The Road to Fort Alamo (1964)

The Road to Fort Alamo (1964)

With the release of Sergio Leone's "A Fistfull of Dollars", the western genre was forever changed. Protagonists became darker, violence increased, and the West became visceral. It is in this climate of genre-revisionism that Mario Bava directed his first western "The Road to Fort Alamo". While this film aesthetically could be considered a Spaghetti western, its plot and characters seems to have more in common with classical American westerns.

Like many Spaghetti westerns, the film opens on a lone rider traveling though the desert wilderness. Bud Massey, played by the great Ken Clark (who musical fans will remember from his role in the 1958  version of "South Pacific"), is hopelessly wandering the west following the murder of his family and the destruction of his farm by unknown assailants when he stumbles upon a squadron of calvary soldiers who have been slaughtered in a similar manner to his family. Among the remains of these fallen soldiers, Massey finds a promissory note from the government entitling the regiment to 150,000 dollars cash. With this promissory note in hand, Massey rides to the next town, assembles a group of men who steal the dead soldier's uniforms, travel to the bank (in their new calvary uniforms), and attempt to cash the note. When the robbery goes bad and an old women is shot, the bandits, with their new cash in hand, flee into the desert. When they have successfully escaped capture from the town's sherif, Massey and his friend Slim are betrayed  by other members of the gang and are knocked unconscious and left in the desert as the rest of the gang make off with the money. The next morning, the men are awakened by calvary trumpets as they are discovered by an actual calvary unit and are forced (because of their stolen uniforms) to play the part of soldiers as they try and find the men who betrayed them. 

If this brief synopsis of the first fifteen minutes of the film does not make you want to watch this film, then Bava's beautifully strange cinematography should. While maintaining the Italian western aesthetic, Bava's directorial flourishes call back to his previous films. Colored lights fill shadows like in the horrifying set pieces of his previous films "Hercules in Hell" and "Black Sabbath". In two scenes, Massey and Carson fight in complete silhouette in front of a strange blue light. This is a western that is seemingly set in the same bright and colorful world of Bava's more horrific films, while still clutching in many ways to the American myth of the west.

In my opinion, this film works as a link between the classical John Ford style western of America and Sergio Leone's darker vision for the Italian spaghetti western. The physical landscape is far removed from Ford's Momument Valley, but the themes of the film tend to resinate more with the American West than its Italian counterpart. Massey is not Clint Eastwood's character in Sergio Leone's films, instead his persona is more closely linked to Ford's John Wayne. He is a good man who is forced into violent circumstances and in the end learns from his mistakes and leads a moral life. I would go into more detail into Massey's arc, but I do not want to spoil the plot of the film. 

In the end, Bava's "The Road to Fort Alamo" is a gem of Italian cinema that seemingly links the cinema of John Ford and Sergio Leone. If you can find a copy of it somewhere, you might just surprise yourself with how much you love the film. If you looking for a spaghetti western with the themes and plots of an American western, and the aesthetic of a Bavaesque horror film; then 1964's "The Road to Fort Alamo" might just be the film for you.

P.S.

     

Anyone one who knows me will tell you that I am a stickler for video and sound quality inside the films I watch. It is a testament to how great this film is because of how much I was engrossed in the experience of watching this incredible western in a terrible lower than VHS quality transfer on youtube. The version of the film I watched was about fifteen to twenty minutes shorter than the theatrical film, it constantly switched between English and Italian dubbing, and all of the musical score was blown out. This was a truly dreadful transfer, but in the end the film still somehow managed to transcend this abysmal viewing. If you'd like to test your patience on a bad quality rip of the film, here is a link to the film's youtube page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HLStRiGQ-o