ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Inadvands Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Michael_Elliott The Road to Fort Alamo (1964) ** (out of 4)Solo rider Bud Massadey (Ken Clark) comes across a Calvary massacre. A dying man gives him a paper payment of $150,000 that is to be paid to the U.S. Army. Bud teams up with a gang to get the money but he's double crossed by a card cheat. Soon Bud and his partner are rescued by another Calvary and sure enough he eventually catches up with the cheat.Mario Bava's THE ROAD TO FORT ALAMO is a pretty bland and boring Spaghetti Western that really doesn't have too much going for it. The Italian director was hitting a very high mark during this point of his career and it's easy to call this the least entertaining movie he made during this period. It's really too bad that this movie seems to have been a "director-for-hire" project as there's just not too much life here.Technically speaking, the film is certainly well-made and it appears that Bava got the job done. That job was getting the film completed without it going over budget. The film was obviously shot with a shoe-string budget and the director at least manages to make it look very professional. I thought the costumes were terrific and Bava at least managed to make the atmosphere seem as if you were back in this era.With that said, the story itself was just rather boring and none of the characters were all that interesting either. Heck, I'd go even further and say that the entire film was just rather bland to the point where you didn't care about anything that was going on. The performances were okay for the most part but none of them really jumped off the screen to grab your attention.

entomol71 First of all I am a fan of Italian films but "the road to Fort Alamo" is one of the worst Italian western that I've seen. It was shot without means. The interiors have a fictitious background with a blue light and fictitious cactus so as to simulate the desolate and barren moorlands of Texas or Arizona, but any clever viewers can note that the real vegetation is made of oak (Q. pubescens) and other plants typical of European climate. Some shots (cowboys that are riding) are accelerated, Bud, the leading actor, cannot ride, therefore he was always replaced by a double. The Indians are awkward, always shot at a distance. I admit the shots are the only thing which make this movie credible, but the others contemporary films like "le pistole non discutono", "preparati la bara" are masterpieces compared with this one. I give it 4 out of 10.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) I think the thing that impressed me the most about Mario Bava's first spaghetti western outing here is how utterly pedestrian most of the proceedings were. Another distinguished commentator here has it right: This is the Italo western boys before the spaghetti idiom was truly established dressing up in their snappy cavalry duds & playing cowboys and Indians just like we used to do out at the sandlot near my cousin's summer house, only we didn't have such nice costumes.Ken Clark is a decent enough he-man leading heroic noble Shatterhand type, apparently roaming the west looking for trouble to straighten out. He finds it when a young novice finds himself taken by a card shark (the priceless Gerard Herter, Max from CALTIKI) and the two have to fight their way out of town & take up with a band of rogues who are targeting a bank to knock over. For reasons that escape me they find themselves mistaken for cavalry officers and join up with a U.S. Army element sent to the region to pacify the local Indian tribes so that the nice Caucasian people can build towns, railroads, brothels, and prosper without having to take the local Natives into consideration.It's pretty much the usual stuff for a low budget early 1960s western and indeed the story is decidedly lacking on the traditional spaghetti western histrionics, which many fans may be disappointed by. I however got a kick out of seeing Mario Bava constrained to a pretty straight forward story, complete with a heroic ride to the rescue at the end with the bugles & everything. If it sounds like a let down, students of Bava's unique visual style will actually be pleased with a series of nighttime scenes obviously filmed on a sound stage with that traditional Bava artsy minimalism emphasizing color and texture over rugged authenticity. This was made in the period before Sergios Leone and Corbucci more or less invented the spaghetti aesthetic, qualifying it more as a Euro western than a proper spaghetti outing. The film is also somewhat unique in that like Joe Lacey's FURY OF THE APACHES it actually involves the Native American peoples -- albeit somewhat clumsily and in a stereotypical fashion -- rather than swarthy Pistoleros shooting at Clint Eastwood's mule.I found it to be a fascinating movie perfect for a snowed in Saturday afternoon, though some may question how convinced Bava was of his own artistic vision for the movie. It's more sort of a compromise between his KILL BABY KILL cinematics and traditionalist Oater mentalities, with some truly stunning shots framed when seen in the proper widescreen ratio. The one thing I kept thinking is that here is a surprisingly ordinary low budget western that's been photographed like a Gothic study in spots, and the rather bloodless nature of the goings on mean that it's a rare example of an Italo western that was meant for all ages rather than a grim cartoon for adults. I kind of like it, and found it a much more rewarding viewing experience than Bava's 1970 final spaghetti ROY COLT & WINCHESTER JACK, though fans of the genre will probably prefer his NEBRASKA JIM. 6/10

unbrokenmetal "La strada per Fort Alamo" was shot in Italy, not in Spain like most Italian westerns. Director "John Old" alias Mario Bava was obviously influenced by the John Ford classics such as "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon", all just in a much cheaper B-movie style; it has almost nothing in common with the typical "Django pays for your funeral" kind of western. This movie has a good script with good dialogs; it's about a bandit who has to pose as an army officer after he got caught wearing a stolen uniform. When Indians attack, he gets opportunity to show he is a brave good guy. One word to the disappointed Bava fans: surely the master had to earn a living, too, and this is what he did for it. You don't shoot masterpieces like "Danger: Diabolik" or "Mask of Satan" every week. More important than such comparisons is that "La strada per Fort Alamo" is a good quality western in a traditional way, and if you don't expect more than that, it's well worth watching.