Diversifying from their signature color-drenched horror reboots, Hammer Films pivots from Dracula, Frankenstein & the Mummy to swashbuckling period historical. Alas, they chose poorly as, for one reason or another*, when it comes to British Dynastic & Civil wars, the Stuart/Cromwell conflict never caught the world’s imagination as those Roses & Tudors still do. Even their opposing nicknames are duds: Roundheads vs Cavaliers. Given low-wattage production & cast, this one plows ahead with Lionel Jeffries (a fine comic actor working in villainous mode) leading Cromwellian forces into the 1648 countryside to hunt down loyal Royalists who’ve fled to the forest to gather and wait their opportunity. (The set-up more William Tell than Robin Hood.) Jack Hedley makes a singularly unheroic presence (no Errol Flynn, he’s hardly Louis Hayward) while Jeffries’ daughter June Thorburn goes rogue and sides against his Cromwell Parliamentarians. Only young Oliver Reed brings something dramatic to the mix, already dangerous at 25, he’s a brooding, scary sideman to Jeffries and might be a turncoat. Might be; you truly don’t know where he stands which brings unexpected vibrancy to writer/director John Gilling’s otherwise uninvolving work.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: To see what all the fighting’s about you might try CROMWELL/’70. Though it’s largely unsatisfying as film and as history. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/cromwell-1970.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Interest hardly peaked by the unflattering fashions of the day or by Cromwell’s veneer of righteousness. Only spoken of here, he’s a hard man to get behind.
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