The Alamo (History Channel/A&E)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: B-     Programs: B

 

 

After about 170 years, it is amazing that what really happened over the battles at The Alamo is still known (if known at all) only under layers of shallow myths.  With the Western genre, the story had to be inevitably dealt with.  The peak cinematic representation, as of the writing, has been the ever-controversial epic The Alamo, produced, starring, and directed by John Wayne.  Some call it a Fascist work of art, while others call it one of Hollywood’s great lost epics.  The reason you may not have seen it is because Howard Hughes bought it and hid it for years, further obscuring the real history of the events.  The History Channel has issued a new DVD set on the subject that brings together four programs over the years relevant on the subject.

 

Remember The Alamo was produced in 2003 as a stand-alone special to coincide with the new feature film about the battle with Dennis Quaid, who taped an introduction and epilog for the program as a tie-in.  This show beat the film, when it was intended to be broadcast upon the release of the film.  The film’s large scale production is the primary reason.  This lays out very well the events that took the land form being part of Mexico under Spanish rule, to just being part of Mexico, to becoming the Republic (read country) of Texas, to becoming part of The United States.  This is the longest program in the set at 90 minutes.  Besides all the well-spoken experts, one unexpected moment is when they built a demo of the wall of a fort at that time, then keeps shooting cannonballs at it to approximate what it would be like to try and take one down.  This is a fine special up to The History Channel’s usual standards.  Film clips from the new film and D.W. Griffith’s anti-Mexican (and always anti-African American) Martyrs of the Alamo (aka The Birth of Texas (1915, also the same year as his propaganda masterwork Birth of a Nation), as well as poster art of Wayne’s version, The Last Command (1955) and a theatrical release of two episodes spliced together of TV’s Davy Crockett.

 

The Real West installment The Battle of The Alamo is from the successful series, hosted in this case by the hugely successful Country music vocalist Kenny Rogers. Instead of a bunch of overlapping information with the last show, this 1992 production gets into more detail about the participation of the participants.

 

The Real West installment The Texas Rangers also offers Rogers with this interesting, valuable aside to the Alamo story.  This makes sense, since it is an untold story usually not addressed to begin with, and a great tie-in here.  This was first broadcast in 1993.

 

Biography is the most successful A&E series to date, and this installment is Day Crockett: American Frontier Legend.  Jack Perkins, one of the best hosts they will ever have, guides us through the story of the man versus the myth, with the usual fine results.  First broadcast in 1994, it also shows the influence in pop culture of the revision of the man as TV hero.  I wonder if Adam Ant has seen this one?

 

The picture on all four main shows are full frame, color, and shot on late analog videotape, save the film clips, while the Remembering The Alamo: Making History & Hollywood program is in non-anamorphic 16 X 9.  The quality varies slightly, depending on the age of the show, but those differences are very nominal, the main difference being slight softness.  All the shows are in Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, and the newer the show, the likelier you are to have Pro Logic-type surrounds.  In the earliest, do not expect much.  Extras include a nine-date timeline on the events that transpired and a Remembering The Alamo: Making History & Hollywood is a more direct tie-in to the new John Lee Hancock film, and has overlap with the main program, though you can think of it as the widescreen version of the main program to some extent.  It runs 22 minutes (for a half-hour commercial timeslot) and includes the trailer for the film.

 

All that adds up to a fine set that lives up to the legend of the battle itself and is already flying off of shelves, a situation that will grow more desperate for consumers when the feature films hits theaters.  Now you have the heads-up.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo