Robin Hood e i pirati

ROBIN HOOD AND THE PIRATES (1960) is an enjoyable Italian costume adventure with a particularly fanciful rendition of the Robin Hood tale, set entirely in a Mediterranean 'Sherwood,' with the pirates of the title, standing in for the Merry Men, camping out in a 'forest' that looks suspiciously like a beach. (The waves hitting the sand are a dead giveaway.) Interestingly, the place marker for Sherwood reads 'Conten di Sherwood.'

Lex Barker, a former Tarzan (1949-53), cuts a striking figure in a traditional Robin Hood outfit and wields a mean sword and bow and arrow as he battles the usurper, Lord Brooks, who killed his father and took over Sherwood. Robin's aligned with a group of shipwrecked pirates who offer some half-hearted help at various times and includes a multi-racial group of 'Saracen' women, led by a hefty black woman named Bambola, who prefers to be called 'Sweetpea' and is played by American singer Edith Peters. She speaks with an American southern accent, despite the fact that the American South was still hundreds of years in the future at the time this film is set. However, she sings a song in Italian at one point and develops a yen for the equally hefty white pirate captain, 'One-Eye' (played by American actor Walter Barnes). Peters had performed in the U.S. in the 1940s with her sisters in a trio called, appropriately enough, the Peters Sisters.

The Vienna-born Jackie Lane plays Robin's impassioned love interest, Karin Blain. Lord Brooks keeps trying to marry her and Robin Hood keeps rescuing her, until the final melee involving all the townsfolk, pirates and the Lord's knights. Lord Brooks's daughter, Lisbeth (played by Rossana Rory), complicates things by desiring Robin herself. The stunning Miss Lane appeared in a wide range of films in England and Europe in the 1950s and early '60s and was also known as Jocelyn Lane during a lengthy Hollywood stint in the mid-to-late '60s, which included playing opposite Elvis Presley in TICKLE ME (1965). Her first film happened to be an earlier Robin Hood film, MEN OF SHERWOOD FOREST (1954).

The film is nicely photographed on location at a genuine castle situated atop a seaside cliff. The tone of the film is lighthearted in the manner of some of the old Hollywood swashbucklers, with the pirates and Bambola providing comedy relief, while filled with sufficient swordfighting, horse-riding and castle wall-climbing action to keep even the genre's most jaded fans happy.

A nasty traitor has deprived Robin Hood of his desirable fortress and his valuable properties when he was away in the crusades .This time,he has pirates with him (and their exotic mates).Strange that we find the forest of Sherwood on the seaside :I naively thought it was near Nottingham.There's no sheriff,no Prince John and Lady Marianne has become Lady Kareen (?).Kareen has been in love with Robin since childhood,but alas ,the villain wants to marry her and to make matters worse,his own daughter,Lisbeth,is in love with the hero .

Robin is so busy recovering his possessions and coming to Kareen's rescue that he does not find any time to steal from the rich and give to the poor.A disappointment for the whole family.Lex Barker is credible as a hero but no match for Errol Flynn.The screenplay,which looks like an eleven-year-old 's essay ,is nothing but a series of clichés.

"Robin Hood and the Pirates" is without doubt the saddest entry yet in a trail of tawdry films set in Sherwood. The coastal Mediterranean locale in this one resembles England about as much as its inhabitants resemble Britons. Lex Barker, usually a stalwart performer in the historic adventure drama here can do little to rise above the banal script which leaves no cliché unplayed. Mario Scaccio as the evil Lord Brooks makes a pitiful adversary, so outmatched by big, blond and bland Barker that this Robin Hood and his crew look like the bullies in comparison to such scrawny and lackluster villains. After the magnificent 1938 Flynn version there had been a steady stream of inferior sequels,most of which do not merit much notice. To further enjoy the Robin Hood character's exploits, one would do better to seek out the 1952 Richard Todd version or the equally good 1954 Don Taylor version, both of which are leagues ahead of this Robin Hood pirate venture which sinks in its own tedium.