The Scarlet Blade

When Hammer's production schedule was cleared in 1956 to make way for more horror films, the plug was pulled on the long-in-preparation 'King Charles and the Roundheads'.

Having in the intervening seven years made another Robin Hood adventure and a pirate yarn, Hammer finally made their Cavaliers v. Roundheads picture with a suitably gory title and Lionel Jeffries, of course, as a roundhead (with Oliver Reed as his saturnine young henchman ironically sporting a fake scar on his face in an entirely different place from the real one he acquired on his left cheek in a nightclub brawl a year later). Jack Hedley makes a rather gentle leading man, and although improbably cast as Jeffries' daughter, the late June Thorburn (who gets to wear a magnificent hat) plays a far greater role in the plot than the leading lady usually does in such nonsense.

Plenty of people get killed - and Hedley is flogged at one point - but compared to Tigon's harrowing Civil War subject 'Witchfinder-General' a few years later it's a pretty placid affair, with a jaunty score by Gary Hughes.