In the year 1191 – while King Richard the Lionhearted has been detained returning from the third Crusade – his treacherous brother Prince John (Claude Rains) has declared himself Regent of England. The ruthless Sir Guy of Gisborune (Basil Rathbone), ruler of Nottingham, uses Richard’s absence to over-tax and oppress the Saxon people.

In Sherwood Forest, Gisbourne finds a peasant poaching a royal deer. Before he can hit the man with his mace, it’s shot out of his hand with an arrow drawn by the gallant, impudent Sir Robin of Locksley (Errol Flynn). Robin later crashes a banquet at Nottingham Castle with a slain deer draped over his shoulders. He introduces himself to the regal Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Olivia de Havilland) and is asked whether he feels the Saxons are over-taxed.

“Overtaxed, overworked and paid off with a knife, a club or a rope.” Marian is indignant, “Why, you speak treason!” “Fluently,” he replies. Robin promises rebellion against anyone attempting to usurp King Richard. Guards try to apprehend him, but Robin escapes from the castle with acrobatic leaps and bounds and rides away.

Word spreads that Robin wants the peasants to band together to resist Prince John. Accompanied by Will Scarlet, Robin encounters the boisterous Little John (Alan Hale, reprising his role from the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks version) and challenges him to a duel of quarterstaffs over a stream. He joins the Merry Men of Sherwood, along with the portly Friar Tuck (Eugene Pallette).

Springing out of trees and camouflaged vines, the merry men ambush a well-armed caravan led by Gisbourne carrying tax money to London. Marian has accompanied the caravan, and when Robin falls in love with her, and for the chance to see her again, places himself in harm’s way repeatedly, disguising himself and participating in an archery tournament designed to trap him.

In 1935, a costume and set consultant on Warner Brothers Pictures’ Captain Blood named Dwight Franklin sent a memo to studio chief Jack Warner, in which he proposed James Cagney “would make a swell Robin Hood.” Warner Brothers was in the process of an image makeover, moving from contemporary stories that might lead to trouble with the censors, to a wider range of pictures, like Busby Berkeley musicals, and costume adventures.

Cagney was under contract to Warner, but walked in a dispute with the studio. Warner Brothers announced that Errol Flynn, 27-year-old star of Captain Blood, would play Robin Hood instead. William Keighley was named director, but when the picture fell fifteen days behind schedule, Michael Curtiz was employed to replace him.

Curtiz had a flair for staging big action sequences, and while he favored elaborate camera setups that sent the film’s budget to $2 million – the most expensive in Warner Brothers history – The Adventures of Robin Hood became the studio’s biggest grossing film of the year.

As theatrical and intermittently corny as films of the era may seem today, this is the definitive swashbuckling adventure featuring Robin Hood, as timeless as it is entertaining. It was shot in three-strip Technicolor, and it looks far more lush and vibrant than any action film produced in the last fifty years.

The climactic duel between Flynn and Rathbone (who was the better fencer, and hated having to lose to Flynn) is one of the great sword fights in the movies. The vast soundstages at Burbank Studios are used to very good effect in the duel, and accompanied by Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s rich orchestral score, Flynn versus Rathbone is worth a rental alone.

Flynn and de Havilland have remarkable chemistry together, and share a beautifully played scene on a balcony. The script – credited to Norman Reilly Raine and Seton Miller -“ isn’t very deep, and I might mumble if the subject of men in tights is mentioned, but nothing in the picture feels false. Above everything else, it’s fun. It made me want to snap a radio antenna off an SUV and use it as a sword.

The Adventures of Robin Hood was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won for Art Direction, Editing, and Music. More stuntmen were employed than for any movie that had been made up to this point, and they’re put to efficient use, diving off stairwells and getting shot with arrows. Very cool stuff. Bidwell Park in Northern California was used for Sherwood Forest.