody.
She’s the kind of nun who would help the Nazis.
Matters reach their appropriately bloody conclusion when Melton turns on the Sheriff after he objects to the Earl’s plan to murder the Archbishop inside a priory, because sacrilege is apparently one level of evil even the Sheriff considers excessive. Robin eventually exposes the conspiracy, the Archbishop survives and justice triumphs, proving once again that stealing the estate of a dead crusader is not a particularly sustainable business model when Robin Hood keeps shooting arrows at your plans.
And then it’s happy endings in Sherwood Forest.
Stray Observations:
• The Sheriff decides that assassinating the Archbishop is the sensible solution to a property dispute. Medieval conflict resolution was apparently not big on mediation.
• The conspirators recruit Robin Hood to murder the Archbishop without knowing the man they are trying to hire is the notorious Robin Hood, who is opposed to murdering innocent people. Excellent vetting process.
• The Archbishop travels around with considerably less security than you might expect for the man effectively running England while the king is away fighting a crusade.
• The Earl of Newark produces a pumpkin as an archery target despite the fact that pumpkins are native to the Americas and therefore have no business turning up in medieval England. History has been stabbed in the back by a vegetable.
• Oliver Reed appears as Lord Melton, looking considerably younger and already possessing the sort of face that suggests he has just thought of something unpleasant.
• Robin and his men repeatedly solve problems with disguises, deception and swordplay because apparently medieval England had no functioning complaints department.
• The Sheriff refusing to commit sacrilege is a nice surprise. Getting backstabbed by his own villainous partners is an even bigger one. Apparently, even Peter Cushing’s Sheriff of Nottingham has standards. They just happen to begin and end somewhere around murdering people and stealing their estates.
The Sheriff should have read the fine print on the villainy contract.
960’s Sword of Sherwood Forest grew naturally out of the enormous success of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the popular television series that had run from 1955 to 1959 with Richard Greene as the legendary outlaw. Greene and Sidney Cole produced the feature for Hammer in association with Yeoman Films, effectively taking the familiar television hero and giving him a Technicolor, widescreen adventure. The project therefore arrived with an unusual built-in advantage: audiences already knew Greene as Robin, while Hammer could bring its own stable of dependable performers and its house director, Terence Fisher, into the mix.
He’s no Errol Flynn, but Greene is a solid Robin Hood.
The production is also something of an oddity in Hammer’s history because, unlike most of the company’s films of this period, it was not made at its permanent home at Bray Studios in Berkshire. Instead, production was based at Ardmore Studios on Herbert Road in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland, with the surrounding Irish countryside providing the locations, including the Powerscourt Estate at Enniskerry. The decision gives the picture a surprisingly lush backdrop, with Wicklow standing in for Sherwood Forest and giving the film a genuine sense of open countryside rather than the usual collection of familiar Hammer locations wearing medieval costumes.
We get some fun romping through Sherwood Forest.
Alan Hackney’s screenplay and Terence Fisher’s direction keep the incidents jouncing along at a brisk enough pace that the film rarely has time to become tedious. A contemporary New York Times review similarly praised Hackney’s script and Fisher’s direction for keeping the action moving, while noting that the nicely tinted Sherwood Forest was as pretty as could be, Sarah Branch was an exceptionally voluptuous Maid Marian, and Greene was suitably limber, with Peter Cushing and Richard Pasco singled out for praise.
This film sports some great villainy.
The cast is one of the film’s strongest assets. Richard Greene is completely comfortable slipping back into Robin Hood, while Peter Cushing has an obvious field day as the Sheriff, playing villainy with the polished menace he could produce almost on demand. Nigel Green makes a sturdy Little John, Niall MacGinnis brings his usual characterful presence to Friar Tuck, Richard Pasco is effective as the Earl of Newark, Jack Gwillim gives the Archbishop some authority, and a very young Oliver Reed turns up as Lord Melton. Desmond Llewellyn also appears, years before becoming Q in the James Bond films. Most importantly, however, Greene is the only actor actually reprising his television role; the rest of the principal cast were new performers, even though several actors, including Nigel Green and Llewellyn, had appeared in the television series in other roles.
Nigel Green is one of my favourite Little Johns.
Compared with the great cinematic Robins who came before it, Sword of Sherwood Forest is much less flamboyant. Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood remains the gold standard for sheer swashbuckling spectacle, while Richard Greene’s television version was built around shorter adventures, familiar characters and a reassuringly episodic rhythm. This Hammer feature sits awkwardly between those worlds: it has the colour, widescreen presentation and theatrical ambitions of a feature film, but structurally it still feels like an expanded television adventure. Later Robin Hood films, from Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian to Kevin Reynolds’ Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, would attempt to make the legend darker, grander or more historically grounded. Sword of Sherwood Forest is content to give us Peter Cushing plotting murder while Richard Greene rides through Ireland shooting arrows at people, which is admittedly a perfectly respectable afternoon. He also has some fun villains to face off against.
Don’t miss out on this early Oliver Reed performance.
In conclusion, Sword of Sherwood Forest is an entertaining but modest Hammer adventure that never quite escapes the shadow of the television series from which it sprang. The cast is solid, the Irish locations are attractive, Fisher keeps the action moving, and Cushing is exactly the sort of Sheriff you want when the assignment calls for someone to look guilty before he has even opened his mouth. Unfortunately, the film does have a “we’re still making an episode of the series” feel when it comes to production value and storytelling scale. The big-screen version of a popular television series makes a rather feeble addition to the Robin Hood legend, but the actors try hard, Fisher keeps things lively, and the whole enterprise has enough charm to make its shortcomings forgivable. It is hardly a definitive Robin Hood adventure, but for a Hammer film made in the shadow of its own television predecessor, it puts up a surprisingly game fight.
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