John Chard

Alas poor Fitzwarren, I knew him well. A Challenge for Robin Hood is directed by C.M. Pennington-Richards and written by Peter Bryan. It stars Barrie Ingham, Peter Blythe, James Hayter, John Arnatt, Gay Hamilton, John Gugolka, Eric Flynn, Leon Greene and Douglas Mitchell. Music is by Gary Hughes and cinematography by Arthur Grant. A Seven Arts-Hammer production in De Luxe Color, this is another variant on the Robin Hood legend. Very much operating from the Norman and the Saxon feud, pic has all the requisite swashbuckling shenanigans to entertain the family. It's very colourful, both in camera lensing and costuming, robust with the action scenes, and thrives on the good olde goodies versus baddies nature of the origin story. The Masked Monk! It's all very fanciful of course, with derring-do and machismo the order of the day, which unfortunately renders the Maid Marian (Hamilton) character as being an outsider looking in. Yet the camaraderie of the merry men, the earning of trusts and surrogate kinship's, ensures there's nary a dull moment in the tale. The pies have it. Whilst the choreography is not high end, the standard of the buckling of the swashes is better than average, while there is some fun sequences that can't fail to raise a smile. Pennington-Richards and his team have managed to not let the modest budget bog the picture down; modern day car glimpsed in the background of one shot not withstanding! Mr. Kipling makes exceedingly good cakes. The cast is made up of mostly unknowns, but that is absolutely fine as the likes of Ingham and Blythe are attacking their roles with such relish, with a glint in their eyes, it's hard not to just buy into the frothy fun of it all. The standout is Hayter as Friar Tuck, the voice of a major cake advertising campaign in Britain, he steals every scene he is in here and he actually on his own makes this well worth watching. There are far better Robin Hood movies out there, for sure this one feels at times like it's clinging on to the swashbuckling coat tails that had long since gone as the 70s approached. Yet sometimes all you need from this type of film to entertain is guts and frivolity, and this has it in spades. 7/10