{"id":18722,"date":"2019-01-06T00:42:01","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T05:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=18722"},"modified":"2019-01-08T02:27:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T07:27:08","slug":"dvd-rogues-of-sherwood-forest-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=18722","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Film<\/strong>: Very Good<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Standard<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong> Sony<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 May 11, 2010<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Action \/ Romance<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0Robin Hood Jr. follows in the footsteps of his father, reuniting the aging merry men and battling a corrupt King John and a scheming Belgian swine.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Theatrical Trailer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Columbia\u2019s second entry in their Sherwood Forest quartet follows an oft-repeated premise in which the son of an icon proves his own worth with the aide of dad\u2019s old pals, all of whom are a lot older but savvy, and still agile in combat. It\u2019s an excuse to attract fans of the 1938 Errol Flynn classic<\/a> by reassembling Robin Hood\u2019s old team, including Alan Hale, reprising the role of Little John, a rare continuity when most spinoffs would prefer to stick to a new batch of characters and avoid stark comparisons.<\/p>\n

The original Adventures of Robin Hood<\/strong> had a huge budget, superb sets & costumes, an all-star cast, extras galore, top-notch swordfights, and music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but being a straight B-production using the same sets as predecessor Bandit of Sherwood<\/strong> (1946), the castle set is repurposed, which isn\u2019t a bad thing, given Rogues<\/strong> picks up several years after Richard III has returned, crafted a Magna Carta, and following his death, evil King John uses brutal taxes to fund the use of the Belgium army to conquer as many wayward sections of England and its Earls as possible.<\/p>\n

The Technicolor by Charles Lawton Jr. (My Sister Eileen<\/strong><\/a>, Cowboy<\/strong>, Rome Adventure<\/strong>) is still first-rate, and casting John Derek as RH Jr. was rather smart. Derek\u2019s dramatic range wasn\u2019t especially broad, but his screen persona was wholly likable, and the addition of a pencil moustache and a tan made him more than a slight echo of Flynn. Derek’s natural athleticism ensured many of the stunts and horseback chases featured a decent degree of the starlet in action.<\/p>\n

By the 1940s, director Gordon Douglas had graduated from Our Gang shorts to more diverse B-movies, but he had yet to show some firm panache with choreographed combat. His next film, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye<\/strong> (1950) had a tough edge, but the fighting in Rogues\u00a0<\/strong>happens a little too slowly. There\u2019s a sense Douglas forgot \/ chose not to speed up the footage\u00a0a smidge, which may explain the dullness of Jr.\u2019s swordfight up an outer stairwell, and his swooping onto the roof \/ quick trot \/ jump to the ground and escape. The lameness is most evident when there\u2019s a superior horseback montage (presumably by\u00a0second unit director Wilbur McGaugh) in which the camera car tracks along the riders, and excited horses whip past a low-locked camera.<\/p>\n

Scenarists George Bruce (Kansas City Confidential<\/strong>, Solomon and Sheba<\/strong><\/a>) and Ralph Gilbert Bettison (1984<\/strong><\/a>) also borrowed bits of Bandit<\/strong>\u2019s prison cell & food swap sequence. In the far less exciting riff, separately jailed Lady Marianne (former child actress Diana Lynn) almost spontaneously decides to help RH Jr. and Little John by wrapping a hacksaw in the same scarf that was returned to her by Jr. in the unusually grisly jousting sequence at the film\u2019s beginning. Being a less creative sequel, though, sawing through the bars is abandoned when Jr. and Marianne manage to knock out the guards and hurry into the sanctuary of Sherwood Forest.<\/p>\n

The reassembly of RH Sr.\u2019s old team is rather cute: Jr.’s \u00a0firing a flaming arrow across the sky has Friar Tuck (Billy House, in a terrible skullcap) leave the seminary post-haste; Alan-A-Dale (Lester Matthews) abandoning a young hottie after crooning a tune in the voice of a man clearly 20 years his junior; and Will Scarlet being extricated by Jr. from the town’s punishment stocks for poaching.<\/p>\n

George Macready\u2019s knack for playing conniving scoundrels (Gilda<\/strong><\/a>) had him recast as King John in spite of playing colourful Fitz-Herbert, the co-scoundrel of rotten royal apple William of Pembroke (Henry Daniel) in Bandit<\/strong>, but lacking the peppery dialogue of the prior film, Macready\u2019s proclamations of cruelty are tepid, leaving the actor\u2019s raspy yet resonant voice to boost his character’s truncated malevolence.<\/p>\n

Rogues<\/strong> is nevertheless fine \u2013 it hits all the predictable marks and has a bit of everything audiences expect in a Medieval action-romance \u2013 but it never transcends its B-grade roots; even the score features far too many theme iterations by Arthur Morton, Heinz Roemheld, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (And Then There Were None<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n

Sony\u2019s DVD features a nice transfer that glows with rich colours, but the only extra is the original trailer that hypes Derek, fresh from All the King\u2019s Men<\/strong><\/a> (1949) as the studio\u2019s \u201cnew romantic idol.\u201d The actor had also co-starred with Macready and Humphrey Bogart in Douglas\u2019 A-picture Knock on Any Door<\/strong> (1949), whereas Macready also appeared in the director\u2019s The Nevadan<\/strong> (1950).<\/p>\n

The four entries in the Sherwood Forest quartet are Columbia\u2019s The Bandit of Sherwood Forest<\/strong><\/a> (1946) and Rogues of Sherwood Forest<\/strong> (1950), and the Hammer-produced The Men of Sherwood Forest<\/strong><\/a> (1954) and Sword of Sherwood Forest<\/strong><\/a> (1960), the latter released by Columbia.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2019 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Composer Filmographies: Arthur Morton<\/a> \/ Heinz Roemheld<\/a> \/ Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amazon Canada<\/a>\"\"\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon USA<\/a>\"\"\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon UK<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columbia\u2019s second entry in their Sherwood Forest quartet follows an oft-repeated premise in which the son of an icon proves his own worth with the aide of dad\u2019s old pals, all of whom are a lot older but savvy, and still agile in combat. It\u2019s an excuse to attract fans…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[5907,5904,5909,5908,5910,835,5906,5905,748],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4RY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18722"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18806,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18722\/revisions\/18806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}