Robin Hood: Thief of Wives (1996) watch online HD

ROBIN THIEF OF WIVES is Joe D'Amato's quickie take on the legendary hero, here reduced to dumb sex comedy. If you can stomach a horrendously asinine English-dubbing job, it's OK XXX diversion.

Just as the crappy Kevin Costner hit version ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES injected an anachronistic Black character into the mix (played by Morgan Freeman), D'Amato makes the Sheriff of Nottingham into a Black, broadly played by Sean Michaels in the film's leading role (Robin doesn't show up at all until over 30 minutes has elapsed). Adding to the silliness, the Sheriff wears a cheap turban (at first I thought it was an elaborate shower cap) -what's that all about?

Key gimmick here is the use of chastity belts; to raise money for King John's coffers, the Sheriff kidnaps all the town's women and fits them with the belts, giving the keys to the King. If any peasant wants to get laid, he has to pay a tariff for the privilege. This is fun, and my mind wandered to today's moronic Tea Party movement - I guess those stiffs would go along with the Christian Right and favor abstinence if a similar taxation plan were instituted today.

So Robin of Sherwood pops up (in the form of Mark Davis), repeatedly stealing the keys and thereby making a hit with the townsfolk. Lovely Maid Marian is abducted by the King and her title and lands are to be turned over to her treacherous servant Rebecca, who for the fans is sexy enough (with over-sized nipples to boot) to have us porn hounds overlook her wrongdoings.

Film culminates in a very poorly staged archery tournament called by the King, with the winner to get Marian's hand and (contradictorily) all her lands and possessions (continuity person forgot about the Rebecca subplot a reel earlier). Surprise ending has King Richard incognito winning the contest, having surreptitiously just returned from The Crusades, and setting everything right in the kingdom.

An even dumber continuity error occurs during one of many slapstick scenes where the Sheriff torments a hapless peasant regarding his wife. In long shots during this sequence she is nude, but in closer shots is wearing her chastity belt, a glaring mismatch every time there's a cut. It's all jumbled together in the final print.

This silliness is an excuse for lots of sex, with Michaels doing a lot of the mixed-combo humping. Cast is nearly identical with that for D'Amato's JULIET AND ROMEO. Since the actors' roles are never identified in these stinkers, there is confusion over who played what; suffice it to say that the same tall & slim, pale beauty who played Beatrice, helping out Romeo in his video is cast as Maid Marian in this one. IMDb calls her Caterina Altieri, but I'm guessing (from the billing) that she's Stefania Sartori instead, but not the "Stefania Sartori" credited with appearing as Juliet.

ROBIN HOOD: THIEF OF WIVES is Italian exploitation king Joe D'Amato's spoof version of ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES, told via some pornographic shenanigans. It's certainly one of his most lacklustre productions, a film whose heart just doesn't seem to be in it. The film is chock full of lazy sex scenes that start feeling repetitive about two minutes in, bad dubbing, and a general lack of coherence in the narrative.

Okay, so you don't expect story depth in a film like this, but even a little effort would have been appreciated. That they film in an old castle is the most interesting thing about this. Otherwise, Sean Michaels is an unlikely Sheriff of Nottingham, Mark Davis gives the most wooden performance as Robin himself, and he's obsessed with stealing women instead of valuables here. D'Amato is working on autopilot and couldn't be more disinterested in the material, and I'm afraid it really shows.

Robin Hood: Thief of Wives (1996)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

One of the countless porn movies Joe D'Amato made in the later part of his career. This time out Robin Hood doesn't want to steal money for the poor but instead he wants women and will stop at nothing to get them. This includes going after the Sheriff of Nottingham's woman. D'Amato "remade" several classic films into porn movies but this one here isn't one of the better ones. Sometimes the director got to work with a large budget but that's not the case here as the budget seems to be lower than some of his earlier films like EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD. The performances are all bland, the direction sleepwalking and even the sex scenes are rather lazy. As I'm going through D'Amato's porn career there's been very few that actually jumped out to at me as being good films. It's no secret the director hated making these movies and you can tell because there's no real energy to the film.