THE STORY OF ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRIE MEN (1953)

This Walt Disney take on the famous folk hero and his band of buddies begins in 1190 with King Richard taking off for the Crusades, leaving his brother Prince John (Hubert Gregg) in charge of the country. But first we meet Robin (Richard Todd, at left) and Marion (Joan Rice), acting like schoolkids with crushes on each other—while Robin practices his archery, Marion fiddles with the target so he keeps missing. Marion's father joins King Richard and leaves his daughter in the care of the Queen Mother. As the king and his forces depart, John promises to serve the country well and the Archbishop of Canterbury gives his blessings. But soon, John has appointed the sinister Delancey (Peter Finch) the Sheriff of Nottingham; the two are in cahoots in order to place new onerous taxes on the people to benefit themselves. When the two hold an archery contest in order to build an small army of tax collectors, Robin and his father Hugh win but refuse publicly to join the Sheriff's group. On their way back home, Hugh is shot dead and Robin takes off into the forest, vowing to fight against John and the Sheriff. Over the years, Robin collects a band of like-minded men who live in the forest and do what they can to steal from the Sheriff's men and give back to the peasants. We meet the usual names from folklore such as the burly Little John, the troubadour Allan-A-Dale, Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet. Marian eventually joins the band of outlaws, and when King Richard is captured on the way from the Crusades and held for ransom, she gets the Merrie Men to publicly donate much of their ill-gotten money toward the ransom, hoping to force John and the Sherrif into giving some of their personal fortunes for the ransom. The trick works, but John abducts Marian and plots to disgrace Robin and his men once and for all.

No movie version of the Robin Hood story is likely to match up to the wonderful Errol Flynn film from 1938. In the Flynn film, Marian is a member of the royal court who doesn't have a past history with Robin, unlike Marian in this version, though otherwise the story and incidents in the two movies are largely the same. Being a Disney family film, this has been sanitized and simplified a bit, and despite the death of Robin's father, Robin and his men rarely seem truly in danger. The Sheriff's villainy is mostly unmotivated—he's bad because the story demands it—and because of this, Finch's performance never takes off, and this becomes a rare bland outing for the actor. The rest of the cast ranges from very good (Todd as Robin, James Robertson Justice as Little John, and Gregg nicely underplaying the evil Prince John) to adequate (Rice as Marian, Martita Hunt as the Queen Mother Eleanor). It moves along at a good pace with, as befits the story, a fair bit of humor cropping up here and there. The Merrie Men send messages through the forest by arrow, and the sound the arrows make as they shoot through the air is a bit like I imagine the German bombs sounded during the London Blitz. Expect a Disney film and you won't be disappointed. [TCM]