"The Alamo"

[Tigermike 3,029]

On April 9 the Disney movie "The Alamo" will be released. I have enjoyed western movies for many years and look forward to seeing them whenever they are made. I have owned horses in the past and am currently in the process of buying more.

But this review of this movie somewhat bothers me. Is this movie just another brick in the wall of anti American BS that we are continually bombarded with? The problem as I see it is that many young people will watch this movie and take it as "fact" in it's entirety rather than do any reading about this historical event.

Movie trailers

Hollywood Desecrates American Heroes: New Disney Movie "The Alamo" is Filled with "Fairy Tales"

by Freedom Alliance

April 2, 2004

Dulles, VA – Michael Eisner and Disney are at it again, this time re-writing history in the upcoming release of, “The Alamo,” scheduled to open nationally on April 9.

“The movie reads more like a Disney fairy tale and promotes a politically correct revisionist agenda aimed at destroying a traditional American hero,” says B. Forrest Clayton, Freedom Alliance Visiting Fellow, former history teacher and author of Suppressed History: Obliterating Politically Correct Orthodoxies.

Clayton obtained a screenplay of the film and found it to be “full of inaccuracies.” For example, according to this film, Davy Crockett was a “frightened wanderer” who wanted to escape “over the wall” in the dark of night, but felt paralyzed and trapped by his own underserved heroic reputation.

The film also has Davy Crockett captured, bound, and executed on his knees, after the battle was over, even though the historical evidence shows that he was killed fighting, in the thick of combat, during the battle. This primary historical evidence includes the testimony of Sergeant Felix Nunez, a Mexican soldier who stormed the Alamo; Captain Rafael Soldana, another Mexican soldier who attacked the Alamo; Santa Anna’s cook, Ben; Travis’ slave, Joe; an African-American who survived the Alamo battle; and Susannah Dickinson, the only adult Anglo survivor of the Alamo battle and wife of one of the slain Alamo defenders.

The movie makers ignored these witnesses that corroborated Crockett’s heroic death in combat and based his capture and execution in the film on a suspect portion of Jose Enrique De La Pena’s supposed diary/memoir which handwriting expert Charles Hamilton proved was forged by John Laflin, a.k.a. John Lafitte, a prominent American forger of papers on American pirates and frontier heroes.

In addition, this film’s script portrays General Sam Houston, the military victor at the Battle of San Jacinto which allowed Texas to gain its independence from Mexico, as a venereal diseased drunkard; Colonel William Barret Travis, commander of Texan forces at the Alamo, as a dead beat dad and serial adulterer; Colonel James Bowie, the Alamo defender famous for his knife fighting skills, as a land swindling, slave trader; and Davy Crockett, the king of the wild frontier, as a war criminal, who participated in a My Lai style massacre in the Creek Indian War and was captured and executed at the Alamo. By contrast, Manuel Castrillon, a Mexican General who attacked the Alamo, is portrayed as a flawless, noble, and brave hero.

“Heroes, such as Davy Crockett, must be vigorously defended by all patriotic Americans in the culture war. They represent Western culture. To sit back and allow them to be desecrated is an injustice to American students and a recipe for disaster for the future of the country,” concluded Clayton.

LINK

[texaubie 0]

I watched a 2 hour History (or Discovery) channel episode about the Alamo last week. Their take on the Alamo corroborated some of the details in this article. For example, Travis fled his wife and kids to escape debt and moved to Texas. His diary is full of his sexual exploits while living in Anahuac, TX (on Galveston Bay). He never went back to his wife/kids. Bowie had tuberculosis and was more than likely shot in the head while in bed when the Mexican army swarmed the Alamo. They also stated that first hand reports confirmed that a handfull of fighters including Crockett were captured. Santa Anna directed that the prisoners be put to death by the sword - a slow, painfull way to die.

In the end, nobody really knows and there is still a lot of uncertainty around the events. I would recommend the History channel episode. It was very informative.

[Ranger12 46]

I watched a 2 hour History (or Discovery) channel episode about the Alamo last week. Their take on the Alamo corroborated some of the details in this article. For example, Travis fled his wife and kids to escape debt and moved to Texas. His diary is full of his sexual exploits while living in Anahuac, TX (on Galveston Bay). He never went back to his wife/kids. Bowie had tuberculosis and was more than likely shot in the head while in bed when the Mexican army swarmed the Alamo. They also stated that first hand reports confirmed that a handfull of fighters including Crockett were captured. Santa Anna directed that the prisoners be put to death by the sword - a slow, painfull way to die.

In the end, nobody really knows and there is still a lot of uncertainty around the events. I would recommend the History channel episode. It was very informative.

I saw the same thing. Nothing in that special made the heros of the Alamo look bad, but it was very informative. They did show clips from the movie and nothing looked bad from what I saw. This guy said he got a hold of a script, but what he read and what actually made it into the movie could be two very different things. If you ever read an original script and then watch the movie, you will notice tons of scenes edited, deleted, or never shot. You will also notice alot of script changes. However, this article does concern me also and may keep me from seeing it until I hear about it from others.

[texaubie 0]

I agree. I did not think the show painted a negative picture of the individuals but more of a realistic view. Most of the Americans in Texas at that time were either frontiersmen looking for adventure or people trying to escape something back East. Either way, I imagine it would take a certain type of individual to take on that adventure. The show stated that a lot of the confrontation between the Americans and the Mexican government was due to the American's desire to own slaves where slavery was outlawed in Mexico (Texas being under control of the Mexican government at that time). US history is not always pretty.

[poboy4AU 0]

Poor Walt Disney is probably doing flip flops. We all know Fess Parker was the real Davy.

[WarEagleFL 0]

I didn't think it was possible but Michael Eisner is really giving Disney a bad name in the film community.