The Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves (1991)

I just watched "Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves" and had a really good laugh. It is a very Hollywoodish film (as in Robin Hood is your classic unflawed action hero), but I was surprised at some of the themes in it to the point of wondering how it's possible that censors and Hollywood producers (in the early 1990s no less) let that through. And then I visited IMDb's trivia page for this film and found out that actually they didn't let these things through ;-P
Don't get me wrong, it's not as if there's anything that shocking in it, but it's not what you'd expect of a light-hearted movie like this - particularly one which is aiming at rather low age certificates (PG in the UK, PG-13 in the US).

From what I can make out (based on the IMDb boards for this film), I was watching the extended British DVD version which has less cuts than the original theatrical release, but is still cut more than some of the DVD releases elsewhere in the world. The reason for this is that the British distributor wanted to retain a PG certificate for the film.

What does the Sheriff of Nottingham have to do with all these censorship musings? Well, that was the character that they cut the most of (this film is quite a different take on him). The cuts not relating to him were done purely because of excessive gore, although why they were excessive I cannot say because the version I saw didn't have them in ;-P (Although to give you an inkling - even in what I saw, this film is pretty heavy on medieval torture)
Most of the scenes relating to the Sheriff were thankfully (because I thought they were the best part of the film) left in my version, although I'm rather disapointed at not having seen him scheduling his whores with words such as "you! my room...10:30. and you! 10:45. and bring a friend." .
One of the most baffling cuts that were made to the version of the film that I watched is the removal of part of the famous spoon dialogue (it's so famous that WikiQuote has it on its spoon page). They kept the first line, but removed the other two. I don't quite understand this cut (why would those lines make a difference between a PG or higher certificate?), but see what you think for yourself - here is the quote:
"Locksley! I'm gonna cut your heart out with a spoon."
"Why a spoon cousin? Why not an axe?"
"Because it's dull, you twit, it'll hurt more."

I cannot continue writing without mentioning how good Alan Rickman is as the Sheriff and prewarn you that there might be quite a lot of gushing about him in the rest of this post ;-P I would have put in a video link here, but I haven't found anything suitable (the trailer is awful and has hardly any of Rickman in it anyway), so I'll content myself with a link to a picture of him as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
So first of all, one of the reasons to love the Sheriff of Nottingham in this film is that he has all the best lines ;-P There's some very black humour there (something that I think doesn't usually feature in American action films) and the way Alan Rickman delivers it is absolutely hilarious.
While the darkness of the character is maybe not portrayed that graphically, it is certainly one of the most perverse Hollywood villains I've seen in a while. Right at the start we're introduced not just to the atrocities he inflicts on people and his lack of anykind of fair play (quite classic elements to any Hollywood villain ;-P), but also to his total lack of sexual inhibition and perhaps most perversely (at least I was very surprised to see this and it didn't make the theatrical release) the film also shows him worshipping the devil.
But apparently, Alan Rickman wasn't playing a villain *grin* Here is something he says in the DVD extras:
I'm not playing a villain. I'm just playing somebody who has a certain checklist of things that he wants in life and he goes after them. And other people say, like Robin Hood decides, that's appalling and it must be stopped.
While the quote totally cracks me up, this is actually what I most loved about Alan Rickman's portrayal. Despite playing some things which are quite perverse when you start thinking about them, the way it's done there's just no judgement of whether the Sheriff is doing right or wrong, it's played as if whatever Nottingham is doing is the most natural thing in the world to do. This, as you might imagine, has a rather bizzarre effect in scenes such as a bishop performing a marriage ceremony while the Sheriff is holding his bride down on the floor and preparing to rape her in front of the bishop the moment the marriage is proclaimed (this was probably my favourite scene, although hardly the only one I loved).

On a final note, here's a thread on the IMDb boards that amused me a lot. I'm very obviously not alone in adoring Alan Rickman as Nottingham (the thread is titled "Did anyone else want the Sheriff of Nottingham to win?"). I doubt anyone will want to wade through the whole thing because it's very long. It's basically lots of people gushing about Alan Rickman and many of them saying he was much better than Kevin Costner (who played Robin Hood) and then there's people who think these people who like Nottingham so much are mad and saying Costner was way better and how can anybody find such an evil character sexy anyway. There are two quotes that particularly cracked me up. The first is by somebody who like me clearly enjoyed Nottingham a lot, but I find her wording rather amusing:
Its very impolite to want to cut someones heart out with a spoon but he makes it sound so funny!
And then there's a post by somebody who thinks all these people gushing over such an evil character are completely mad:
Lets's see...you guys are all rooting for a man who is a: murderer (of his own cousin and no doubt thousands of others); a would-be rapist; a devil worshipper; a contract killer (hiring Celts to do his dirty work); a pervert (with dozens of whores at his beck and call). Yeah, you picked a real upstanding criminal to admire and drool over. WELL NOT ME!