Saturday, July 18, 2009

William Shatner IS Alexander The Great!

I watched this curiosity, Alexander the Great, today and I thought it was 50 okey minutes of television. Shatner was fun, but not really convincing as Alexander, and Adam West had very little to do. John Cassavetes, Simon Oakland and Joseph Cotten was more fun. Cotten seems quite tired and dosen't look healthy at all, but Cassavetes and Oakland really tried to do something good.

I really like Phil Karlson's direction and the stunts and action was better than average for this kinda production. It felt a lot like a peplum, but with less sets and extras. Most of the time it looks like a western-movie, but with greeks running around killing enemies. Karlson has some great crane-shots that really shows of the scenery. There's no chance in hell that we would think it was something else than the US

What I understand it was a pilot for a TV-show that never happen. The pilot was put on the shelf for a couple of years and resurrected when Shatner and West had become popular because of Star Trek and Batman. Far from a masterpiece but good matiné-fun, at least for me.

In the end there was a good battle, some nice sword-fighting and good stunts. But most of it was obviously stock footage from another movie, and those scenes where quite cool. I've been trying to to find some info about this stock footage, but no luck. Can anyone give me a clue to which movie it was from?

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