How sad is this?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

its poetry is the basic virtue. and the fact who gives to it a special individuality among the films of period from the same genre. first, for the love story, ambiguous , strange, not real fair. for the relation between brothers. for the shadow of the past. and, sure, for a hero far to be perfect. not the last, for Charlton Heston. many motifs for bitter critics in this case. not the convincing acting and a confuse story. but it remains a classic. maybe for the poetry of a story defined by clash between cultures, the sin of a brave hero, a love story who is different by the classic recipes. short, a classic.

"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.

It's rotten luck when someone takes the trouble to make a historical drama based intelligently on the best historical knowledge available to them, only for subsequent research to prove it completely wrong. This fate befell The War Lord, which hinges on the idea – a perfectly respectable academic theory in 1965 when it was made – that the "jus primae noctis" was a survival of pre-Christian fertility rites. A couple of years later a French historian thoroughly exploded the idea that the custom ever existed at all; this left the film looking like an obvious historical nonsense, and as it doesn't contain enough wall-to-wall action for the average "never-mind-the-sense-bring-on-the-swords-and-battle-axes" fan of historical epics, it's been all but forgotten. A pity, because there's really a lot in it to like.The hero is an 11th-century Norman knight, Chrysagon (Charlton Heston in a brutally unflattering Norman haircut), who after many years' service as a household knight has finally been given a fief of his own somewhere on the North Sea coast to defend against Frisian incursions for his master the Duke. (It's not clear which duke – of Normandy?) The action opens as Chrysagon arrives with his younger brother and small following of fighting men to claim his fief. They're pretty underwhelmed by it – it consists of swampy coastal forest, the castle is a grim dank primitive tower, and the paganism practised by the local peasantry unnerves them considerably. Still, a fief's a fief, and Chrysagon has fought a long time for this hike in status.One of the local customs entails brides being taken to the local lord for their wedding night – for luck, fertility etc. Chrysagon rejects this custom not out of virtue but because he recoils from this pagan carry-on, and anyway, a Norman lord should be able to ravish peasants for himself - he shouldn't have to wait till they're brought to him. However (and you all saw this coming, didn't you?) one day his hounds chase a beautiful local bride-to-be into a pond and …… Okay, the plot is a bit cheesy – but the whole thing is surprisingly realistic and medieval; you get the feeling that everyone concerned was genuinely trying to think themselves into the 11th century. Someone went to a lot of trouble working backwards from 19th-century European folklore and forwards from The Golden Bough to imagine how an 11th-century fertility rite might have been enacted – it's not their fault said rite never existed. The village really looks as though nothing very much has moved on there since the Migration Period, and the lord's tower is genuinely Romanesque. (Okay, it's more 12th than 11th century, and any stone tower at all would have been the last word in luxury and modernity back then – but that's nitpicking.) The Normans have the usual Hollywood knitted-string mail, but you can tell that the designer was looking hard at the Bayeux Tapestry. (And possibly even at the Norman-Sicilian clothes in the Imperial Treasury, judging by the side neck fastening on the Unreliable Younger Brother's tunic!) But it's not only the look of it that they tried to make medieval, but the way everybody thinks and behaves. Somebody thought through the questions "did 11th-century Norman fighting men believe pagan gods existed at all, and if so what did they think they were?" and "how might Norman knights and priests have squared with their consciences participating in pagan customs?". Chrysagon is not only good but (according to his younger brother) tediously righteous; but everybody, including him, assumes that he can and will shag on the spot any peasant who takes his fancy. (It's only a superstitious fright that stops him.) He has power of life and death over the peasants, and takes for granted that they are inferior, yet he also accepts that local law and custom have some weight which he can't simply brush aside. It's going to be a hundred years before anybody invents courtly love, so all the Normans – including Chrysagon himself – take for granted that any feeling for a peasant girl deeper than crude lust is as at best an unmanly weakness, at worst madness or bewitchment. His men are all loyal followers of many years' service, but as they see their lord starting to go mushy over some slut and endanger them all by provoking a peasant revolt on her account, their loyalty starts to crumble. His younger brother, who was more-or-less content to play second fiddle to him when they were both household knights, finds himself resenting the gap in status that has opened up between them now he is his brother's vassal. All this has credibility.It's far from perfect. Perhaps it really was necessary to label the peasants' religion as "Druidism" in order to convey the notion of pre-Christian paganism to the average viewer - but did they really have to call the heroine "Bronwyn"? (A friend of mine was misled by this into assuming the action was set in Brittany – she couldn't otherwise account for "Druids" and Celtic names!) And she is the one real embarrassment of the film. Her character is written as hopelessly sweet, feeble and drippy – no detectable personality - and Rosemary Forsythe doesn't look or sound like any kind of peasant from any place or time in history. Even so, The War Lord is one of the most medieval films I've ever seen, and is definitely worth watching if you can find it.

Throughout history there have been segments of the middle ages where an audience would like to be transported into that age to experience what it must have been like. This is one movie where a viewer can almost believe they are in the Medieval period. The film is called " The War Lord " and is taken from the exploits of Crysagon del la Cruz. (Charlton Heston) Although the fictitious events of the film and his true events do not coincide, the movie does try and recreate the times. It is shortly after the feudal wars in the 9th century, that our hero arrives with his loyal body-guard and soldier-at-arms, Bors (Richard Boone), his brother Draco (Guy Stockwell) and a band of war weary soldiers. He has been given a land grant for his loyal service to the Duke. It consists of a Keep, surrounding forests, fields, woodlands and itinerant peoples. Upon arriving, he realizes the Frisian King (Henry Wilcoxon) and his Vikings are raiding his holding and exciting action follows, as he has unknowingly captured the Frisian king's son. Although his vassalage is a poor holding, it's nevertheless his. All goes well until he is invited to accept his rights as manor lord and take a young girl from her husband on her wedding night. After that things erupt into bitter conflicts between the people, the Vikings and with his own brother. Exciting fare for those who care to relive the middle ages. A fine drama and a Classic in its own right. ****