The Black Shield of Falworth

Introduction

The Black Shield of Falworth is one of the six films that Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh made together during their 11-year marriage. Curtis plays a peasant, Myles, who travels from Crisby Dale with his sister, Meg, to deliver a letter to the Earl of Mackworth.

Myles excels in training, under the one watchful eye of Sir James, who is impressed by his skill, but not his temperament. Meanwhile, Myles falls for Lady Anne, for whom Meg is a handmaiden, but Anne is claimed by the evil Sir Walter Blunt.

Myles must discover his true heritage, defeat Sir Walter and marry the woman he loves.

Video

This was Universal International's first CinemaScope film and it shows. There is very little camera movement and the colours are surprisingly muted and, oddly for a film directed by Rudolph Maté, the great cinematographer who worked on such films as Dreyer's Vampyr and Welles' The Lady From Shanghai, the cinematography isn't great - but then he's not the cinematographer!

The transfer is fair enough, but the picture is a little soft and the matte paintings and period design are unconvincing. It also isn't in true CinemaScope, presented in 1.78:1 rather than 2.55:1.

Audio

The disc has a reasonably clear Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack, with a rather OTT score, some of which almost occludes the dialogue. There are no subtitles.

Conclusion

The Black Shield of Falworth is spectacularly daft, with a fine array of accents - some of the Americans don't seem to even attempt an English accent, and Tony Curtis is wonderfully inconsistent, sounding somewhere between the Bronx and Buckinghamshire!

The acting is similarly hammy and pantomime-esque, not helped by a ridiculous, trite, script - I found myself doing an MST3K voice-over during parts of the movie! Crisby Dale is such a daft American invention of a medieval English place and it made me think of Crispy Duck every time I heard it! This is the sort of film Monty Python parodied in The Holy Grail.

The film is cheesy rubbish and this is a bare-bones disc, with a fairly high price-tag, but I can see why some might have it as a guilty pleasure.