Monday, April 24, 2017

Long Live Robin Hood

Long Live Robin Hood (i.e. either L'arciere Di Fucco or Archer of Fire or The Scalawag Bunch) (1971)

Runtime: The version I saw was 81 minutes long; it was obvious that the original film was longer

Directed by: Giorgio Ferroni

Starring: Giuliano Gemma, Mark Damon, Silvia Dionisio, Mario Adorf, Nello Pazzafini

From: Several production companies, as this was a co-production among Italy, France and Spain

Yep, I only saw this because it featured Mario Adorf. Most people don't need to see this, to be honest. At least it's OK. See why below: 

This is another random find on Amazon Prime* I only watched because of the presence of someone in the cast. While I wish this could have been the full movie in widescreen, instead this is a truncated version in fullscreen. I will presume that the full version has a larger role for Prince John rather than the brief appearance he has here. To my amusement, that character looked like Prince Valium from Spaceballs, but with orange-brown hair. Also amusing to me is how the role of Friar Tuck was played by Mario Adorf, who I think is awesome because of the great job he did in movies like Caliber 9 and The Italian Connection. The fact that he also had orange-brown hair and even a matching beard likely would only be great to a few people, but it was quite the look for him.

The story is for the most part what you'd expect... aside from the lack of “rob the rich and give to the poor” it's the Robin Hood legend, with the characters and situations that are familiar by now. In every way I say that it's average. It's not the best screen appearance for the story but it's not the worst either; plus, at least in the dub I saw, Robin spoke with an English accent... the film is light in tone and the action is decent.

While I wish I could see the full version, at least what I saw was acceptable and not a waste of time.

* It's an old Italian movie so of course it has had multiple titles throughout the years. It's on Prime as Archer of Fire, which is a literal translation of its Italian title. It's known here and IMDb as Long Live Robin Hood, yet on Wiki it's The Scalawag Bunch.

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