Care home residents star in comedy Western

"All right, if they want a fight, I'll give 'em one," says 85-year-old Margaret Peat, as she raises a gun with her right hand and fires a shot.

Tony Jackson, 84, retaliates by firing two shots back, and the dispute quickly descends into a deadly shootout.

This may sound like a scene from a spaghetti Western, but it is actually from a film made at a Derbyshire care home.

The Tale of Robin of Otley was made by 11 residents with a combined age of 948, and is due to get its premiere later in October.

"I've never done anything like it before in my life," said 96-year-old Geoff Hinchliffe, one of the residents at The Old Vicarage care home in Bakewell.

"It just shows that people can still do things. Because you're 96 doesn't mean you can't do things.

"It's no good just sitting and thinking."

James Dixon, activities coordinator at the care home, said it came about because residents "weren't particularly interested" in doing arts and crafts.

"We began to do creative writing," he explained.

"We started to write as a group, and that's where OV Productions started.

"So it's a group of residents that are very creative, and we would get together and talk about projects we wanted to do."

The residents posed for photos to make a comic strip before coming up with the idea of making a film.

"I showed Tony a short film I'd made on my phone, and he was blown away that I could make a film on my phone, and he said the next one needed to be a film," said Mr Dixon.

"We've got Geoff who's from West Yorkshire, and Tony who's an absolute cowboy fanatic, so we said, 'let's do something in the Wild West of Yorkshire,' and then Enid said, 'could it be a Robin Hood film?'

"So we've come up with this comedy Western set in Yorkshire based on the Robin Hood story."

Mr Hinchliffe, who plays Robin Hood, said the project had even benefitted his physical health.

"When I came here, I was on oxygen all the time," he said.

"I'm now only on it about 12 hours a day. It's amazing."

Irene Onion, who co-wrote the film and stars as Lord Elpus, said it had helped her mentally.

"I've enjoyed it, it's something to look forward to, and it gives pleasure to the other residents here, and it saves me from going round the twist, sitting thinking doing nothing," said the 82-year-old.

"Yes, I've enjoyed it very much. If you don't use it, you're losing it."

The 40-minute movie was filmed on a phone, with residents taking turns to film their parts separately in front of a green screen, before the clips were edited together.

The film premiere will be on 16 October at Bakewell Town Hall, but it is only for relatives of the people involved.

About 150 people are expected to attend, and there will even be a red carpet and photographers.

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