Bearing in mind that this was an hour-long pilot for an early sixties television show, it really is quire excellent. Shatner was a fairly familiar face at the time but no one had ever heard of Adam West, so his second-billing was a response to his success as Batman when the titles of the film were updated.
There is an odd plot hole about what happened to Alexander at one point, but otherwise this was pretty darned good, considering that the competition was formulaic westerns and silly comedies such as the Beverly Hillbillies. And this was towards the end of the era when big budget sword and sandal epics were highly popular.
It would appear that the idea of staging huge battle scenes on a weekly basis (including the purchase of footage from previous films) would have been very expensive and I wonder if the stories might have become repetitious over a season. The one-off nature of this film is the result of the good judgement on the part of network executives and not because of the relative quality of the product.
Overall, this is a good flick and very bold attempt for a TV series pilot.
There is an odd plot hole about what happened to Alexander at one point, but otherwise this was pretty darned good, considering that the competition was formulaic westerns and silly comedies such as the Beverly Hillbillies. And this was towards the end of the era when big budget sword and sandal epics were highly popular.
It would appear that the idea of staging huge battle scenes on a weekly basis (including the purchase of footage from previous films) would have been very expensive and I wonder if the stories might have become repetitious over a season. The one-off nature of this film is the result of the good judgement on the part of network executives and not because of the relative quality of the product.
Overall, this is a good flick and very bold attempt for a TV series pilot.