Da'ud Bob's Movie Review
for
October 2016

I'd heard about this movie before ever seeing it. In fact, if I'm to be truthful, it was the reviews on IMdB that first piqued my interest in it. Reviews that said things like: "after 20 minutes I tried gnawing my own leg off while trying to hope that the film would improve, but it then performed the impossible accomplishment of getting even worse!" and "This movie is so bad and so badly acted, that is will make your eyes and ears bleed." So how could I pass up a movie that gets reviews like that? With that kind of vilification by reviewers, there was a good chance that this film could match Deathstalker II as the worst movie I have ever reviewed. You can see that I had to. I simply had to. And so it is that this month, Da'ud Bob reviews for you 2012's Robin Hood, The Ghost of Sherwood (also found as Robin Hood, Ghosts of Sherwood).

I'm not sure why there is a "ghost" or "ghosts" in the title; there are no ghosts in the movie. Partway through it, Anna Sue thought that the only way it could be improved was with the introduction of zombies into the storyline. Then they added zombies. She was wrong.

Starring Martin Thon as Robin Hood, Ramona Kuen as Maid Marian, Kai Borchardt as Friar Tuck, Dennis Zachmann as Will Scarlett, Anika Neubauer as the Witch, Claude-Oliver Rudolph as Guy of Gisbourne, and Tom Savini, whom I don't think I have seen since his great turn as Morgan in 1981's Knightriders) as the Sheriff of Nottingham (alas, how the mighty have fallen! Really, Tom, Zombiegeddon? Horrorween? Have you no shame?). Anyway, this version of the Robin Hood story takes some bits and pieces of the Robin Hood stories, mixes them in with some magic potions, a witch whose motivations are entirely unclear, and eventually turns Robin Hood and most of his Merry Men into zombies wandering about Sherwood Forest in search of people to kill and eat.

Good points: Real chain mail.

Bad points: The real chain mail was made with too large rings of too small a gauge wire. The furry horse bridles. The fight choreography. The script. The acting. The soundtrack. The costuming. The witch: long fingernails, dirt all over her face, bad teeth, and all. The witch's potion as Febreeze. Setting a large fire in the middle of a forest! Newly-created zombies foaming at the mouth.

Zero breasts. Four gallons of blood. 57 dead bodies. (Although, two of them are brought back to life without turning them into zombies, so I'm not sure how to count those.) Arrow fu. Maul fu. Sword fu. Dagger fu. Potion fu. Garrotte fu. Fire arrow fu. Exploding rock fu. Fighters roll. Merchants roll. Heads roll. Gratuitous woodland stream. Gratuitous magical transfiguration potion. Gratuitous Indian (India Indian) merchant. Gratuitous religio-philosophical discussion. Gratuitous democratic socialism, a/k/a hippie commune. Gratuitous musical interlude. Gratuitous slo-mo. And ... just when you think the movie is over and they start running the closing credits, it continues on for another ten minutes. Academy Award nominations to Ramona Kuen as Maid Marian for her reaction to Friar Tuck's cup of "medicinal" wine: "That's awful! What swamp was it made in?"; and to Anika Neubauer as the Witch for "I heard the screams; everything must be all right." As with Deathstalker II, the outtakes are better than the movie. At one point, Maid Marian asks "How could you do this?" Frankly, that was my question to everyone who had anything to do with this throughout the entire movie: "How could you do this?" Anna Sue says she'd rather watch Robin Hood: Men in Tights twice than ever see this movie ever again. And if you know Anna Sue's aversion to Men in Tights, you know how much that's really saying here. A perfect 100 on the Vomit Meter. Zero stars. Da'ud Bob says, "It's official! This movie is worse than Deathstalker II (by ½ star). Check something else out!"

Upcoming movies and miniseries to watch for!

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