the audience applauded

Sorry, this movie sucks

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

There is a DVD of this movie that shows its excellent wide screen color cinematography. Another big plus factor of this movie is its basis in historical fact. The Black Prince, portrayed by Errol Flynn, was a real person, the Prince of Wales in old England of the 1300's. He really did marry a noblewoman named Joan, here portrayed by Joanne Dru. Many of the characters portrayed in this move were real, such as the King of France who is correctly mentioned as a prisoner of England, and the Dauphin of France who was suddenly forced by circumstance to rule in his father's absence. But the big ultimate winner of all the warfare was French hero Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France, who is portrayed in this film. Although depicted here as losing a battle, du Guesclin really did eventually regain almost all of France from the English and other assorted groups. These characters are chronicled more fully in a fine book called "The Distant Mirror" by noted historian Barbara W. Tuchman. The book also documents the constant wars, castle sieges, attacks, counter attacks such as those presented in "The Warriors". Believe it or not, these guys really did run around in a bloody, crazy, messy hundred years of warfare all over France and parts of Italy and the Habsburg Empire. And the English did have a claim on Aquitaine and fought for a long time to retain it.So the movie is not just swashbuckling for its own sake. For me, understanding that the circumstances and that the major figures presented here are historical adds a new perspective to what you might be tempted to call "just another swashbuckler". The only failing that I perceive to all this is that not much time can be allowed for character development (hence the Tuchman book for reference- its well written but really long).Errol Flynn's acting is good as it always was throughout his career, but alas he is too dissipated to be able to swash many buckles, although he or his double do participate in some action scenes. Dru is not effective in her part which is only secondary to this film's story, but Peter Finch and others including a young Christopher Lee do a fine job in supporting roles. Yvonne Furneaux steals the movie from all these stars with a lovely fun performance.So this film has a lot of action in a true historical perspective, is well made and features good wide-screen cinematography. I can't pigeon-hole this as "just a swashbuckler" because it is a historical film at the same time, and you can't just say "its another late Flynn" because in his late films he grew as an actor and still tried to deliver a performance while suffering the severe decline of his health related to alcoholism and heart failure."The Warriors" lacks depth but is overall a pretty good action movie.

Saw this 59 years ago and some of its images have remained buried in my unconscious, coming out at odd moments over the six tweener decades. Thus, when it hit DVD I had to check it out again. Yes, Flynn is 46 and looks like he just got stung by a jelly fish, and yes, when the swords and lances come out, the visor goes down so a real stud can do the man work, but it's a completely enjoyable romp. Unlike the Warner Bros costume pix, this one was filmed in real castles which add immeasurably to its interest; the English countryside, green and sunlit, also helps, as do first-class costumes, lots of horses and a stout cast of English yeoman actors playing English yeomen. Everyone's a pro and while Flynn hasn't the sparkle and elan of his younger days, he's a solid lad around which to build a medieval oater, even if Alan Hale had been dead five years when this one was before camera. Good music, good (but not great) fight choreography and toward the end a cast of at least a hundred make it a rouser. Plot is piffle, and it asks us to sympathize with English occupiers over French homeboys which isn't easy to do, but Peter Finch, mad as hell and not going to take it any more, makes a convincing Dastardly Villain. I've remembered him (SPOILER) getting a battle ax in the chest off a Flynn right hand pitch for 59 years, just as I've remembered the all the King's knights cheering at the end after they drove the Frenchies off. A nice revisit. One oddity: It was released in US as "The Warriors," which is certainly how it's known, to the extent that it's known at all. So why file it, Dr. IMDb, under the name "The Dark Avenger," since, btw, there's no avenging done anywhere in it, and it's so sunny and costume-crazed there's no dark here either.

Errol Flynn stars in what would be one of his last adventures, in this movie called The Dark Avenger AKA The Warriors. The story starts with the facts concerning the Hundred Years' War, which was between England and France for control of the French throne. As the film starts, we see a battle between the British and the French (on whose soil I'm not quite sure) just ending with French prisoners being taken, one of them being Peter Finch, who is not very acquiescent to the rule of the British and doesn't mind rebelling against them and inciting a revolt among the prisoners. In order to kill Prince Edward (Errol Flynn) and overcome their imprisonment, they devise a plan to kidnap a lady, whom they know Edward has taken a fondness for, and her two younger brothers. The rest of the film concerns her rescue. Such is the plot of this pretty understandable film. Some may say, and even I, after seeing the film for the first time, that it is rather simple and not terribly exciting. And, what adds to its awkwardness is the fact that Peter Finch is not too convincing as a Frenchman, considering the fact he was British. But it does have its good points, with Errol Flynn in his well-known genre of film, the lovely Joanne Dru (game-show host Peter Marshall's sister) and a plot you can follow. With good production values, including an unusually moving score, which I liked from the opening scene, this is one of Errol Flynn's turkeys that may not be that bad, if you'll only give it half a chance.

Once you survive the numbing and typical pageantry which marks the beginning of the picture, the intrigue gets rather interesting. The lousy dub on this commercially purchased VHS tape is another obstacle. Alas, no DVD is available (though there are some crumby DVD dubs out there, too!). However, once I adjusted the contrast, brightness and beefed up the color level (a lot), it was a viewable tale the got very slowly more interesting as time went slowly on. This picture marks Finch's rise and Flynn's decline (no more to swash and buckle after this). Compare his "Captain Blood" twenty years previous and you can see what time and booze did to poor Errol.Joanne Dru certainly DID look bored throughout, as was mentioned earlier. Perhaps the whole thing was just a costume romp for her.It's such a shame when a decent copy of the film is apparently unavailable from which to make copies. I find the same problem with the 1940 version of "Our Town."