Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen

Infamousta brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Michael O'Keefe This Republic picture can stand tall in the shadow of the other Alamo movies from major studios. Director Frank Lloyd presents a film that is similar to another Republic flick...Man of Conquest released in 1939. This movie actually has that feel of major studio about it. Terrific camera angles. There are heroes and there are heroes. This time Jim Bowie(Sterling Hayden)takes the lead. Patriot Sam Houston has stirred up his share of faithful Texicans and closed minded men become anxious and unsure of the future. Texas is threatened by the armies of Mexican general Santa Ana(J. Carrol Naish)and a coexistence policy of Bowie's is not sitting well. The arrival of Davy Crockett (Arthur Hunnicutt)is like a ray of hope for courageous defenders assembled in the Alamo. A confrontation with Santa Ana seems nearing and any thoughts of reinforcements for the Texicans is dashed.Factual history is sidestepped for the sake of the movie. William Travis(Richard Carlson)agrees to share leadership with Bowie. It is a last-ditch stand with the overly outnumbered defenders of Texas and the Alamo dig in for one hell-of-a battle. A last man standing affair. Santa Ana can gloat, but not for long. Brilliant hand-to-hand combat sequences. The battle is realistic enough to almost smell the gunpowder. Actuality aside, this movie is well worth seeing.Other players featured: Ernest Borgnine, Jim Davis, Otto Kruger, Ben Cooper, Virginia Grey, John Russell, Slim Pickens and the beautiful Anna Maria Alberghetti.

dougdoepke Frankly, I don't watch movies expecting to see historical accuracy. Movies are basically a commercial product marketed to earn a profit, which means pleasing as large an audience as possible. So, if there's a conflict between historical accuracy and constructing a more saleable story, we know generally which factor will prevail. That's simply the way our capitalistic system works. Thus, well-intended folks should not be surprised at the liberties taken in this supposed account of events surrounding the siege of the Alamo.That being said, I thought the movie was very enjoyable. I thought so back in 1955, and again the other night on TMC. It's a good lively cast. Hayden may not have liked his role, but he's motivated nonetheless—catch how much he puts into the emotional exhaustion when he raps in vain on a door and then faces the camera in near collapse. That's probably the most animated this fan of Hayden's has seen him in any movie. The under-rated Richard Carlson also delivers as Hayden's rival, and of course there's the inspired casting of Hunnicutt as Davy Crockett at a time when Disney's Crockett dominated the big screen and the pop music charts too. In fact, Hunnicutt's little speech after arriving at the fort amounts to a masterpiece of down-home eloquence. And Russell Simpson's parson of-very-few- words is just the kind of no-nonsense character you'd expect to find among a band of back- woodsmen. Too bad, however, that commercial factors required Alberghetti's role. She's fine as the teenage aristocrat, but the sub-plot pairing her with the very mature Hayden amounts to the movie's biggest drawback. One thing lowly Republic was good at is action sequences. Here the battle scenes and spectacle are outstanding—the collapsing parapet is both surprising and especially well done. For sure, the studio knew how to get the most out of limited resources, even as constraints show up around the edges, particularly with painted backdrops. Nonetheless, the enemy is treated with due respect, and I particularly liked the elegiac final scene with the traumatized women and children. It's just the kind of somber mood fitting for what has happened. Of course, Republic's reputation as a cowboy studio would never get its product much attention from either the press or the artistic community. Nonetheless, this is a surprisingly well-mounted and entertaining feature that can hold its own against bigger- budget action features of its day. Too bad, its many merits have been so generally overlooked.

bkoganbing This is a version of the Alamo story often overlooked mainly because it focuses on Jim Bowie as opposed to Davy Crockett as the central character. Sterling Hayden in one of the many roles he truly hated before escaping to the seas is a stalwart and heroic Bowie.As I said though in another review of a film with Bowie as the central character, Jim Bowie was anything but heroic. He was a land swindler, slave dealer, no good con man who very few people had anything nice to say about. He was a tough guy though, no question about that and the famous Bowie knife was made to his specifications.Bowie was married into the Mexican aristocracy and did suffer the horrible tragedy of having his wife and children taken in an epidemic of the plague. We never see them here or in the John Wayne film or in the new Disney epic.Possibly the best acting honors do go to Arthur Hunnicutt who was more the backwoods character that Davy Crockett was then John Wayne. Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 Alamo was probably the best Davy Crockett ever put on film and the most accurate.Probably too much is now known for the general public to appreciate a film like The Last Command. The principals at the Alamo were three dimensional characters and not the cardboard cutouts they are here.

Melvin M. Carter I always liked this Alamo epic better than Wayne's because it moved faster and Sterling Hayden and Arthur Hunnicutt looked like Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett might have been. Hunnicutt's death scene influenced Wayne's in his epic but I'll rate Hunnicutt's an A+ for less "operatic" posing and a more real "I'll take you to hell with me realism. The teeny bopper love angle could've of been dropped though.