I am a huge fan of Hammer Horror but I do also enjoy watching their non horror output too. This adventure yarn about Robin Hood was directed by the great Terence Fisher but sadly this movie - made during the studio's finest period - just feels lacking. Richard Greene played Robin Hood on TV prior to this but I just found him quite plain and dreary as the famous outlaw, no charisma at all. What does makes this worth watching is the ever reliable Peter Cushing as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, at times he sounds more like Baron Frankenstein, for example he says "Graves are known to be empty, dig it up!" Sporting a goatee beard he does look quite different than usual. One other thing that I liked was that he comes to blows with a sadly uncredited and badly dubbed (why!?) Oliver Reed. As one would expect from Hammer the costumes, scenery etc all look very nice. However despite being set in the English county of Nottinghamshire the large rugged hills make it obvious that it was not filmed there (shot in Ireland). Maid Marian is wearing lipstick and looks more 1960 than Medieval, there are lots of sexist comments and the fight scenes aren't very good. At 80 minutes the time passes quickly enough but it's far from being a Hammer classic.
Review of Sword of Sherwood Forest
