Robin Hood!

I picked up a few months back a wonderful DVD of Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood. It's one of those DVD sets that takes full advantage of the format to offer up a wide array of interesting, enlightening and entertaining extras. There's a whole faux-afternoon of film-going experience with a trailer, a cartoon, a newsreel, and a short film. There's background on the creation of the movie, the 1922Robin Hood movie with Douglas Fairbanks, and a delightfully detailed commentary. There are two classic cartoons with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck both lampooning the Robin Hood story. There's a Flynn trailer library and features on the invention of Technicolor. A great tasty collection not even mentioning a colorful presentation of this classic adventure story. Errol Flynn as Robin and Basil Rathbone as Guy of Gisborne might just be the finest hero-villain casting in the history of film. They are perfect in their roles and their swordfight is in my all-time top ten list of fave movie moments. I've long had a still of the classic duel which is tucked away in a box right now, but has historically been in my office.

At the same time I picked this flick up I got hold of a Border's reproduction of Howard Pyle's classic The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It's a pretty little book. All this Robin Hood thinking got me to remembering one of the earliest Classics Illustrated volumes I ever owned featuring the adventures of the outlaw from Sherwood. It's a solid comic adventure with a lush cover image clearly inspired by Errol Flynn's definitive version from the movie and some worthwhile artwork and storytelling inside. If you've never sampled Classic Illustrated before, this is a good one to begin with.

Now I'm hankering to see more Flynn. I've got Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk on VHS, but I'd love to see if there are quality DVD verisons with some great features out there. If ever there was an actor who brought the zeitgeist of the "superhero" to the big screen it was Flynn, a larger-than-life personality who could play the bejeezus out of any large role he was given. And Robin Hood, star of many a comic book, and the inspiration for such hardcase "superheroes" as Green Arrow and Hawkeye the Marksman is certainly a larger-than-life role.

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