Western Month Goes Up in Fire and Brimstone

Brimstone (2016)

A wise pastor once wrote that every person (at least every worshiping person) has a worship language. Usually, it's the language in which the person first began to worship -- if you first prayed and sang in Spanish, you’ll tend to find Spanish the most meaningful language for prayer and singing your whole life.

Churches started by immigrants in America certainly followed this pattern. At first, the native language of the immigrants would be used in worship (whether that be Norwegian or German or Chinese), and that language would be used by that founding generation. Their children would worship with a mix of their parents' native language and English. The third generation would worship in English. For this later generation, English would be their worship language because it was the language in which they'd understood what they heard.

For some reason, the Reverend (Guy Pearce) in 2016’s Brimstone founds a church of Scandinavian immigrants and insists that the church services be in English. This just doesn’t make sense. It’s very insensitive pastoral care. Of course, this pastor is also an incestuous murderer, but I didn’t want to completely gloss over this insensitive aspect of his pastoral care.*

Brimstone is a story told in four acts, but those acts are not presented in chronological order. The third act, Revelation, is presented first. Exodus, the second act, does come second. The first act, Genesis, comes third. The fourth (and final) act, Retribution, does come last.

In Revelation, we meet “Liz” (Dakota Fanning), the young wife of a frontier husband, Eli (William Houston). He has a son with his former wife, and together they have a daughter. I found it strange that Liz becomes upset when Eli teaches his son to shoot a rifle. Rifles were essential tools on the frontier. Come on, even the Amish use rifles for hunting. Liz is mute, though she can hear. We don’t learn why this is the case until much later in the film.

The family goes to church, and Liz is visibly upset when she hears the Pastor’s voice. The congregation sings the hymn “Abide With Me” (which is sung time after time in the film in other church services and by individuals). Why does this happen in so many Westerns?  One hymn is used again and again (often “Bringing in the Sheaves”) Why not use several different hymns with similar themes? It’s not like the production needs to pay copyright fees for using these songs. 

But soon, the Reverend comes to Liz’s home, kills the family’s sheep, threatens her daughter, and guts her husband with a knife. He tells Liz he killed Eli because Liz loved him. Liz and the children flee the house to the safety of her father-in-law’s home in the mountains.

In the second act, a younger Liz (who can still speak) is sold to a brothel by a family of Chinese immigrants. Liz learns to adjust to her brutal new world until one day, a man comes to the brothel and pays for all the women in the house. It is the Reverend, who has bought out the house just to get to Liz. When he kills a friend of Liz’s, Liz slices his throat and runs away. (We already know this doesn’t kill the Reverend.)

The third act, Genesis, reveals the beginning of the story. We see the Reverend shame his wife in front of his congregation (which sings “Abide With Me”, of course). The minister complains that his wife doesn’t satisfy him sexually. But when the wife offers to sleep with him, he refuses. (He here disobeys Paul’s instruction in I Corinthians 7 that a husband should not refuse his wife, or a wife her husband). And here we learn that Liz is the Reverend’s daughter and that he wanted sex with her, rather than his wife.

Long ago we made it clear in this blog that murder is a disqualifier from a positive Movie Churches Steeple rating. It should go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. Incest is also a big negative.

In the last act, there is the final bloody confrontation between Liz and the Reverend, who. has long since proved he is not a good pastor.

So as we’ve been saying all along, the Reverend in Brimstone deserves our lowest Steeple Rating of One Steeple. Oh, the heck with it. The minister of Brimstone earns our first Zero Steeple Rating. (Consider, we didn’t even rate Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter a Zero Steeple Rating. So that is an achievement of a kind -- and somehow still more than the Reverend deserves.)

*It is our policy here at Movie Churches to give murderous clergy our lowest rating of One Steeple. Even without the vicious killings, the Reverend would not rate highly.

Western Month: It's a Duel!

The Deadly Companions (1961) & God’s Gun (1976)
Some say the term “adult Western” originated in 1953 with the release of Paramount Pictures' Shane. The studio was trying to distinguish their film from the more simplistic entries in the genre such as the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry Westerns where the good guys always beat the bad guys in a fair fight and often sang a cheery song as well. This is rather odd; there were certainly “Adult Westerns” before 1953. Films like The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and Stagecoach (1939) certainly dealt with grown-up issues, and Cimarron won Best Picture in 1931.;

But “Adult” would become even more “Adult” as the years went on -- particularly “Adult Violence” beginning in the 1960s. One of the prime movers in this shift was Sam Peckinpah, who would go on to make The Wild Bunch, one of the most violent Westerns ever made. Another change came in the 1960s with Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns like his trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. (They were called “Spaghetti” Westerns because they were made in Italy.)

Today's two films are connected with those trends. The Deadly Companions was Sam Peckinpah's first feature film after working on TV shows such as The Rifleman and The Westerner. God’s Gun was an Italian production, but it was more. It is the only Italian and Israeli (thanks to producer Menahem Golan) co-production that I know of. 

Of course, the films are featured here because they feature clergy and church prominently.

The Deadly Companions opens with three men, Yellowleg (Brian Keith), Billy (Steve Cochran), and Turk (Chill Willis) going to a small town saloon. (Yes, they are the deadly companions of the title.) The bartender serves them whiskeys but tells them they need to drink quickly. He then pulls curtains down over paintings of naked women in the bar. Billy asks him why he’s doing that and is told, “The parson doesn’t like to see them while he preaches. The bar closes when the preacher comes in.”

Yellowleg comments that it’s not Sunday, but the bartender responds that probably no one around has seen a calendar for the previous two years.

The preacher (Strother Martin) enters followed by a group of congregants, men and women. One woman, Kit Tildon (Maureen O’Hara), and her son, Mead (Billy Vaugh) sit in an unoccupied row of chairs. They draw attention.

One of the other woman loudly whispers to her companion, “Imagine, a woman like that coming in church like she’s respectable.” 

Her friend answers back, “She probably doesn’t even know the boy’s father.” 

“This is probably the closest she’s been to a parson.” 

“The nerve to be holding a prayer book.”

The parson doesn’t seem bothered by this gossiping in the church (bar) at all. He’s bothered by something else. “Lord, I see you brought us some new faces, male and female. I’ll be dishing out the Gospels in a minute, but first I’ve got to say something to the fellas with hats on. I’ve never met a man who wouldn’t take his hat off to the Lord. Mister, take it off.” 

Billy and Turk remove their hats, but Yellowleg will not. “You get on with your preaching,” he says as he leaves the church/bar.

We here at Movie Churches are not impressed with a minister who worries more about headgear than gossip and backbiting in his congregation.

The parson asks for a moment of silence, which is followed by a less than melodious rendition of “Rock of Ages.”

The preacher begins his sermon and says, “If anyone reckons they want to go to hell, that person should stand and be counted.” 

Billy takes him at his word and stands. Billy pulls his gun and says, “Any man that doesn’t stand on his feet as well, is going to join me pronto.”

While his gun is drawn, Kit walks up to him and slaps Billy in the face. Billy is impressed and grabs Kit and kisses her, lets her go, and walks out of the bar.

The preacher tells Kit, “Ma’am, I’d like to thank you for your fortitude.” She and her son leave the church/bar into a shootout. And Kit’s son is shot and killed.

Kit wants to bury her son with his father in the town of Siringo. But that’s Apache country, and people urge her not to go there. The mayor offers a free plot in the graveyard, and the parson offers to perform the ceremony. Kit refuses, insisting she will bury her son by his father, even if she has to go alone. (She doesn’t go alone, as the title of the film indicates.)

Spoilers - Eventually Kit does make it to Siringo and finds her husband’s grave by the Mission, and is soon joined by a posse that includes the parson. The parson offers to say “the right words.”

The clergy come off much better in God’s Gun (written and directed by Gianfranco Parolini). Lee Van Cleef stars in a dual role as Father John, a priest, and his twin brother, Lewis, a gunfighter.

As Father John talks with a young man, Johnny (Leif Garrett), Johnny’s mother, Jenny (Sybil Danning), calls him to polish the glassware (in her saloon). The priest tells her, “First we thank the God for the morning, then we clean the church, then he can polish your glasses.”

At the church, Johnny sneaks some communion wine but spits it out. He thinks the priest doesn’t see, but Father John laughs and says, “Sick grapes make sour wine.” Continuing to search for trouble, Johnny finds a gun and a holster in the church altar.

Johnny asks, “You think you could teach me to shoot a gun sometime?”

“I don’t know if I can remember,” Father John says, “I’m holding it for somebody. I don’t think you’ll ever meet him (his brother Lewis). He’s down in Mexico somewhere.”

Johnny returns to his mother’s saloon. The Claytons, bad men led by brother Sam (Jack Palance), come to town and make trouble in Jenny’s saloon. One of the gang, Jess (Robert Lipton), shoots a man playing cards and falsely claims self-defense. The men ride out of town, and the sheriff (Richard Boone) makes no effort to stop them.

Johnny tells Father John what happened, and the priest pursues the gang, to the great displeasure of the sheriff who worries it will bring more trouble to the town.

Father John sneaks up on the gang as they sleep, stealing their guns. He then wakes the men, and apologizes, “Sorry to destroy your slumber, gentleman.” He explains he came to return the murderer to town for trial. “Let’s go, young man, I don’t want to miss my morning mass.” He is able to return the man to town, with the help of mysterious shots fired from the trees (which turn out to have been Johnny),

Jess is put in jail, though the sheriff isn’t happy about it, because the Claytons return to town and Jess out of jail. Men from the gang then go to the church and shoot the priest down as he is welcoming parishioners to mass.

Johnny sees this, steals one of the Claytons' horses, and rides off to Mexico to find Father John’s brother Lewis. Johnny finds him and learns some interesting things about the late priest. Lewis says, “Nobody could beat John to the draw, but one day God put a Bible in his hand in place of a gun.”

Lewis, though, continues to use the gun and goes back with Johnny to exact revenge for his brother’s death.

So how should we rate the clergy in today’s Western double feature? The uncharitable parson of The Deadly Companions rates only Two Steeples, but the brave Father John of God’s Gun rates Four, bringing today’s average to Three Steeples.

(Sidenote - Of interest probably only to me, but I, Dean, was in a film with Lee Van Cleef, a low-budget adaption of Saki's short story, "The Interlopers".  In high school, I was hired to play a small part in this film that may not even exist anymore. Van Cleef worked on the film on a different day. We never met, but it does make me playable in Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.)

Western Month Continues: Heaven Only Knows

Heaven Only Knows (1947)

As we have said oh so many times, this is a blog about Churches and Clergy in movies. It isn’t about theology, but obviously, the subject comes up on occasion. And my goodness, Hollywood theology is, um, interesting. Heaven Only Knows, to its credit, branches out from the usual Big Screen Bad Theology.

Many films (It’s A Wonderful Life is a prime example) portray angels as humans who have died and gone to heaven. According to the Bible, angels are completely different creations from people, though they have the ability to take on the appearance of people. But they don’t always, or even usually, look like people as far as we know. In chapter six of his book of prophecy, Isaiah describes seeing “seraphim” with six wings: two for covering their faces, two for covering their feet, and two for doing the flying. That doesn’t sound at all like Robert Cummings, but in this film, he portrays the Archangel Michael.

The story begins in some kind of heavenly board room. A group of “angels” (all white men) discuss a problem case on Earth (apparently one of their many areas of responsibility -- and the most troublesome). Adam “Duke” Byron (Brian Donlevy), can’t be found in the “Book of Destiny” and therefore, in the theology of this film, doesn’t have a soul. Adam was born in San Francisco in 1858, moved to Glacier, Montana, and was supposed to marry the minister’s daughter, Drusilla Wainwright (Jorja Cuthright). Instead had become the owner/manager of a saloon/gambling hall. To save Adam, Michael is sent to Earth to see to it that Adam marries Drusilla. Yes, according to the theology of this film, Adam’s salvation is to be found in “the love of a good woman.”

So Michael goes to Earth and finds himself living in the Wild West. The town of Glacier is in the midst of a feud between saloon owners; Adam Duke vs. Bill Plumber (Bill Goodwyn) and the citizens of the town are caught in the crossfire.

Drusilla calls a town meeting and argues that they should take the law into their own hands and get rid of men like Plumber and Duke. Her father arrives at the meeting, and he is not pleased. The Reverend Wainwright (John Litel) tells the townspeople that he has long prayed they would come together, but not this way. He admits, “It’s easier to feed a man’s evil instincts than feed his family.” He blames the sheriff for not dealing with the problem of the casinos at war, “If a disciple of law and order were on the job, it would be easier to be a disciple of the Lord.” He bemoans the situation but doesn’t offer a solution.

Then the sheriff bursts into the meeting and offers a solution. He says the townspeople should just lay low until the warring parties kill each other off. He says he's heard that the Kansas City Kid has arrived and that he'll probably clear out the riffraff and then clear out himself. 

Drusilla says if the sheriff’s system doesn’t work, they’ll resort to their own system.

Meanwhile, when Michael comes to town, he's mistaken for the gunslinger, who was hired to take out Duke. When instead he saves Duke’s life, Duke hires him. When Duke's saloon, Pair of Dice, is attacked, Michael takes Duke to safety in the schoolhouse. Drusilla, the schoolteacher, is not pleased but allows it.

Duke is looking for some way to get back at Plumber. so Michael tells him he knows a source of great power -- and takes him to church. Duke says, “Don’t you beat the devil?” 

Michael responds, “I try.”

Michael has Duke put money in the offering box. Duke asks how this is all going to help him, and Michael says, “You’ve learned we’re all on a journey together and this (church) is like a post office where we come to get our mail.” Duke realizes Michael is talking about spiritual things, and he is not pleased.

But the townspeople eventually decide to take justice into their own hands and come to lynch Duke. They believe Duke is hiding in the church, but he and Michael have escaped out the back. Rev. Wainwright blocks the mob from entering the church, saying, “I’ve preached for years against the rope and gun.”

Duke goes to Drusilla and asks her to run off with him. She gets him a horse, and they ride out of town, but Drusilla won’t stay with him if he stays in his old life in saloons and gambling halls. She says that’s a life of sin, and Duke asks, “What’s good? What’s bad? The only sin I know is being alive and not doing anything about it.” 

She goes back toward town and finds that the townsfolk have decided that if they can’t hang Duke, they’ll hang Michael, Duke's supposed henchman.

They set Michael on a horse and put a rope around his neck. But no matter how many times they whip the horse, the horse won’t move.

Reverend Wainright comes with his congregation to oppose the lynching. He preaches, “Today I am going to tell you the story of a man who lived, and died and rose again.” Strangely, he never says the name of “Jesus.” Perhaps the studios were afraid that actually saying the Lord’s name would be too much for the audience or would seem somehow sacrilegious. His words fall on deaf ears, and the lynchers still try to get that horse to move.

Duke returns. He cuts Michael down and takes him off the horse. Duke says he’ll go back to town, marry Drusilla, and start a new life. Perhaps even join the church choir. And Michael boards an unscheduled coach that will take him back to Heaven.

So what Movie Churches rating do we give the Reverend Wainwright and his church? He’s been preaching in Glacier for years, but his ministry seems to have had no great impact on the morals of the town. His theology doesn’t seem to be much more solid than Hollywood’s, but he does stand up to a lynch mob. For that, he earns Three Steeples.

Movie Churches goes West(ern)

The Mask of Zorro (1998)

Liberation Theology, the idea that the church should be primarily concerned about the oppressed suffering at the hands of oppressors, is thought to have originated in Latin America in the 1960s. Nonetheless, while watching The Mask of Zorro it's easy to think that the concept originated in Las Californias of the 1820s. The priests in the film are continually at odds with oppressive government forces on behalf of the poor.

The story begins just prior to the era of Mexican independence in 1821. A mysterious masked man named Zorro appears and fights the Spanish authorities in defense of the peasants. Before his forced return to Spain, the corrupt governor Don Rafael (Stuart Wilson) lays a trap to capture and kill Zorro. Three innocent peasants are scheduled to be executed by hanging.

Don Rafael gives a speech prior to the execution claiming to have been the only one who cares for the people. A friar, Fray Felipe (William Marquez), yells out, “Zorro fought for the people!”

“Where is he now, Padre?” the Governor responds.

Zorro soon makes his appearance, rescuing the trio of men before they are hanged. When one soldier has Zorro in his rifle sights, Fray Felipe elbow butts the soldier in the face, rescuing his hero -- but the rescue is short-lived.

Once Don Rafael has captured Zorro, he discovers the masked man's true identity. He is a Spanish-born nobleman, Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), and the governor takes soldiers to arrest him in his home. In the ensuing conflict, de la Vega’s wife is shot and killed. Don Rafael takes the couple’s baby daughter to raise as his own child in Spain, sending the nobleman and the priest to prison.

Twenty years later, Don Rafael along with his “daughter” Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) returns to California, this time with a plot to make himself a fortune. This inspires de la Vega to escape from prison, freeing the priest Felipe as well.

Don Diego meets a thief, Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), who came to his aid decades before. He agrees to train Alejandro to be the new Zorro so together they can take on Don Rafael and his forces.

Alejandro doesn’t take to the swashbuckling trade immediately. In one of his first attacks on Don Rafael’s men, he is unsuccessful -- but he meets (and fences with) the beautiful Elena. He is forced to flee and seeks sanctuary in a church. Fray Filipe sees him and says, “The years have been far kinder to you than they have been to me.”

Alejandro hides in a confessional and who but Elena should come to make her confession. She tells the “priest” hidden by the wooden divider, “I have broken the Fourth Commandment." 

Alejandro is as ignorant of matters of faith as he is of many things, and he responds, “You killed somebody?” 

She has to explain that she failed to honor her father (it's the Fourth Commandment for Catholics, but the Fifth Commandment for Protestants).

She goes on to confess her sin of lusting after a man (Alejandro himself). Still pretending to be a priest, Alejandro assures her that this was no sin, “Sister, you have done no wrong. The sin would be not doing what your heart tells you to do.” Again, Alejandro shows he is theologically lacking.

Soldiers soon come, and Alejandro must flee again -- but he's seen by Elena who then knows she was not talking to a priest.

Fray Felipe appears once more in the film. Don Rafael, angered that the priest again aided (a different) Zorro, has him sent off to work in the gold mines, where Don Rafael intends to make a fortune by defrauding Santa Ana by keeping the gold for himself. The priest, along with other peasants, has been enslaved into serving under terrible conditions at the mines.

This is why Fray Felipe earns our highest Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples. We see him being whipped as he works on the mines, truly living in the steps of Christ, who was whipped for our transgressions. He acts as the Suffering Servant while Zorro(s) act as Savior for the people. By the film's end, liberation for the people does come.

It's worth noting that the film seems to have a more positive spin on the First Mexican Empire than many in the Roman Catholic Church would hold. In 1834, the government of Mexico nationalized the Missions and gave the property to those with political influence. Those lands became ranchos which were the dominant institutions of Mexican California.

Clint Eastwood Movie Churches Month: Preacher, Angel, Gunman, Ghost?

Pale Rider (1985)

There certainly aren’t any churches in the film Pale Rider, and I’m not sure if there are any clergy. But there is a character that everyone calls “Preacher” (Clint Eastwood), and everyone treats him like a clergyman, and he never objects. It does seem like he might be something else. There are scars on his back that look like they could be bullet holes. When a lawman, or maybe just a gunman, named Stockburn (played by John Russell, a star of TV westerns) comes to town and hears a description of Preacher, he thinks he might know the man. But then he says, “The man I’m thinking about is dead.”

So maybe he’s a ghost. (Which doesn’t fit my theology, but can work in a film.) Maybe. Or maybe he’s an angel. Especially if you think angels are just people who died and went to heaven and got wings (eventually) like in It’s a Wonderful Life. (Again, not my theology, but whatever.) Or maybe he’s something else altogether; a miracle, an answer to prayer, who is also a killing machine.

The film opens with poor prospectors who’ve formed a small community to legally work their claims (immediately winning my sympathy, as I went to Piner High School and our mascot was The Prospector). Then horsemen working for a wealthy landowner, Coy Lahood, attack the camp, killing a young woman named Megan’s dog.

Megan goes off to bury her dog and seems to believe she knows the Scripture to recite for the situation, the 23rd Psalm. But she can’t stick to the text.

“‘I shall not want’...But I do want.

“‘He leads me beside still waters’...But they killed my dog.

“‘I will fear no evil’...But I am afraid. We need a miracle.

“‘I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’ If you exist. But I want to experience this life first. But if you don’t help, we’re all going to die. Please? Amen.”

Overall, not a bad prayer for the situation.

A bit later we see Megan reading the Bible to her mother -- specifically Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse;” (partial title drop) “and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” And as that’s when Megan first sees the Preacher ride up on a pale horse.

It is not the first time the audience has seen Preacher. Shortly before, Hull Barrett, one of the poor prospectors, went to town to get supplies. He’s harassed by LaHood’s men but rescued by the Preacher. Hull doesn’t think of him at the time as a preacher, but as a probable gunman.

Still, Hull invites the stranger back to the mining camp. While the stranger freshens up for dinner, Hull sees what look like bullet scars on the man’s bare back. Then he sees something even more odd: the man puts on a clerical collar.

They dine with Megan and her mother Sarah. Hull awkwardly offers the Preacher (as they begin to call him) whiskey. “Nothing like a shot of whiskey to whet a man’s appetite,” the Preacher replies. Megan asks the Preacher to say grace and he offers a short prayer, “For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful.”

After dinner, Hull explains his relationship with Sarah. Her husband left her, and he’s tried to help her and her daughter. “It ain’t I’m living in sin.” But he soon adds, “If I get hitched, can you do the hitching?”

The Preacher is noncommittal about the matter. But he does ask, “Could you put me to work?”  

Hull responds, “I couldn’t. Well, if there was something spiritual.”

To which the Preacher replies, “The spirit ain’t worth spit without a little exercise.”

Hull and the Preacher set about picking a large rock out of the river. LaHood’s son and a monster of a man, Club (Richard Kiel, who played Jaws in the Bond films), ride up to them. Hull introduces the new man, “He’s our new preacher.”

LaHood’s son (Christopher Penn) tells the Preacher he probably shouldn’t be staying around. The Preacher responds, “There’s a lot of sinners hereabouts, you wouldn’t want me to leave before I finish my work.”

To show his strength, Club breaks the great rock with one blow. “The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways,” the Preacher comments. He then proceeds to beat up Club.  

“Preacher my a#%” comments the young LaHood.

The senior LaHood (Richard Dysart) is not happy to hear there is a preacher with the miners. “You let a preacher into Carbon Canyon? When I left for Sacramento, their spirit was nearly broken. A man without spirit is whipped. But a preacher? He could give them faith. #*@$! One ounce of faith and they’ll be dug in deeper than ticks on a hound.”

So LaHood tries another method of dealing with the Preacher, not unlike the method Satan used on Jesus in the wilderness. He invites the Preacher to his office.

LaHood: “Do you imbibe, Reverend?”

Preacher: “Only after 9 in the morning.”

LaHood: “When I heard a parson had come to town, I had an image of a pale, scrawny, Bible-thumping Easterner with a linen handkerchief and bad lungs.”

Preacher: “That’s me.”

Lahood “Hardly. When I heard you were here I thought, why not invite this devout and humble man to preach in town, let the town be his parish? In fact, why not offer to build him a brand new church?”

Preacher:  “I can see where a preacher would be mighty tempted by an offer like that.”

LaHood: “Indeed.”

Preacher: “First thing he’d think about is getting a batch of new clothes.”

LaHood: “We’d have them tailor-made.”

Preacher: “Then he’d start thinking about those Sunday collections.”

LaHood: “Hell, in a town as rich as LaHood, that preacher’d be a wealthy man.”

Preacher: “That’s why it wouldn't work. Can’t serve God and Mammon both. Mammon being money.” (Glad you explained that, Preach.)

So the Preacher sticks with the miners, even when LaHood threatens with Sheriff Stockburn and his “deputies.”

The Preacher faces another temptation back at camp when Megan tells him, “I think I love you.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” the Preacher answers, ”If there was more love in the world, there’d probably be a lot less dying.”

“Can’t be anything wrong with making love either,” Megan adds.

Preacher answers, “I think it’s best to practice one for a while before you do the other… Most folks around would associate that with marriage.”  He then makes it clear to Megan he isn’t the marrying kind, quite upsetting the girl.

But when the badmen come, the Preacher takes them on in a gun battle, killing all.

So is he a ghost? Or an angel? Or death itself? Or just a preacher who is really good with a gun?

I’m really not sure, but I’m giving him three steeples, because I’m afraid of what he might do if I gave less.

Viewed on the Small Screen in Montana

Little Big Man, (1970)

Let’s get this out of the way. The make-up for Dustin Hoffman as a 120 year old man in 1970’s Little Big Man is pretty awful. But they don’t have to make up the location setting of the Custer’s Last Stand Battlefield, because the filmmakers used the actual setting in Montana.

The film is based on the novel by Thomas Berger, a fanciful retelling of history through the perspective of a man who lived both as an Indian and a white man in the Old West. A boy, Jack Crabb, is rescued from a Pawnee massacre by the Cheyenne, who raise him as their own and rename him Little Big Man. Crabb rejoins white culture and lives as a medicine salesman, a gunfighter, an army follower, and a drunk. But most important for this blog, he lived for a time with a minister and his wife.

Jack is “rescued” from the Indians by the army and given to the Reverend Silas Pendrake and his wife, Louise. The Reverend tells Jack that since he’s lived with heathen that know nothing of God or moral right, he is going to have to beat morals and Christian love into him. Mrs. Pendrake has another approach to training Jack, giving the teenaged boy a bath, personably scrubbing him while singing  “Bringing in the Sheaves” and “Shall We Gather at River.”  

Mrs. Pendrake tries to teach Jack the Gospel, saying, “Jesus is your Savior, you do realize that Jack?” When Jack protests he knows the importance of Jesus and Moses, she explains, “Moses was a Hebrew but Jesus was a Gentile like you and me.” She also tries instruct him on the importance of good morals, “You are good looking, Jack. All the more reason for you to receive complete religious instruction. We all must resist temptation. Purity is its own reward.”  

Jack says, “I didn’t know anything about a thing called sin,” but he learns. He eventually gives in to temptation of young women in town, and when the Reverend catches Jack rolling with a young woman in the hay, the Reverend beats him.

We see the Reverend’s congregation momentarily, singing “Amazing Grace.” Jack is forcefully baptized in the river; along with the traditional “in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” Pendrake says the baptism makes Jack “white again.”

But Jack’s “religious period” ends when he goes to town with Mrs. Pendrake and catches her making love with the man who runs the dry good store. (Years later, Jack comes across Mrs. Pendrake using a different name in a whore house.) Toward the end of his life, Jack tells the interviewer that he hasn’t sung a hymn in 104 years.

And may I repeat that Little Big Man was not only set in Montana, but was filmed there (and in California and Canada).

There have been other Westerns set in Montana (such Open Range, perhaps the best Western of the 21st century), but most weren’t actually filmed in Montana. But 1954’s Cattle Queen of Montana did film in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a woman with the awesome name of Sierra Nevada Jones (but none of the film was shot in Nevada). As great a star as Stanwyck was, she is not the biggest name in the film. The film also stars a future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

A cattle rustling film set in modern times was 1975’s Rancho Deluxe, starring Jeff Bridges in his twenties. Much of the film was shot in another National Park located partly in Montana, Yellowstone. The rest of the film was shot in the small town of Livingston, Montana, where we stayed a night. Another contemporary Western/heist film was 1974’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Michael Cimino, which was also filmed totally in Montana (Lewis and Clark National Park, Great Falls, Choteau, Augusta, Fort Benson, and Hobson).

Robert Redford directed and starred in a modern Oater, The Horse Whisperer, about a man with a special affinity with horses. It was filmed in Livingston and other Montana locations, as well as New York and California.

I love most of the films of Steven Spielberg, but there is one film I’ve tried to watch a couple of times and quit both times part way through because of boredom, 1989’s Always. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws) plays a daredevil pilot who takes one risk too many and must spend much of the film dead. As most of the film is dead. But it did film in Bull Lake and Libby, Montana (and also in Utah and Idaho).

One of my favorite books, one I’ve used quite often as a sermon illustration, is Young Men and Fire, written by Norman Maclean. It is the true story of fire jumpers in Montana. Maclean also wrote a novella, A River Runs Through It, to great acclaim. Robert Redford directed the adaptation of that novel in 1992. The film was one of Brad Pitt’s first starring roles as the rebellious son of a stern minister (Tom Skerritt). I should write up the movie church in that film more fully sometime, but this is enough for today.

On the Small Screen in Wyoming

Unforgiven (1992)

If you’re seen Richard Dreyfuss’ mashed potato statues, you know that Westerns aren’t the only films set in Wyoming. But some of the greatest Westerns ever made are set in Wyoming. Sadly, most of them weren’t filmed in Wyoming. Still, here are a dozen Westerns, from the great to the comic to the downright strange, set in the state of Wyoming.

Starting with the great: 1992’s Unforgiven was the third Western to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and it was a year the Academy got it right. Clint Eastwood was nominated for Best Actor and won the Oscar for Best Director. Gene Hackman also took home an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

The film doesn’t feature a church of any kind, but the theme of the film is quite Biblical: justice. I have a friend, Tim Stafford, who edited God’s Justice Bible, and he argues that justice is the most important theme of the Bible. Unforgiven is about the pursuit of justice, and perhaps about the impossibility of men achieving it.

Unforgiven at a movie theater is painted on this bison statue

The film opens with a prostitute being attacked by one of her customers. The cowboy slices her face with a knife, which greatly decreases her “value.” The town sheriff, Little Bill (Hackman), decides on a “just” punishment -- the cowboy will pay the pimp for his loss of “property” with ponies. The other women in the brothel think death for the cowboy is the just punishment and set up a bounty. Eastwood plays a retired assassin who tries to collect the bounty, setting in motion a bloody sequence of events that make everyone question what we “deserve” in this life.

Sadly, though the events of the film are set in Wyoming, the film was made in Canada. (It was #68 on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest American films.)

The first film I saw as a kid that was not G-rated was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, back in 1969. At the time, the film was rated “M", a rating that didn’t last long after that. The blend of action and comedy and the teaming of Robert Redford and Paul Newman delighted large audiences (including me). But though the real Butch, Sundance and the Hole in the Wall gang worked out of Wyoming, the film was shot in Utah and New Mexico.

One of the first successful talkie Westerns was 1929’s The Virginian. Gary Cooper played the title character, who comes to Wyoming. It was the film that provided the origin of the phrase “If you want to call me that, smile.” This was the third version of the film, but the first two versions were silent. The Virginian was remade in 1946 with Joel McCrea, but none of the versions were filmed in Wyoming; all were made in California.

1952’s Rancho Notorious by the great German director, Fritz Lang, captures the Western spirit as one would expect from someone from the Weimar Republic. It also has a rather strange performance by Marlene Dietrich as Altar Keane, a former saloon keeper who founds a criminal hideout named Chuck-A-Luck. Like the vast majority of Hollywood studio films, it was made in California -- which subs for Wyoming.

1955’s White Feather is based on a true story of an attempted peace mission from the U.S. Cavalry to the Cheyenne in Wyoming. Robert Wagner was barely believable as a  Cavalry officer, but much worse was the casting of Caucasians as Native Americans. Debra Paget plays “Appearing Day,” Jeffrey Hunter is “Little Dog,” and Hugh O’Brian portrays  “American Horse.” Not even Wyoming is played by the correct nationality, since it was filmed in Mexico.

1965’s Cat Ballou won an Academy Award for Lee Marvin in the dual roles of an evil gunman and a drunk. Unfortunately, Wyoming was portrayed by Colorado. In 1967’s The Ballad of Josie, Doris Day plays a Western hero in a feminist tale, and California plays Wyoming. While Unforgiven portrayed an Old West brothel as a grim and desperate place, 1970’s The Cheyenne Social Club is run by the delightful Shirley Jones in a brothel as a cheery place. Dancer Gene Kelly directed the film. A brothel as a social club is no more convincing than New Mexico’s portrayal of Wyoming.

1980’s Heaven’s Gate is a very fictional story based on Wyoming’s Johnson County Cattle War. But the film is known much more for its finances than its storytelling. Director Michael Cimino, fresh from his success with The Deerhunter, was given carte blanche on budget to make his dream project. But his ridiculous devotion to “accurate detail” drove up the budget, and when the film flopped it bankrupted the studio, United Artists. If Cimino was really so concerned with accuracy, why did he film in Idaho and Montana rather than Wyoming?

Last year, another beloved auteur, Quentin Tarantino, risked a great big budget on a star studded Western, The Hateful Eight. But again, after setting the film in the state of Wyoming, he didn’t film there. He filmed in Colorado.

One classic Western film, director George Stevens’s Shane (starring Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur), was set in Wyoming and actually filmed in Wyoming (in the Grand Tetons). It won one Oscar, for Cinematography. But it also made the American Film Institute list of the hundred greatest American film, landing in slot #45, ahead of Unforgiven.