Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)

By CinemaSerf

I think this could be the third time that I have seen Alan Hale playing "Little John" in a "Robin Hood" adventure and he always manages to do it with gusto and enthusiasm. That is really all there is to say about this otherwise pretty shameless rip off the Flynn/Rathbone version (1938). This time, the nasty King John (George Macready), with the help of his henchman "Sir Giles" (Paul Cavanagh) decides to tax his already poverty-stricken Saxon people and it falls to the second Earl of Huntingdon (John Derek - aka son of the legendary "Robin Hood") to thwart this dastardly plan and to find a way to bring this monarch to book. The adventures are all pretty formulaic, but there is a colourful zeal to the whole thing. Derek has a charming boyishness as he parades around in his spray-on Lincoln green, whilst Cavanagh and Macready make for quite effective baddie double-act and much of it looks as if it was filmed on the same sets as it's more illustrious earlier iteration. There is plenty of swordplay, just a soupçon of romance with Diana Lynn's rather static "Lady Marianne" and it's well worth eighty minutes of your time.