Anybody else seen "September Dawn?"

[onager]

Movie based on the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, when the Mormons slaughtered 120 men, women and children.

Jebus! I am AMAZED that this movie got made. For one thing, because of the incredible political/financial power of the Mormon Church.

And for another...well, gosh darn it, as we all know, we're supposed to be NICE to all Twue Bewievers and not criticize their faith. Hollywood always seems to follow that rule. Belief is always RESPECTED in movies, whether the believers wear magic underwear or advocate throwing virgins into volcanos. There's some good in all belief systems, y'know.

:eyes:

Anyway, this is a pretty good flick. Terence Stamp is great as Brigham Young: arrogant, self-righteous and always with a gleam of barely-buried fanaticism in his eyes. Other characters refer to him as "an ignorant tyrant," among other things.

And Jon Voight plays a truly despicable Mormon (Son-Of-A-) Bishop.

The producers did shoehorn in a gratuitous romance, but it's tolerable. The massacre scenes are incredibly graphic, showing Mormons shooting, stabbing and head-bashing women and little kids. (The instructions to the mob are: "Leave no one alive who is old enough to talk.")

Text at the end informs us: "To this day, the Mormon Church denies any responsibility for the massacre and Brigham Young's involvement."

Well, I love a surprise ending...

[laconicsax]

1. To be fair, the people they massacred weren't Mormon and they blamed it on someone else.

You see, it wasn't just a massacre, it was a massacre of non-Mormons committed by Mormons just trying to cleanse their theocratic territory. Even better, they 'rescued' the young children not slaughtered and raised them to believe in the power of magic underwear.

[onager]

2. The movie mentions something I didn't know...

...about those not-slaughtered kids: "It took the U.S. Army a year and a half to track down the kidnapped children and return them to relatives."

IMO, long as the U.S. Army was there, they should have arrested the cult leaders and put that particular corporation right out of business. We could been spared such idiocy as Prop. 8 and Sen. Borin' Hatch.

A better idea: once the Mormons set up shop in Zion, the government should have awarded cheap/free Utah land grants to a few hundred thousand immigrants - like Irish Catholics, German Protestants, Russian Jews, and freethinkers/non-believers/troublemakers.

That might have kept the Mormons too busy to establish a theocracy. Or at least diluted its impact.

[laconicsax]

3. Have you been to Utah?

The word 'wasteland' comes to mind, scenery as it may be. Let the Mormons have it. Only the an idiot or psychopath (not to say they're mutually exclusive) would come across a dead lake in a desert and declare it the right spot to settle.

Edited to add: I haven't found any good reviews of this movie or bad ones that actually talk about the quality of the movie instead of how it offends their faithiest inclusiveness.

[onager]

4. I have been there, but only briefly. Thank no-god!

n/t

[Synnical]

5. I saw it awhile back - the fictional romance ruined the flick, IMO

Other than that, it was interesting, but I only gave it 2 stars out of 5 in my Netflix rating.

That's just me.

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale