Customer Rating: 
Summary: Those flippin' american accents can drive you nuts
Comment: Good family movie with good hard sword fights for the boys, beautful princesses for the girls, solid story for mum and dad and splendid backdrops. Go on, go on, oh go on buy it, it's what you dreamed of being when you played knights and castles as a kid.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Rousing Tony Curtis Movie
Comment: The Black Shield of Falworth gets a bad rap quite a bit - because of Curtis' accent, the script, the acting, etc...
But it's really a very entertaining, rousing film that takes the standard "farm boy who's really nobility" theme and achieves great things, notably an entertaining film with a script that is witty, acting that is not as bad as people think, and great action sequences that make the movie. The clanking sound effects of medieval battle are often covered/obscured with music or overdone, but these sound effects work very well to heighten the tension.
This film should be in wide release on DVD. My hope is that since these types of films have made somewhat of a comeback thanks to Gladiator and Braveheart that the Black Shield of Falworth will get the attention that it is due.
Customer Rating:
Summary: with a little forgiveness this is GREAT!
Comment: Yes the acting is horrible, and yes the set pieces are old school...but this movie strikes at the heart a simplistic joy and is enjoyable to a full extent if you can allow it to just swewep you off your feet and enjoy the unbelievable ride of a heroic, honorable peasant boy who fulfills his birthrite as royality. I saw this for the first time a very long time ago as a boy on WGN on a Sunday afternoon, and I recorded it, and I have watched this movie at least 100 times since then and the tape is now dead. PLEASE someone bring this movie to DVD! Thank you and take care everyone!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Five, because you CAN'T Get it! 3 1/2 as a movie, But. . . .
Comment: Where IS this movie on DVD? Come to think of it, where is it on VHS in popular release? WHY isn't IT AVAILABLE?Well, as to the movie, it's an awkward adaptaion of Howard Pyle's, "MEN IN IRON." Want to have some fun? Try and find the book It's really not very good. The interiors are so studio set-pieces, they are laughable. The acting is, at best, acceptable. Curtis is very young, very handsome, and as Miles Falworth (in the immortal words of Anna Russell), "very stupid." He takes on the Earl, the Master of Arms, the Master of Squires, and according to the book, he's not even 18 yet! What a Dunce! But the technicolor, the pairing of Curtis, and his new wife, Janet Leigh (this was the FIRST movie they ever made together {And YES, it's the same Janet Leigh who gets the big-bad butcher knife in Hitchcok's "PSYCHO"}), a story line of the middle-ages trying oh-so-painfully to edge into the Renaissance (well, not exactly, that wouldn't REALLY happen for another 300 years, but the point is there. Listen for the line, "Our Lord the Earl has thirteen books." The printing press had not been invented yet. Get it? Get it?)And Miles (Curtis) discovers that the page of one of those books has been torn out. The name of Falworth no longer exists in the Book of English Nobility. Uh-oh.
Oh there's swash and buckle aplenty. Moreover, there's more about Chilvary and Knighthood than you ever wanted to know. Fights, Sword-fights, Jousts, Intrigues, Plots, Plots within Plots (except the audience is very-very carefully guided along so the good-guys are clearly distinguishable from the bad-guys; i.e., the guy in black armour--bad guy)!
But Curtis and Leigh are both at their prettiest! Oops, I mean their best. Very much in love, and very photogenic on the screen, what should be silliness is Chilvary. What should be cliche is Romantic.
Oh hell, pop some good popcorn, pour too much butter over it, over-salt it, and put on this damn good movie. Go ahead. Cheer the good guys! And definitely Boo the bad guys.
Most of all enjoy. This movie goes back to the late 40's-50's; when adventure meant spectacle, and in it's own small way, THE BLACK SHIELD OF FALWORTH delivers spectacle. Not De Mille spectacle, but in your face, here and now, and the GOOD GUYS WIN spectacle.
It is a bit silly, I admit. But it's more than engrossingly watchable.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Where is this movie on DVD?
Comment: Why hasn't this movie been released on DVD? Curtis' other great movie the Vikings was available years ago, why not this movie? There are too many bogus movies being made available, now is the time to start seriously considering offering classics such as these on disc. Another fine movie that was released fairly recently was the original Robin Hood, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
