The release is timed to cash in on Ridley Scott's current Robin Hood, distributed in the U.S. by Universal. Sony has unearthed four hard-to-see titles for DVD: besides The Bandit of Sherwood Forest and Prince of Thieves they include Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950) and Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), the latter filmed in England. Though lacking extra features each title has received an excellent video transfer and all are at least interesting.

The story opens with Robin Hood (Jon Hall) foiling a bowman's (I. Stanford Jolley) assassination attempt on Sir Allan Claire (Michael Duane), who with his sister, Lady Marian (Patricia Morison), is traveling to Sherwood Castle so that the former can marry Lady Christabel (Adele Jergens). However, the woman's father, the cruel Lord of Nottingham, Sir Fitz-Alwin (Lewis L. Russell), has broken his word, promising her instead to Baron Tristram (Gavin Muir).

Robin, along with Friar Tuck (Alan Mowbray), Little John (Walter Sande), and Will Scarlet (Syd Saylor), decide to kidnap Sir Allan's intended because, Robin says, "You can't steal what's already yours." So much for Women's Lib in Sherwood Forest.

The film was directed by Howard Bretherton with Derwin Abrahams listed as "associate director" in the credits. (He may have overseen the film's second unit material.) Both were B-Western veterans adept at keeping things moving but not so good when it came to longer scenes of exposition, which tend to be static and visually uninteresting.

The Prince of Thieves was made in Cinecolor, a process favored by low-budget producers at companies like Screen Guild Productions and Monogram. It was a two-color, double-emulsion process and its resultant color pallet resembled two-color Technicolor from the late-silent/early-talkie period. The system was great at capturing browns, reds, and blues but not green. This made it less than an ideal choice for a Robin Hood movie; instead of being lush and green, Sherwood Forest here looks brown and dusty as if it's in the midst of a crippling drought.

The cast is a peculiar mix of B-Western character players, Columbia contractees, and stars in decline. Jon Hall's days as the star of bigger-budgeted Technicolor programmers at Universal was at an end; costar H.B. Warner's glory days were long past and his role as Gilbert Head, Robin's adopted father, is small. Patricia Morison and Adele Jergens were busy actresses in B-movies like this and are pleasant and attractive, though character veteran Alan Mowbray is out of his element as Friar Tuck, a part obviously written for a broader, more visual performer than he. Robin Raymond appears in the film as Maude, Lady Christabel's handmaiden and Will Scarlet's love interest. She sports an unbelievably bad Cockney accent that often seems looped. The villains meanwhile are so colorless most go unbilled and are killed off-screen. Fans of B-Westerns and serials will recognize bug-eyed I. Stanford Jolley, who really chews the scenery when, wounded, he returns to the castle.

The Three Stooges filmed a series of two-reel comedies on sets supposedly built for The Bandit of Sherwood Forest but most of the sets appearing in those Stooge shorts are actually the overworked settings from The Prince of Thieves. These may have been redressed sets from the earlier Robin Hood movie but I don't think so.

The film was efficiently adapted by Charles H. Schneer, who under Katzman's tutelage would soon be producing potboilers for Columbia all by himself, most famously SPFX man Ray Harryhausen's early efforts. (The packaging text and the IMDb obviously confuse Charles Schneer with writer Charles Schnee who, not Schneer as the packaging claims, won an Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful.)

To its credit, The Prince of Thieves is lively and undemanding audiences looking for some escapism probably weren't disappointed. The action scenes are decently choreographed for a quickly-made programmer, with good on-set special effects and stunt work. Jock Mahoney, later a memorable screen Tarzan, doubles Jon Hall and is plainly visible in several shots; he seems to have doubled several other actors as well.

Video & Audio

　 As mentioned above, The Prince of Thieves was filmed in Cinecolor, an imperfect process involving two strips of film during shooting (as opposed to Technicolor's three or the later Eastman Color's one). As the vast majority of studios using Cinecolor were poverty row companies, this is one of the few (first?) instances of a major label transfer of a Cinecolor film using original elements. The results are impressive, maximizing the benefits of the process while making no effort to artificially tweak its deficiencies. The first couple of reels appear notably soft, but after about the 20-minute mark the picture becomes much sharper and while a far cry from three-strip Technicolor the effect is interesting.

The audio is English only, with optional SDH subtitles resembling blocky closed-captioning. There are no Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

As with The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, The Price of Thieves is unmemorable but a notch or two above similar programmers of its type and budget. This isn't likely to please mainstream audiences expecting something like the Ridley Scott Robin Hood, but fans of B-pictures may find it entertaining. Recommended.

　


Stuart Galbraith IV's latest audio commentary, for AnimEigo's Musashi Miyamoto DVD boxed set, is on sale now.