THE RIBALD TALES OF ROBIN HOOD (1969)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

The above lobby card asserts that this film came "from the same company that brought you THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ZORRO." I have only a dim memory of the latter film, but as I recall that Zorro-flick was just one of many softcore comedies spawned by the liberalization of the American market re: adult films in the late 1960s. Some of these were set in some exotic historical period, like medieval Europe or the American West. I fully expected a movie with the title RIBALD TALES OF ROBIN HOOD would also be a dimwit T&A comedy set in medieval England.

Well, HOOD is no better than most of these low-grade quickie efforts, but it's peculiar in that it's not a comedy, nor an adventure in the dominant "Robin Hood" mold. There are comic moments in it, with lusty wenches baring their goods for the doubtlessly merry men of Robin Hood. Yet HOOD is unusually serious for a sex-flick. Grindhouse films of the sixties sometimes focused on modern-day people enduring lives of quiet desperation, but I've never seen a depressing medieval sex-film.

Most of the usual Robin Hood routines are in place: Robin (Ralph Jenkins) and his merry men hide in Sherwood's deep forest from the authority of King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham while robbing from the rich in order to ransom King Richard (who never actually makes it back to England here). However, whereas most Robin-iterations show Maid Marian hanging out chastely in the leader's company, these rebels have various camp-followers hanging around and, of course, hanging out of their blouses whenever possible. 

Meanwhile, King John and the Sheriff can't figure out their next move, even with assistance from John's evil sister Lady Sallyforth (Lynn Cartwright).  First, for some reason I didn't entirely follow, she and the Sheriff travel into Sherwood and get captured, but Robin releases them in order to humiliate them, bound nude back-to-back on a donkey. (Before the release, one of the bosomy camp-followers suggests she wants to mess with Sallyforth while she's tied up, only to spit on her instead. Naturally, Sallyforth gets even later.) This segue wasn't strictly necessary, because immediately afterward, secondary villain Guy of Gisborne comes up with the main plot against Robin Hood. The evildoers persuade the hero's former fiancee Maid Marian (Dee Lockwood) to enter Sherwood and talk Robin into giving up the outlaw life. Maid Marian does so, taking along a lady in waiting. Once the two women enter the Sherwood camp, neither lady has to wait very long before they start getting busy; Marian with Robin and the other girl with Little John.

All of this sounds like your typical goofy comedy. Yet though there are mildly humorous moments (two camp-girls fight with quarterstaffs upon a river-bridge), the tone is dominantly grim. Maid Marian doesn't do anything to betray her lover, but a disloyal camp follower gives away Robin's plans, and the hero is captured and imprisoned at John's castle. In addition, Tina, Little John's conquest, is raped and killed by the Sheriff. The villains, hoping to find Robin's cache of stolen gold, force Marian to interrogate him in the dungeon. He thinks she betrayed him, and slaps her a couple of times, though in the end his deep feelings for her overcome his sense of betrayal. Robin then escapes the dungeon, thanks to Marian letting him wear her heavy cloak so that the guard lets Robin out, thinking it's Marian. (Said guard also pinches "her" butt as "she" leaves.)

When the Merry Men in due course invade the castle to free Robin, they slay most of the male villains, and they also end up freeing Marian from the tender mercies of Lady Sallyforth. The villainess takes a definite sapphic delight in tormenting Marian, alluding to the "soft girl things that your traitorous Robin and his arrogant maleness couldn't possibly know"-- which is definitely the one line in the whole script worth committing to memory. In another unusually dramatic touch, Robin gives Sallyforth to his men to deal out punishment. Little John has the chance to rape (at the very least) the woman partly responsible for the demise of his beloved. Yet he demurs, clearly not willing to touch her sexually, and leaves her punishment to two other outlaws.

Though there is a lengthy fight at the end, it seems clear to me that director/co-writer Richard Kanter barely cared about these scenes next to scenes of male grief at the loss of their beloved women. The streaming version I saw also omits a traumatic moment from other versions, in which Robin as a child watches the Sheriff and his men slay Robin's father and despoil both his mother and sister. HOOD may not formally good for a "Robin Hood drama." But I give Kanter props for trying something different in a market devoted to sedulous imitation.

One of Sallyforth's torture methods constitutes a naturalistic "diabolical device:" a bed of spikes over which the victim is suspended by chains. However, this device inspires IMO only fear, not the dread that is summoned forth by the most well-known torture device in English-language fiction: Poe's uncanny combo of The Pit and the Pendulum.