This is a movie about the "prophet" Joseph Smith and his buddy Brigham Young leaving one point after another trying to get their rendering of Christianity started, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.None of the actual tenets of Mormonism are discussed, but anyone who has seen the magnificent "South Park" episode All About Mormons? should acknowledge them easily enough. (It's also the best frontier musical ever written!I'm not going to debate religion. All religions are stupid. Not necessarily people who have faith, just the organizations that say if you don't go to them, like a possession, then you don't love the conflict between good and wrong. That's foolish.The movie opens with Brigham Young (played by Maurice Grandmaison, who looks a lot care Grizzly Adams and like no photo of Brigham Young I've always seen) being defeated in the current, 1820s state of Christianity. Preachers saying everyone's going to fire in Hell, people being hostile and violent. Young wants something better, someone to fawn obsequiously over. It's so that he meets a "seer" named Joseph Smith.
Richard Moll, billed as "Charles" Moll for some reason, is Joseph Smith with jet black rockabilly hair. Every second he's on screen he looks ridiculous. And Moll, whom I like, is very trying, too. The operation is terrible, though. His access to Smith is less reverent and more car salesman meets evangelist (which sounds about right, actually).So those are the two people we'll be spending time with. Young is shown to be a bit of a thug, and Smith is virtually a tyrant. I'll explain.The movie shows the two and their flock moving from township to town across the country. First, they're in New York. Then Missouri. Then Illinois. Later, Utah. Everywhere they go, people attack them because of their claim on Christianity. Mormonism is shown as being a Christianity of peacefulness and brotherhood; anti-war, anti-slave. All commodity values. Very small is noted about Jesus being from Missouri, Native Americans being a "stained" lost tribe of Jerusalem, all non-white races being "abominations," etc.So, they're persecuted by people who are just mean. The opening shot is Smith being tarred and feathered (an effective scene, honestly). When the Governor orders the Mormons exterminated, not yet President Martin Van Buren (the first president who was born an American citizen! can help Brother Joseph.Or, as my total cutie of a brilliant wife called him: "Brosef."Each time they go up a new town, to the quality and imaging of every frontier period movie ever made in the 70s, they're run out. They then rebuild. Each time it's uplifting. Each time little things are glossed over, like the 1838 Mormon War and that 9/11 Mountain Meadows massacre thing, among many other events. In fact, no real events are depicted. Just the being run out of town part.Eventually they form Nauvoo, Illinois, with Smith as its mayor. When the town's press prints some unfavorable things about Mormonism, Smith orders the theme and its presses burned to the ground! Immediately, you (or at least, I) think of what a monstrous affront this is to our country's first freedom, freedom of the press.There's a cause that and freedom of religion rank number 1, you know. When Smith burns those presses, well, can you trust that again he is persecuted!So, Smith is killed- shot in the question in a struggle not shown. It's up to Brigham Young to make the church to the waste of Utah, where they miraculously prosper. Polygamy is introduced earlier but just now is it explained, and in a way that's awfully defensive. (See Governor, it isn't about fornication!The acting is bad, the feel is a bit patronizing and the writing teeters on propaganda. Worse than that, though, is the presentation. As I said, this is a re-edit of '77 film. Scenes are chopped whole! We'll get one scene, then it will cut to somewhere else and we'll get one strain of dialogue, the chief point, before cutting again. And it looks/feels VERY much care it was edited, lacing the shade of any craft.The editing choices are weird, too. One scene some characters are talking about rights, which was kind of interesting, but then it's cut mid-stride! Later, a blight of locusts descends on their produce in Utah and for, like, fifteen minutes we get to determine the farm folk round the locusts with shovels and shoes. It's unending! The unit is but a sloppy mess.For the closing scene, the ghosts of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith look over modern, 1997 Salt Lake City, wearing smart white disco tuxedos with tails and everything. Arm over the other's shoulder, they pass off contentedly, their work done.
The picture is directed by Tom McGowan and scripted by Philip Yordan, who, with Moll and Grandmaison, later did the 1980 film Cataclysm, which was crudely edited into the 1983 film Night School to Terror, where God and the Devil swap stories made from incomplete films.Those two/three are probably McGowan's greatest accomplishments. Yordan, though, is an Academy Award-winning writer (1954, Broken Lance). He has about 60 credits, including Dillinger ('45), Houdini ('53), The Bravados ('58), King of Kings, El Cid (both '61), Day of the Triffids ('62), 55 Days at Peking ('63) and The Unholy ('88). An interesting story would be what happened in his life in the 70s that led him to doing Brigham and Cataclysm.Savage Journey has 41 votes on IMDb HERE. It's available on DVD as a solo title at Amazon HERE. The film's original version, Brigham, only has 25 votes on IMDb and doesn't appear to be available. I can't imagine it's lots of an improvement, though.And by who's definition is this a "Drive-In" "Movie" "Classic"! Hmmm?!NOTE: I borrowed the images from a blog titled "Get on the Bandwagon" HERE. They're the only photos I could see of the damned film, and the entrance there was simply written last month!
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