Maybe if the defenders of the Alamo had had those six-shooters that Glen Ford's character used, they could have stood off the Mexicans. Too bad those guns weren't invented yet. Apparently, the director never thought to find out that the Alamo battle was in 1836 when they were still using single shot rifles and pistols.
shareinteresting pointWhen there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
I saw this film when I was a child and the colt .45s stood out like a sore thumb even then. The film looked like it was set after the Civil War rather than the Alamo siege.
shareThe rifles the women in the wagons were using looked period, but when the shooting started they seemed to fire like repeaters.
Another fault with almost all Hollywood wagon train westerns: The wagons are always pulled by a team of healthy horses when in reality a majority of wagons were pulled by one or two cattle or oxen. Not everyone had horses.
"they seemed to fire like repeaters."
Maybe, but the women DID reload them with powder into the muzzle.
"Another fault with almost all Hollywood wagon train westerns: The wagons are always pulled by a team of healthy horses when in reality a majority of wagons were pulled by one or two cattle or oxen. Not everyone had horses."
Give them a break here; this isn't just a "wagon train" cross-country. It was a last-minute emergency escape from a threatened town. If they had the horses I'm sure they'd leave the cattle behind for being too slow. After all, they were being pursued constantly by the bandits.
Not a bad film, and the scene was quite moving where Lt Lamar realises he's facing the same dilemma as Stroud as to choosing between duty and family. The defence of the Alamo was staged well enough, but, as has already between remarked, those six-shooters...
I could overlook the somewhat short rifles and the rapid fire they produced,the uniformity of the Texas Army's uniforms (it's unlikely that they would all have been outfitted in the same way) and the uniforms worn by two or three of the Alamo's defenders (Travis is said to have ordered one, but never took delivery.) But it wouldn't have taken much to have dressed the townsfolk in something like 1830s' style - the sheriff in particular looked like he was in any Western set in the 1870s.
And the revolvers really jarred; it wouldn't have distracted too much from the action had period pistols been used.
Mind you, there were similar discordant notes in the John Wayne film "The Comancheros",where a couple of passing allusions showed it was set in the later 1830s(not that this was necessary to the plot)and repeating rifles and revolvers were prominent.