"The War Lord", which Franklin Schaffner made in 1965, was not a success. It's easy to see why since this medieval epic was totally unlike other sword-and-sandal pictures before or since. Fundamentally, it's a love story and a highly intelligent one, spoken in a strange dialect that's neither fish nor fowl. Charlton Heston is the war lord who falls for village girl Rosemary Forsyth, (and she for him), but she is betrothed to another so he uses his right as master of all he surveys and, as was the custom in those parts, to take her on her wedding night which naturally causes all sorts of trouble. It's an uneven film with some terrible miscasting. Richard Boone looks as if he's wandered in from "Have Gun - Will Travel", Guy Stockwell thinks he may be in "Hamlet" and Heston is, of course, his usual square- jawed wooden self but there is also much here that is very fine, (including some brilliantly staged battle scenes). It's very well written, (by John Collier and Millard Kaufman from a play by Leslie Stevens), and is superbly photographed in widescreen by Russell Metty. Naturally it's become something of a cult movie, as failures often do. It's far from being a great picture but it's also worth seeing.
Review of The War Lord
