Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) – Review

1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves takes a beloved folk legend, drenches it in studio money, and then quietly sidesteps much of the charm that made the story endure. It’s big, loud, occasionally stirring, and just self-serious enough to make you miss the days when Robin Hood actually seemed to enjoy himself. Even so, its cultural footprint is undeniable, though parts of it feel less like folklore and more like a medieval theme park designed in a boardroom.

Robin of Locksley (Kevin Costner), apparently the only English nobleman who sounds like he’s from California, begins his journey rotting in an Ayyubid prison during the Crusades. After escaping with fellow prisoner Peter Dubois (Liam Halligan) and a conveniently noble Moor named Azeem (Morgan Freeman), Robin promises to look after Peter’s sister Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). Peter promptly dies to make sure that promise carries maximum emotional weight, and Azeem pledges a life debt, because nothing says “friendship” like contractual obligation. Back in England, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) is busy plotting a coup while Robin’s father (Brian Blessed) is murdered for having the audacity to be loyal to the king.

 

This is the kind of guy who plots three murders before breakfast.

Returning home, Robin finds his estate trashed, his father dead, and his servant Duncan (Walter Sparrow) blinded, which really sets the tone for this supposed crowd-pleaser. He rescues a kid named Wulf and stumbles into Sherwood Forest, where he meets Little John (Nick Brimble), who challenges him to a duel because apparently that’s how job interviews worked in medieval England. Robin wins, earns the gang’s respect, and starts building his brand as a socially conscious outlaw. Meanwhile, Will Scarlet (Christian Slater), who sounds like he wandered in from a Breakfast Club audition, spends most of his time looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

 

“Chicks cannot hold their smoke, dat’s what it is.”

Robin forms his merry band, robs the rich, feeds the poor, and essentially invents grassroots activism with swords. Friar Tuck (Michael McShane) is recruited after a drunken brawl, Marian oscillates between independence and needing rescue, and the Sheriff escalates things by hiring Celtic warriors and deciding he should marry Marian for political gain. Also, there’s Mortianna (Geraldine McEwan), a witch who whispers prophecies and generally makes things uncomfortable. Is it just me, but doesn’t witchcraft seem more an Arthurian element rather than a Robin Hood one, or possibly Macbeth?

 

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

Things go predictably sideways when the Bishop of Hereford (Harold Innocent) betrays Marian,  Sherwood gets burned, and most of the outlaws are captured. Duncan dies after doing the one job he had left, Marian agrees to marry the Sheriff to save everyone, and Will Scarlet reveals he’s Robin’s half-brother in a twist that feels less like drama and more like someone remembered they needed one. The finale is a chaotic castle assault involving explosions (courtesy of Azeem), peasant uprisings, and a duel where Rickman chews through the scenery like it owes him money. The Sheriff dies, the witch gets stabbed, and King Richard (Sean Connery) pops in at the end like a surprise celebrity cameo to bless the wedding.

Historic Note: Sir Sean Connery shows up as King Richard at age sixty-one, while the real Richard the Lionheart returned to England in his mid-to-late 30s. Either the Crusades age you horribly, or this kingdom has terrible lighting.

Stray Observations:

• Robin spends years in the Crusades and comes back with zero accent continuity. Truly a linguistic miracle.
• No Prince John anywhere in sight, which is bold considering he’s usually the franchise’s go-to scheming weasel.
• Wanted posters are plastered everywhere despite the minor inconvenience that printing hadn’t been invented yet.
• The film treats “Nottingham” like it’s the Sheriff’s last name, when it’s actually just his job title. Imagine being called “Dave Office.”
• The Sheriff hires Celtic warriors who apparently exist solely to scream and set things on fire. Not to mention the fact that Celtic mercenaries are from a culture several centuries prior to the film’s setting.
• Not only do the Sheriff’s men haul massive siege engines through the dense Sherwood Forest, they somehow do it quietly enough to launch a surprise attack. Nothing slips by you like a stealth catapult.
• The Sherwood hideout is basically an Ewok village on steroids, sprawling and conspicuous enough that it should have its own postal code.
• The Sheriff decides the best way to secure power is forced marriage, because nothing says stable government like an unwilling ally.
• The studio reportedly trimmed Alan Rickman’s scenes after realizing he was running circles around Kevin Costner. Nothing says confidence like cutting your best performance.
• Early in the film, Marian proves she can go toe-to-toe with Robin in a fight, then later forgets all combat skills when captured, as if the script gently asked her to sit this one out.

 

“I thought I was supposed to be a girl boss?”

Now, the interesting part is that this wasn’t supposed to be another swashbuckling romp in the mould of 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Writer-producer Pen Densham had bigger, heavier ideas, imagining Robin as a privileged man radicalized by his experiences in the Crusades. It’s a more “modern” take, trying to inject social awareness and grit into a legend that traditionally thrived on charm and wit. The problem is that the film commits to this seriousness just enough to weigh itself down, but not enough to say anything particularly meaningful. You end up with a Robin Hood who lectures more than he dazzles, which is a bold strategy for a character famous for making rebellion look fun.

 

Question: Which of these is the sidekick?

Behind the scenes, the production had that delicious whiff of Hollywood rivalry. A competing Robin Hood film from 20th Century Fox was in development at the same time, one that reportedly leaned even harder into the grit and grime, doubling down on the “mud, blood, and moral ambiguity” approach before that became the default setting for historical epics. This version sprinted ahead and effectively scared the other one into irrelevance, beating it to the punch and sucking up all the oxygen. It’s the cinematic equivalent of showing up early, claiming the good seat, and daring anyone else to argue. The result was a film that dominated the box office, even if it didn’t exactly dominate hearts, leaving the grittier Fox take to fade into a “what if” footnote.

 

The “other” Robin Hood movie.

Director Kevin Reynolds, coming off his role as uncredited second unit director on Costner’s Dances with Wolves, brings a certain earnest, grounded sensibility. He deliberately avoids the breezy spectacle of something like Indiana Jones, aiming instead for a more “realistic” medieval world. That sounds noble until you realize Robin Hood might not be the story that benefits from restraint. There’s a tension between the grounded approach and the inherently fantastical elements, and the film never quite reconciles the two. It wants grit and myth at the same time, and they keep tripping over each other.

 

“Yub nub, eee chop yub nub!”

The casting is… eclectic, which is a polite way of saying it feels like a global casting call with minimal coordination. Cary Elwes wisely passed on the role of Robin, citing the contrived plot, but then went on to parody the whole thing in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which might be the most honest response possible. Kevin Costner stepped in and, after some failed attempts at an English accent, just gave up entirely, creating a Robin Hood who sounds like he’s about to order a cheeseburger. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s Marian starts as a proto–girl boss before being yanked back into traditional damsel in distress territory. Morgan Freeman, however, brings genuine dignity and warmth as Azeem, grounding the film whenever it threatens to float off into nonsense.

 

“I’m here to class up the joint.”

Then there’s Christian Slater, who delivers his lines like he’s still in a 90s teen drama, and it’s honestly kind of impressive how out of place he feels. His performance has this odd, twitchy modern energy that never quite syncs with the rest of the film. But towering above everyone is Alan Rickman, who essentially hijacks the film and turns it into his personal playground. Given free rein, he crafts a Sheriff of Nottingham who is theatrical, vicious, and wildly entertaining, gleefully bending the tone to his will. Every time he’s on screen, the movie suddenly remembers it could be fun, as if Rickman briefly wrestles control away from the film’s heavier instincts and injects a pulse back into it.

Note: The Sheriff has been many things over the years, but here he’s reimagined as a full-on practitioner of dark pagan rites, because apparently, simple tyranny needed a supernatural upgrade.

Compared to earlier adaptations, this version trades Errol Flynn’s effortless charm for angst and political messaging. That shift feels especially pronounced when you think about something like 1976’s Robin and Marian, which took a reflective, almost elegiac approach to the legend, or Disney’s animated Robin Hood, which leaned fully into playful charm and anthropomorphic mischief without a hint of existential crisis. Those films knew exactly what tone they were aiming for, whether wistful or whimsical. Later versions would either lean back into humour or double down on realism, but Prince of Thieves sits awkwardly in the middle, unsure of what it wants to be. It’s too serious to be escapist fun and too uneven to be a definitive reinterpretation, which is probably why it’s remembered more than it’s loved.

 

“Sorry, Robin, but you’re just so darn bland.”

In conclusion, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a fascinatingly flawed blockbuster, a film that made a fortune at the box office while never quite becoming anyone’s favourite. It’s weighed down by its own ambitions, occasionally rescued by strong performances, and carried across the finish line by sheer scale and momentum. For all its attempts to redefine the legend, it ends up feeling like a product of its time, a glossy, conflicted 90s epic that can’t decide if it wants to inspire you or lecture you. Still, it has Alan Rickman, and that alone keeps it from collapsing entirely.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – Review

George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead burst onto screens in 1968 like a cinematic contagion—raw, grimy, and utterly fearless. Made on a shoestring budget and shot in grainy black and white, it crawled out of rural Pennsylvania to devour the minds of unsuspecting audiences everywhere. Beneath its rough exterior lies one of the most revolutionary films of the 20th century: a parable about fear, chaos, and humanity’s inability to stop arguing long enough to survive the end of the world.

We are first introduced to siblings Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner), who are driving out to the countryside to visit their father’s grave, because apparently, Pennsylvania cemeteries are the perfect place for sibling bickering. Johnny mocks Barbra for being scared of the dead, until one of them decides to prove him right by attacking and killing him. Barbra runs like she’s in a soap opera dream sequence and ends up in a farmhouse with an interior design straight out of a nightmare: bloodstains, corpses, and ghoul décor. Enter Ben (Duane Jones), who shows up, takes charge, and spends the rest of the movie being the only person with common sense, so naturally, he’s doomed.

 

“I’ll be this film’s token smart person.”

Barbra’s descent into near-catatonia begins while Ben boards up the house like he’s auditioning for a zombie-themed episode of This Old House. Soon, we discover the cellar already has tenants: the aggressively unhelpful Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), his fed-up wife Helen (Marilyn Eastman), their sickly daughter Karen (Kyra Schon), and young couple Tom (Keith Wayne) and Judy (Judith Ridley), whose main purpose, as far as I can tell, is to add to the body count. Ben wants to defend the upstairs; Harry wants to cower downstairs. They argue about this for approximately the rest of eternity while ghouls gather outside like trick-or-treaters who don’t take “no” for an answer.

 

“Mister Cooper, we’re completely out of candy!”

Radio and TV broadcasts reveal that the dead are rising across the East Coast—cannibal corpses caused by possible radiation from Venus. (Because sure, why not?) The government’s solution: shoot them in the head or burn them, which also works for many of the movie’s cast members. Tom and Judy attempt a heroic gas run with Ben, but a flaming truck and an open gas tank end their relationship—and their bodies—in one spectacular explosion of bad decision-making. Ben barely makes it back to the farmhouse, now filled with more tension than a Thanksgiving dinner gone wrong.

 

At least they didn’t have to deal with in-laws. 

As the night drags on, panic turns everyone into their own worst enemy. Harry grabs Ben’s gun, Ben shoots Harry, and Helen gets killed by her now-ghoulish daughter Karen in one of horror cinema’s most horrifying domestic scenes. Barbara briefly snaps out of her trance just in time to be dragged off by zombie Johnny—brotherly love, undead edition. Ben retreats to the cellar, shooting the reanimated Coopers before barricading himself in for the night. Come morning, a redneck posse arrives, blasting ghouls left and right. Ben emerges, exhausted but alive, only to be mistaken for one of the undead and shot in the head. His body joins the pile of burning corpses, a final image that’s equal parts shocking and soul-crushing.

 

“And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him.”

Stray Observations:

• Johnny, the MVP of bad timing: teases his sister for being scared of zombies, gets immediately killed by one. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.” And he’s dead.
• This may be the era of the “slow zombie,” but the one that killed Johnny and chased after Barbara was moving at a pretty good clip.
• A zombie takes out the headlights of Ben’s truck with a rock, which not only shows that these zombies have tool-using skills, but that they also have an aversion to light, for some reason.
• Ben boards up the house brilliantly… except for all those open spaces you can see light through. They should teach zombie apocalypse carpentry in schools.
• With setting fire to corpses, couches and tossing Molotov cocktails all over the place, I’m amazed they didn’t burn the farmhouse down.
• The TV news reports do more for the story’s world-building than most entire modern zombie franchises.
• Johnny had his skull caved in by a tombstone, which should’ve ended things for him permanently, as smashing brains tends to end zombies, yet somehow, he still clocks back in for zombie duty.

 

That’s brotherly love for you.

George A. Romero was a Pittsburgh commercial filmmaker when he and his friends decided to make a horror film, drawing on the paranoia of the 1960s and the pulp storytelling of their youth. The result was a masterpiece that looked like a newsreel from Hell. Romero cited Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend as his key inspiration (which itself was later turned into a movie starring Vincent Price, The Last Man on Earth), specifically the idea of a lone man besieged by a world of the “infected.” Romero took that premise and stripped it of its sci-fi gloss, replacing vampires with mindless flesh-eaters and making the monsters a mirror of society itself.  You can also see the fingerprints of EC Comics all over the film—the grim irony, the moral comeuppances, the sense that the world is one big sick joke told by the dead.

 

Things in this film get grim fast.

Romero’s camera is unflinching, clinical even, treating horror not as fantasy but as reportage. The black-and-white cinematography gives the film a grim documentary quality, as though we’re watching the evening news descend into apocalypse. Every death—Ben’s especially—feels like a headline that never should’ve happened. For a genre known for its escapism, Night of the Living Dead instead forced audiences to stare right into the abyss and recognize themselves among the screaming.

 

The dead, a perfect metaphor for entropy.

Before Night of the Living Dead, the “zombie” was a voodoo puppet, a victim of magic and colonial fear. Films like 1932’s White Zombie portrayed them as blank-eyed servants of dark sorcery and voodoo. It was Romero who ripped that mythology to shreds and rebuilt it in his own image. His ghouls were us: hungry, unthinking, relentless. He gave birth to the modern zombie apocalypse, where the real horror isn’t the walking dead but the living idiots who can’t stop sabotaging each other. Every zombie movie, video game, or TV show that came after owes its existence to this 1968 Pennsylvania nightmare.

 

Here is where the whole “Survival Horror” genre kicked off.

As for the cast, Duane Jones’s performance as Ben is extraordinary, not just for his commanding presence but for what it meant in 1968 America. He brings intelligence, calm, and leadership to a film otherwise populated by panic and stupidity. His death isn’t just tragic; it’s allegorical, a gut-punch in a time when racial tensions were raw and violence against Black men was nightly news. Judith O’Dea’s Barbra is a portrait of trauma so intense it borders on parody, while Karl Hardman’s Harry Cooper delivers one of the all-time great “punchable” performances. Even the smaller roles, like Marilyn Eastman’s weary Helen and Kyra Schon’s undead Karen, add to the film’s oppressive dread, and a special shout-out goes to the optimistic local police chief who gives helpful advice on how to handle the ghouls, while pointing out what kind of threat they are.

 

“They’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

In conclusion, Night of the Living Dead is a cinematic infection: small, cheap, and impossible to contain. Its influence has spread to every corner of horror, reshaping how we think about monsters, morality, and survival itself. Romero’s genius was in showing that the apocalypse doesn’t begin with the dead rising; it begins when people stop listening to each other. Beneath the rotting flesh and gore lies a truth more terrifying than any ghoul: humanity is its own worst enemy.

Quatermass and the Pit (1967) – Review

Sometimes a horror movie is so smart, it makes you feel a little dumb for watching it at midnight with a bowl of cereal. Quatermass and the Pit (also known as Five Million Years to Earth) is that kind of film, a cerebral slice of 1960s British sci-fi that fuses ghost story, alien invasion, and evolutionary nightmare into one heady cocktail. It’s The Exorcist meets 2001: A Space Odyssey by way of the London Underground, and it’s gloriously unsettling.

The film opens with workers digging an extension to the London Underground at Hobbs End, uncovering what looks like a prehistoric skull. Dr. Matthew Roney (James Donald), a paleontologist who probably hasn’t had a weekend off in years, determines it’s five million years old — older than any other known human ancestor. Nearby, they unearth part of a metallic object that definitely isn’t in the British Museum’s collection. Naturally, someone decides it must be a World War II bomb, because when in doubt, blame the Nazis. But is it actually a bomb?

 

“Could this be Hitler’s secret bunker?”

Enter Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir), the world’s crankiest visionary, who has just learned that his peaceful moon-colony project is being hijacked by the military for missile bases. His new handler is Colonel Breen (Julian Glover), a stiff-upper-lip type whose only real weapon is smug disbelief. When they’re summoned to Hobbs End, Breen thinks he’s found his unexploded ordnance, while Quatermass suspects something much older, and much worse. Inside the metallic “bomb,” another skull is found, and the team soon discovers the object itself dates back five million years.

 

“Someone call David Attenborough, we have a problem.”

Roney’s assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) — smart, skeptical, and in that “too sensible for this nonsense” way — joins Quatermass at the site. The name “Hobbs End” rings a bell; “Hob” being an old term for the Devil. Local legends speak of hauntings and strange apparitions in the area, because of course they do. Soon, ghostly disturbances coincide with the excavation, because if there’s one thing you don’t want to do, it’s dig up an ancient alien murder pit under London.

 

“Chariots of the Gods, man.”

When the object is finally opened, the team discovers the desiccated remains of insectoid creatures with horned heads, Martians apparently, who look uncomfortably like the Devil himself. Quatermass deduces that these Martians, facing extinction on their dying world, genetically modified primitive humans to carry on their race’s legacy, along with their psychic abilities and genocidal tendencies. Breen dismisses this as Nazi disinformation (because of course, he does). But soon, psychic phenomena erupt across London.

 

“I still say it’s the Nazis.”

The spaceship’s energy infects the human subconscious, awakening ancient Martian instincts, and the population goes berserk in a telekinetic race purge, with the main purpose of destroying those who don’t have the Martian DNA within them. Quatermass nearly succumbs to the alien influence, but Roney resists, ultimately sacrificing himself to ground the psychic energy through a crane, saving London, but proving that humanity’s devils may be five million years deep in our DNA.

 

Poor Roney, he saved humanity, didn’t even get a knighthood.

Stray Observations:

• Workers find an ancient skull and a mysterious metal object…and decide to keep digging. OSHA would like a word.
• Strangely, this is a Hammer Film where someone uncovers skeletons with pronounced canines, and none of them turn out to belong to Christopher Lee.
• Colonel Breen’s first instinct is always “Nazi bomb.” If your bathtub leaks, Breen probably thinks Hitler’s behind it.
• In the lab, the scientists handle the “aliens” with all the safety precautions of a toddler with finger paint—no gloves, no masks, no lab coats, just pure confidence and airborne microbes.
• “Hobbs End” literally sounds like “Hell Corner.” Why do people still live there?
• That press conference should have ended with someone shouting, “You’re all doomed!” and running out.

 

“The end of the world, brought to you live via BBC 1.”

Professor Bernard Quatermass began life on the BBC in the early 1950s, when writer Nigel Kneale unleashed The Quatermass Experiment on unsuspecting viewers. Kneale’s creation was the thinking person’s mad scientist — a rocket engineer with a conscience and a knack for uncovering alien conspiracies that always end with London in ruins. By the time this entry hit the big screen in 1967, the professor had already survived two prior film adaptations (The Quatermass Xperiment in 1955 and Quatermass 2 in 1957). This third entry, adapted by Kneale himself, remains remarkably faithful to the original six-part TV serial, only leaner, meaner, and with more screaming civilians.

 

Village of the Damned.

Director Roy Ward Baker brings a sense of grounded realism to the mayhem. Known for his steady hand behind films such as A Night to Remember, Baker makes the absurd utterly convincing. His London feels grimy, lived-in, and eerily plausible. Arthur Grant’s cinematography, meanwhile, is a masterclass in Hammer horror moodiness. He bathes the Underground in shadow and smoke, and his clever use of coloured lighting during the climax — where psychic chaos meets spectral apocalypse — gives the finale a hallucinatory terror that lingers long after the credits roll.

 

You can almost smell the ozone.

As for the film’s cast, Andrew Keir’s Quatermass is the film’s backbone: gruff, passionate, and perpetually frustrated with idiots in uniform. He brings gravitas and humanity to a role that could’ve easily veered into lecture territory. Barbara Shelley, as Barbara Judd, is equally magnetic, intelligent, empathetic, and possessing that calm Hammer poise that anchors the hysteria. James Donald plays Dr. Roney as the quietly heroic scientist,  the one who actually does the saving while everyone else theorizes. And Julian Glover, years before he’d lose his life in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, is perfectly cast as the pompous skeptic Breen, a man destined to be vaporized by his own arrogance.

 

“Breen, you’re fired!”

In 1967, sci-fi horror was undergoing a fascinating identity crisis. America was going atomic (Fiend Without a Face and Them!, etc.), while Britain was digging into existential dread. Quatermass and the Pit bridged that divide: a cosmic horror film dressed as a scientific mystery. It’s part Lovecraft, part Doctor Who, and entirely its own thing. Instead of rubber monsters or flying saucers, it gives us evolutionary corruption, psychic hauntings, and the unnerving idea that human violence isn’t random…it’s inherited.

 

“Who ordered the fried aliens of death?”

In conclusion, Quatermass and the Pit remains one of Hammer’s smartest, strangest, and most ambitious films. It fuses horror and science fiction with such conviction that even its dated effects can’t blunt its ideas. Beneath its London rubble lies a metaphor for every human horror — racism, war, mass hysteria — and the chilling notion that maybe the Devil isn’t supernatural at all, but biological. Creepy, clever, and a bit too close to home, it’s a movie that digs into the past only to unearth our collective guilt.

Robin Hood (1991) – Review

There’s something almost admirable about a movie that shows up to a crowded party, realizes it’s underdressed, and still tries to mingle like it belongs. John Ivin’s Robin Hood is that movie. It’s earnest, occasionally scrappy, and tragically unaware that a much louder guest is about to steal the room.

The film opens with Much the miller (Danny Webb) committing the medieval crime of “being hungry in the wrong forest,” promptly hunted down by the charmingly unhinged Sir Miles Folcanet (Jürgen Prochnow). Enter Robert Hode (Patrick Bergin), a Saxon nobleman with a conscience, and his companion Will (Owen Teale), who stumble into this mess and decide that maybe gouging out a man’s eyes over venison is a bit excessive. Folcanet disagrees, loudly and with menace, and insists Hode be punished by the local shire-reeve, Baron Roger Daguerre (Jeroen Krabbé), who inconveniently happens to be Hode’s friend. Friendship, as it turns out, is very flexible when power and money are involved.

 

Fair-weather friends of Sherwood Forest.

Daguerre, privately juggling his moral compass and his social climbing, reveals he’s planning to marry his niece Marian (Uma Thurman) for her wealth, because nothing says romance like a financial transaction with a side of medieval creepiness. Publicly, he gives Hode a token punishment, which should have smoothed things over if Hode weren’t the kind of man who insists on having principles in a system that clearly doesn’t support them. One insult later, Hode is declared an outlaw because nothing escalates like wounded pride in a feudal system.

 

“Well, it could be worse, it could be reigning.”

Banished to Sherwood Forest, Hode reinvents himself as Robin Hood, because branding is important even in the 12th century. He gathers the usual suspects, including Little John (David Morrissey) and the rest of the Merry Men, who seem to materialize out of the trees like they’ve been waiting for a casting call. Together, they harass Norman forces, rob the rich, and generally behave like the forest-based resistance movement the story requires, which becomes slightly more urgent when Prince John (Edward Fox) shows up demanding the return of the taxes Robin has been redistributing and, as a fun bonus, insists that Robin be killed for the inconvenience. After one particularly humiliating encounter for Folcanet, Marian decides to join the gang in disguise, which works about as well as you’d expect in a movie where secrets have the lifespan of a mayfly.

 

“Where oh where could Maid Marian be?”

Naturally, things fall apart when betrayal enters the chat. Marian is exposed and dragged back to face her grim matrimonial fate, prompting Robin to hatch a plan that is equal parts daring and wildly optimistic: storm Nottingham Castle and stop the wedding. The final act delivers the expected clashes, with Folcanet meeting a suitably violent end and Daguerre experiencing a last-minute moral awakening that feels less like character development and more like narrative convenience. In the end, he reconciles with Robin, blesses his union with Marian, and promises a brighter future where Saxons and Normans get along, which is a lovely sentiment if you don’t think about it for more than three seconds.

 

Did they forget Prince John still wants Robin dead?

Stray Observations:

• Daguerre thinks marrying off his niece for her wealth is a solid long-term strategy and not a red flag visible from space.
• Robin casually drops the word “cash,” which is impressive considering the language hasn’t caught up to his spending habits yet.
• Villains loudly announce their evil schemes in rooms full of people, because whispering is for cowards.
• Folcanet complains about being surrounded by “thugs,” apparently borrowing vocabulary from a future the British Empire hasn’t even scheduled yet.
• The Merry Men assemble with suspicious ease, like Robin posted a “rebellion, must love archery” notice somewhere.
• Friar Tuck celebrates his tax haul by dreaming of swan’s breast in Madeira, a place that won’t exist for another few centuries. Ambitious palate, questionable timeline.
• Marian spends a good portion of the movie oscillating between “capable” and “needs rescuing,” sometimes within the same scene.
• For a legendary archer, Robin somehow limits himself to two whole arrows across the entire film. Conservation efforts have never been this committed.
• The plan to storm Nottingham Castle hinges on hope, timing, and the assumption that guards will be wildly incompetent.

 

Then again, how could you stop something like this?

Now for the part where this film’s bad luck becomes almost comedic. It came out in the same year as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which is like releasing your indie garage band album the same day a stadium tour kicks off next door. The Bergin version didn’t even get a proper theatrical release in the United States, a decision that quietly screams “we’ve seen the competition and we’re not suicidal.” In several international markets, it actually arrived first, technically beating the Costner juggernaut to screens. Sadly, getting there early didn’t translate into box office glory, mostly because audiences tend to notice when the main event shows up five minutes later with bigger stars and louder marketing.

 

“Maybe I can split Costner’s arrow?”

What’s interesting is where this version sits in the long, crowded lineage of Robin Hood adaptations. It leans heavily into the Norman versus Saxon conflict, echoing the structure of The Adventures of Robin Hood, where the political tension is as central as the swashbuckling. That’s a solid foundation, and for brief moments, the film almost convinces you it might do something thoughtful with it. Then it remembers it also has sword fights to stage and villains to scowl, and the nuance quietly exits through the nearest forest path.

 

“We couldn’t quite afford both a swash and a buckle.”

The character choices are where things get… creative. The familiar lineup is present, at least on paper, with Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, and Much the Miller’s Son all making appearances, though none leave much of an impression beyond “Yes, that person exists.” More notably, the traditional heavyweights, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisbourne, are replaced. Daguerre takes on the Sheriff’s role as the scheming authority figure, with the added twist of being Robin’s former friend, while Folcanet fills the Guy-shaped hole as the snarling enforcer with a disturbing interest in Marian. It’s a decent attempt to remix the formula, even if the execution never quite escapes the gravitational pull of mediocrity.

 

The film does double down on the merriment. 

What really drags the whole thing down is its refusal to take risks, which is especially frustrating given how solid the cast is. Patrick Bergin brings a grounded sincerity, Uma Thurman flashes the kind of presence that suggests she wandered in from a better movie, and even the supporting players seem more capable than the material allows. Yet the film plays everything straight, almost timidly, as if afraid to offend the sacred text of Robin Hood lore. Meanwhile, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for all its flaws, at least swings for the fences. This one barely steps up to the plate. You can feel the caution in every scene, every line reading, every action beat that feels just a little too safe, like a group of talented actors politely agreeing not to make a scene.

 

Jeroen Krabbé is good, but he’s no Basil Rathbone.

In conclusion, John Irvin’s Robin Hood is a film caught between intentions and execution, between tradition and reinvention, and most fatally, between obscurity and a much shinier rival. It has moments where it almost finds its footing, where Bergin’s grounded take and Thurman’s early spark hint at a better movie lurking beneath the surface. But those moments are fleeting, buried under safe choices, uneven pacing, and a general lack of cinematic urgency. It’s not embarrassing, not incompetent, just stubbornly average in a genre that thrives on larger-than-life energy. In the grand archery contest of Robin Hood films, this one hits the target, just not anywhere near the bullseye.

The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966) – Review

Sometimes a movie comes along that reminds you why drive-ins existed: so that people could make out and not watch the movie. The Navy vs. the Night Monsters is one such film, a cinematic cautionary tale about why you should never mix a serious science fiction novel, a low budget, and a title that sounds like it was dreamed up by a hyperactive eight-year-old with a toy submarine. The movie wants to be The Thing from Another World, but it ends up being The Shrub That Ate My Career.

The plot (and other crimes against storytelling) begins at the U.S. Navy weather station on Gow Island, a place where life is slow, too slow, in fact, until the arrival of a C-47 transport plane full of scientists, Air Force crewmen, and Antarctic specimens promises to shake things up. On approach, something starts moving around in the cargo bay, a crewman screams bloody murder, and then dives out of the plane to his death. Moments later, the transport crash-lands on the island, killing most of the crew and blocking the only runway.

 

So much for a routine refuelling stop.

Lieutenant Charles Brown (Anthony Eisley), Navy nurse Nora Hall (Mamie Van Doren), and biologist Arthur Beecham (Walter Sande) investigate the wreck and find only one survivor—the traumatized pilot, reduced to catatonic mumbling. The cargo seems harmless enough: a few penguins and several frozen prehistoric tree specimens, because nothing says “potential menace” like ancient lumber and confused seabirds. Joining the team is civilian meteorologist Robert Spaulding (Edward Faulkner), an insufferable know-it-all with an ego bigger than the island and an uninvited crush on Nora. As tensions rise and Spaulding’s smarmy flirting becomes more unbearable, the group notices something strange: the cargo of penguins has vanished without a trace. Beecham, meanwhile, commits an act of cinematic genius by deciding the best way to preserve these rare frozen trees is to plant them in tropical soil. Sure, what could possibly go wrong?

 

“Doc, could these things be Triffids?”

The island birds start going berserk, and a strange, corrosive slime begins showing up all over the island. The scientists scratch their heads while people start disappearing one by one. Though not quickly enough for the audience’s comfort. Something destroys the base’s generator, plunging the island into darkness, and the supposedly catatonic pilot occasionally takes a break from his nap to lunge at anyone unlucky enough to get too close. Soon, it’s revealed that the planted trees have not only come back to life, but are now mobile, acid-secreting, carnivorous nightmares roaming the island at night. They grow at an alarming rate, reproduce without explanation, and seem determined to turn Gow Island into an all-you-can-eat buffet.

 

“Are they here for the Early Bird Special?”

As the situation deteriorates, Lt. Brown tries to hold his dwindling crew together while the monsters ooze their way through the plot. Guns prove useless, and the island’s communications are fried, leaving our heroes to fend off the lumbering menace with homemade weapons. Thankfully, the civilian meteorologist Spaulding discovers that fire destroys the monsters, because of course it does. The Navy finally manages to contact the mainland, prompting a deus ex napalm finale: fighter jets drop fire bombs, the monsters go up like Christmas trees, and Lt. Brown and Nurse Nora share a smoke-free romance amid the ashes.

 

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Stray Observations:

• The movie’s title sounds like a parody, and apparently, the cast thought so too—they reportedly threatened to walk when they heard it.
• The “night monsters” look like burnt tree stumps covered in carpet fuzz and moved with the enthusiasm of a man dragging his recycling bin to the curb.
• When your “special effects” man (Jon Hall) is also your backup director, that’s not a creative choice—it’s a red flag.
• Mamie Van Doren’s Nurse Nora spends most of the film alternating between tight sweaters and tighter slacks, proving that feminism was still a few rewrites away.
• The catatonic pilot wakes up a couple of times to attack people, but no one thinks to maybe place the dude in restraints. There is dumb, and then there’s this group of idiots.
• At one point, a character sees something melting and calmly says, “We should get samples.” Sure, because touching alien goo always ends well.
• This film is based on a serious sci-fi novel by Murray Leinster, but you’d never guess that from watching the movie.
• Roger Corman’s uncredited fingerprints are all over this thing—cheap monsters, reused stock footage, and a runtime short enough for a double bill with a beer commercial.

 

“Look, we can cut the budget here, here, and here.”

Director Michael A. Hoey had ambitions. He wanted to turn Leinster’s novel The Monster from Earth’s End into a chilling, intelligent thriller like The Thing from Another World. What he got instead was a film so uneven it could double as a carnival ride. Hoey’s problem wasn’t vision—it was interference. Executive producer Jack Broder wanted a longer runtime to sell the film to television, but when Hoey delivered a tight 78-minute cut, Broder called in Arthur Pierce—yes, the same Pierce who directed Women of the Prehistoric Planet—to shoot additional scenes. The result is a patchwork quilt of scenes that barely connect, stitched together with random close-ups and reaction shots that could’ve been filmed in a broom closet. It’s like The Thing meets Gilligan’s Island, only neither side survives the encounter.

 

“Can we blame it all on mad science?”

The special effects were the brainchild of Jon Hall, hired specifically because he was cheap. Hall, a once-famous actor from the ’40s, apparently thought the best way to depict killer trees was to become one, building rubbery, stubby “tree monsters” that looked like someone glued moss onto a fire hydrant. When Hoey refused to film scenes involving them—perhaps out of self-respect—Hall himself stepped in to direct the monster sequences, resulting in creatures that wobble across the frame like drunks in burlap sacks, occasionally waving what might be branches or simply uncooperative props. And yet, somehow, it’s fascinating: watching these monsters shuffle slowly toward their prey while the actors scream in terror feels like a metaphor for the film industry itself—something big, dumb, and inevitable crushing dreams in slow motion.

 

“Look, you can see where the papier-mache is tearing.”

As for our leading lady, Mamie Van Doren and the case of the misplaced sweater, she was cast because she had a contractual obligation to appear in a Corman film, and Hoey decided to make the most of it. “So, I put her in a tight sweater and a pair of slacks about 50 percent of the time,” he later said, with a candour that could curdle milk. Her character, originally written as military personnel, became a civilian, possibly because the Navy wanted nothing to do with this movie. She does her best, but when surrounded by rubber trees, gooey corpses, and lines like “Those trees are alive!”, it’s hard to act when the scenery is quite literally eating itself. Though, to be fair, her male “love interests” are even less believable than the killer plants.

 

The acting here is more wooden than the trees.

In conclusion, The Navy vs. the Night Monsters is the kind of movie that makes you appreciate the fine art of competent filmmaking. It’s an unintentional comedy dressed up as a monster thriller, a film that aims for suspense but lands somewhere between confusion and giggling disbelief. Michael A. Hoey’s ambition to make a smart sci-fi horror film was drowned in studio meddling, bargain-bin effects, and a title that doomed it to ridicule before a frame was shot. Yet, despite all its failures—maybe because of them—it’s oddly entertaining. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching a drunk magician accidentally set his hat on fire: you can’t look away, and part of you hopes he pulls something miraculous from the flames.