THE WAR LORD is one of those maddening films with many epic elements compromised by a miserly studio. Like SPARTACUS (also made by Universal), production values very from sumptuous to horrible (looks like the same fake forest set as used in SPARTACUS). Director Franklin Schaffner(PATTON) simply lacks the panache to capture the romance on display, and Rosemary Forsythe has the physical assets but nothing else to pull off the female lead. One wonders what THE WAR LORD would have been had Kathryn Ross, another Universal ingenue, been cast. Fine performances by Charleton Heston, Richard Boone and Maurice Evans, but a slightly hammy one by Guy Stockwell. For all its realism, action, drama and mystical trappings THE WAR LORD simply does not add up to much. In only six years, Heston had fallen from BEN-HUR and EL CID to this claptrap. Sad.
Review of The War Lord
