The Making of an Epic: Mohammad Messenger of God (1976) (TV)

Writer:

Christopher Penfold (narration)

Genre:

Documentary

Cast

Damien Thomas	...	Narrator
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Moustapha Akkad	...	Himself
Albert Blackshaw	...	Himself
John Bloom	...	Himself
H.A.L. Craig	...	Himself (as Harry Craig)
Phyllis Dalton	...	Herself
Maurice Fowler	...	Himself
Jack Hildyard	...	Himself
Maurice Jarre	...	Himself
Anthony Quinn	...	Himself
Tommy Reeves	...	Himself

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Christopher Penfold		narration

Produced by
Geoffrey Helman	....	producer

Film Editing by
Barry Chattington
Alfred Cox
Stuart Taylor

Sound Department
Paul Carr	....	sound
Lionel Strutt	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Michael Delaney	....	photographer (as Mike Delaney)
Nicholas D. Knowland	....	photographer (as Nic Knowland)
Geoff Mulligan	....	photographer

Other crew
Nicky Kisch	....	researcher

Production Companies

• Filmco International Productions

Distributors

• Anchor Bay Entertainment (2005) (USA) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Roger Cherrill  post-production

Runtime:

45 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Filmco International Productions

Trivia:

This making-of documentary is featured on the DVD for The Message (1977), released in 2005.

Movie Connections:

Features The Message (1977)

The test of time

This is a documentary, found on the DVD of Mohammad: The Messenger of God, and is a making-of featurette on that very film. It holds clips of it, behind the scenes footage, interviews and has a narrator. This actually appears to have been produced back in 1976, when the movie itself was. It's interesting to see how they did such at that point... in fact, I'm not sure I particularly knew that they did so, at all. Maybe it was reserved for the biggest motion pictures. This talks about the two versions being done simultaneously... Arabic and English... and various other subjects. You get to find out about the process, and what difficulties they ran into, several of them being from weather and sand. The director has numerous worthwhile things to share. This is arguably longer than it needed to be, and some of it feels a little like padding, not to mention this is clearly at least relatively promotional in nature. At just under 45 minutes, and with at least one unnecessary montage, it's a tiny bit excessive. The pacing is reasonable. There is no language, and the violence is obviously staged. I recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the title itself. 7/10