''Siege of the Saxons'' is a 1963 British

adventure film An adventure film is a form of adventure fiction, and is a genre of film. Subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, an ...

directed by

Nathan H. Juran Naftuli Hertz "Nathan" Juran (September 1, 1907 – October 23, 2002) was a Romanian film art director, and later film and television director. As an art director, he won the Oscar for Best Art Direction in 1942 for ''How Green Was My Valley'', ...

and released by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

. Starring

Janette Scott Thora Janette Scott (born 14 December 1938) is an English retired actress. Life and career Scott was born on 14 December 1938 in Morecambe, Lancashire, England. She is the daughter of actors Jimmy Scott and Thora Hird and began her acting car ...

and Ronald Lewis, the film is set in the time of

King Arthur King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...

, but, as with many Arthurian themed films, the sets and style are from

medieval England England in the Middle Ages concerns the history of England during the medieval period, from the end of the 5th century through to the start of the Early Modern period in 1485. When England emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire, the econ ...

. The plot is also heavily influenced by

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depic ...

Plot

King Arthur learns that one of his knights is plotting to take over and marry his daughter. Soon the soldiers of double-dealing Edmund of Cornwall slay the king. However his daughter Katherine escapes with the help of outlaw Robert Marshall. Claiming that Katherine is dead, Edmund prepares to usurp the throne in league with Saxon invaders. After coming close to death more than once at the hands of the sinister limping man, Katherine and Robert and other loyal countrymen rescue the great wizard

Merlin Merlin ( cy, Myrddin, kw, Marzhin, br, Merzhin) is a mythical figure prominently featured in the legend of King Arthur and best known as a mage, with several other main roles. His usual depiction, based on an amalgamation of historic and le ...

from the hands of Edmund's men to help them save

Camelot Camelot is a castle and court associated with the legendary King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and, since the Lancelot-Grail cycle, eventually came to be described as the ...

and England. They arrive at Camelot just as Edmund is about to be crowned. On Merlin's advice, Robert challenges Edmund to kill him as a traitor, by using Arthur's sword

Excalibur Excalibur () is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes also attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Britain. It was associated with the Arthurian legend very early on. Excalibur and the Sword in th ...

. Edmund is unable to draw the sword from the scabbard, whereupon Robert presents the sword to Katherine, the rightful heir, who draws it out easily. Katherine is recognised by the court as the new Queen. Following a battle against Edmund's remaining men and the invading force of Saxons, Katherine's armies prevail. She offers the lands of Edmund and other renegades to Robert, so that he can rule alongside her as King.

Cast

as Katherine * Ronald Lewis as Robert Marshall * Ronald Howard as Edmund of Cornwall *

Mark Dignam Cuthbert Mark Dignam (20 March 1909 – 29 September 1989) was a prolific English actor. Born in London, the son of a salesman in the steel industry, Dignam grew up in Sheffield, and was educated at the Jesuit College, where he appeared in num ...

John Laurie John Paton Laurie (25 March 1897 – 23 June 1980) was a Scottish actor. In the course of his career, Laurie performed on the stage and in films as well as television. He is perhaps best remembered for his role in the sitcom ''Dad's Army'' (196 ...

as Merlin *

Jerome Willis Jerome Barry Willis (23 October 1928 – 11 January 2014) was a prominent British stage and screen actor with more than 100 screen credits to his name. Willis had a leading role in the ITV drama series ''The Sandbaggers'' as Matthew Peele. He ...

as the Limping Man *

Charles Lloyd-Pack Charles Lloyd-Pack (10 October 1902 – 22 December 1983) was a British film, television and stage actor. Life and career Lloyd-Pack was born at Wapping, East London, to working-class parents. He was seen in several horror films produced by th ...

as the Doctor *

Francis de Wolff Francis Marie de Wolff (7 January 191318 April 1984) was an English character actor. Large, bearded, and beetle-browed, he was often cast as villains in both film and television. Life and career Born in Essex, he made his film debut in '' Flam ...

as the Blacksmith

Production

Producer

Charles H. Schneer Charles Hirsch Schneer (May 5, 1920 – January 21, 2009) was an American film producer, best known for working with Ray Harryhausen, the specialist known for his work in stop motion model animation. Life and career Born in Norfolk, Virginia, ...

made it after a series of fantasies with

Ray Harryhausen Raymond Frederick Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013) was an American-British animator and special effects creator who created a form of stop motion model animation known as "Dynamation". His works include the animation for '' Might ...

. This and ''

East of Sudan ''East of Sudan'' is a 1964 British adventure film directed by Nathan Juran and featuring Anthony Quayle, Sylvia Syms and Derek Fowlds. The storyline is spliced with various sections of African wildlife. Much of this stock footage makes no s ...

'' were made over 15 days, using stock footage. "Columbia had a lot of unused footage in their library," said the producer. "If 10 percent or less of a film made in the United Kingdom was stock footage, you received a government subsidy. I decided that would be a good commercial opportunity, so I made both pictures that way. I took the big action sequences out of Columbia's library." ''Siege of the Saxons'' used ''The Black Knight'' and ''East of Sudan'' used footage from ''

Beyond Mombassa ''Beyond Mombasa'' is a 1956 British/American Technicolor adventure film starring Cornel Wilde and Donna Reed. It was directed by George Marshall, set in Kenya and filmed there and at a London studio. Plot Matt Campbell (Cornel Wilde) arrives ...

''. It was the first of three consecutive films director

Nathan Juran Naftuli Hertz "Nathan" Juran (September 1, 1907 – October 23, 2002) was a Romanian film art director, and later film and television director. As an art director, he won the Oscar for Best Art Direction in 1942 for ''How Green Was My Valley'', ...

made for producer

Charles Schnee Charles Schnee (6 August 1916 Bridgeport, Connecticut - 29 November 1963 Beverly Hills, California) was a screenwriter and film producer. He wrote the scripts for the Westerns '' Red River'' (1948) and '' The Furies'' (1950), the social melodrama ...

in England. Shooting was conducted around the

Home Counties The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often inc ...

in England and at

Bray Studios Bray Productions was a pioneering American animation studio that produced several popular cartoons during the years of World War I and the early interwar era, becoming a springboard for several key animators of the 20th century, including the ...

in Berkshire.

Oakley Court Oakley Court is a Victorian Gothic country house set in overlooking the River Thames at Water Oakley in the civil parish of Bray in the English county of Berkshire. It was built in 1859 and is currently a hotel. It is a Grade II* listed bu ...

near

Windsor, Berkshire Windsor is a historic market town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British monarch. The town is situated west of ...

was used for the castle interiors,

Burnham Beeches Burnham Beeches is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest situated west of Farnham Common in the village of Burnham, Buckinghamshire. The southern half is owned by the Corporation of London and is open to the public. It is also a Na ...

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...

was the forest, and the final battle scenes were shot at Callow Hill,

Virginia Water Virginia Water is a commuter village in the Borough of Runnymede in northern Surrey, England. It is home to the Wentworth Estate and the Wentworth Club. The area has much woodland and occupies a large minority of the Runnymede district. Its nam ...

, in Surrey. The film reused a lot of costumes, props, and footage from the earlier and bigger-budgeted 1954 Columbia film, '' The Black Knight'', starring

Alan Ladd Alan Walbridge Ladd (September 3, 1913 – January 29, 1964) was an American actor and film producer. Ladd found success in film in the 1940s and early 1950s, particularly in films noir and Westerns. He was often paired with Veronica Lake ...

and costumes and props from the 1963 film ''

Lancelot and Guinevere ''Lancelot and Guinevere'' (known as ''Sword of Lancelot'' in the U.S.) is a British 1963 film starring Cornel Wilde, his real-life wife at the time, Jean Wallace, and Brian Aherne. This lesser-known version of the Camelot legend is a work shap ...

'' directed by and starring

Cornel Wilde Cornel Wilde (born Kornél Lajos Weisz; October 13, 1912 – October 16, 1989) was a Hungarian-American actor and filmmaker. Wilde's acting career began in 1935, when he made his debut on Broadway. In 1936 he began making small, uncredited app ...

. The hero dons Alan Ladd's armor from ''The Black Knight''. King Arthur wears the same costume as Brian Aherne did as Arthur in ''Lancelot and Guinevere'' and even looks much the same as Aherne. The film also uses sequences from some of Columbia's ''

'' films.

Release

The film was released on a double bill with Schneer's '' Jason of the Argonauts'' (1963), a film best remembered for its

special effects. Schneer later hired Juran to direct another pair of films for a similar double bill: a large budget fantasy with special effects by Harryhausen, ''

The First Men in the Moon ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in ''The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantastic ...

'', and a lower-budgeted English adventure heavily reliant on stock footage, ''

''. The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' called it "statutory but good humoured and moderately jolly... hampered by flat direction and cramped settings."

External links

*
''Siege of the Saxons''
at BFI
''Siege of the Saxons''
at

TCMDB Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of Atl ...

References

{{Italic title 1960s historical adventure films 1963 independent films 1963 films Arthurian films British historical adventure films British independent films Columbia Pictures films Films directed by Nathan Juran Films scored by Laurie Johnson Films produced by Charles H. Schneer Films about outlaws Films about royalty Films shot at Bray Studios Films shot in Buckinghamshire Films shot in Surrey 1960s English-language films 1960s British films