Alexander the Great

The first temptation is to critic it very hard. The image of Persia from intro is fake, the Macedonians seems like Romans, the fight scenes are almost passable.

But William Shatner proposes a not so bad Alexander, Joseph Cotton and John Cassavetes are just good and the film is only a pilot episode .

So, after the 52 minutes, you can define it as a decent try, inspired by the spirit of period in adaptation of Ancient history heroic episodes, with a reasonable potential and fair in large aspects.

A nice film and a not so bad story- sure, the aspect of sketch is obvious.

At the second view it seems just correct, the heroic virtues, the love story, the punishment of traitors and enemies being fair used. The most important, the desire of return to Macedonia , interesting reflected.

A story about great men that would come to redefine our civilisation. An event whose impact would reach the "ends of the world and the great outer sea". A cultural revolution had started that would mark the beginning of an epoch.

None of these statements describes this made for TV pilot movie, which is a rather turgid retelling of the Battle of Issus with William Shatner in the title role and Adam West playing Robin to his Alexander. The script is horrible, the acting is wooden and thank god this pilot was never picked up.

Three years later Shatner and West were free to be cast in their iconic roles and history was made.

If it wasn't for the really terrible dialogue, this would make for quite a passable sword and sandals adventure, William Shatner is in full theatrical ham mode as the eponymous character who must combat the maniacal King Darius of Persia as well as a few of his more independently minded generals. It can only really be described as a very loose interpretation of history - there is oodles of creative licence going on - but it is still quite a good fun little drama that lets our hero roll around in the dirt, without his shirt coming off, and we've even got some belly dancing too! It's rubbish, really - but I still, perversely perhaps, I rather enjoyed it.

Do you want to see Captain Kirk and Batman in the same scene? Or how about two great stage actors in a BC period piece? William Shatner, Joseph Cotten, John Cassavetes, and Adam West all teamed up for the television hour-long movie Alexander the Great. It was obviously a low-budget flick, and the two famous tv fellows weren't famous yet.

Really, the only reason to watch this is if you think William Shatner is a stud. He prances around in skimpy Roman costumes showing off his body, and he looks very cute with his wavy, blond hair. The movie itself is pretty bad. It's one of those old tv movies that give old tv movies a bad name. But I did sit through the entire hour. I like to look at pretty things.

In his autobiography, Adam West stated, "May well be the worst hour of TV in history" regarding this pilot for a proposed TV series that he co-stared in. Is it THAT bad? Of course not - I've seen worse pilots and worse TV series. That's not to say that this is a GOOD pilot, however. I will say that it doesn't look bad - some time and expense was put into making or getting a hold of period costumes and props, though it does look some battle footage was taken from a theatrical movie. And there is some amusement from Shatner's sometimes hammy performance as the title figure, and that this great leader is sometimes portrayed as a kind of adolescent goofball. But that is all that is entertaining about this pilot. It's a real dull affair for the most part, with a lot of stiff and dry dialogue. The pilot also fails to provide enough explanation for viewers who know little to nothing about Alexander the Great and his military campaign, so as a result there are some confusing parts. If you do want to watch this pilot despite what I've said, it can be found on the Mill Creek DVD company's 50 movie pack "The Sensational Sixties", which managed to uncover a decent-looking print for this now public domain production.