Leaves are better than wind

I've been putting a ton of movies on my cloud DVR simply because I can, there only being time restrictions instead of space limitations. As a result, I've wound up watching a few movies that aren't as good as I might have hoped for. One of the movies that disappointed me was the 1970s western The Winds of Autumn.

An opening subtitle informs us that the action is set in the Montana Territory, 1884. Out hunting is young Joel Rigney (Chuck Pierce Jr., son of the film's director). While out, he spots a couple of shady-looking people, an old woman and two men that look to be about the right age to be her kids. Joel has the good sense to hide from them. We then hear a bit of their conversation. The woman is Ora Mae Hankins (Jeanette Nolan), together with her son Wire (Andrew Prine) and his uncle Pete (Jack Elam). They're planning to get another Hankins out of prison, breaking him out of a work detail.

Joel goes home to inform his family about what he saw, which is when we learn that the Rigneys are Quakers. I didn't know that Quakers made their way to the Montana Territory, as their pacifism seems rather unwise for the American frontier: while they turn the other cheek, the rest of the world is going to chew them up and spit them out.

The Hankins' breakout doesn't quite go to plan, as one of the boys gets shot in the back by a prison guard. The family goes somewhere looking for a safe space to hide and remove the bullet while allowing him time to recover. Wouldn't you know it, but that place just happens to be the Rigney spread. One of the sons sees Joel's older sister, and he's taken with lust, so when she winds up in the barn, he rapes her. Mom goes looking for the girl, and the Hankins men have to act fast, so they murder the entire family.

Well, not the entire family, as Joel was off seeing his friend, the man with a past, Mr. Pepperdine. Joel comes back to the farm to find that his entire family has been murdered, and the rest of the Quaker community looks for a place to put Joel, hopefully with people who can raise him right and not with Pepperdine if at all possible. Never mind what Joel wants.

And since they don't care what Joel wants, Joel decides that he's not going to care so much about what they want. He decides he's going to go look for the people who shot his family, even though he's naïve and doesn't know all that much about the big wide world....

There's a good idea at the heart of The Winds of Autumn, but it's one that doesn't quite work. I think it's down in part to the direction, and partly down to the casting of the kid, who didn't go on to have much of a career when he wasn't being direceted by his father as he was here. It's not a terrible movie, but the whole thing feels decidedly mediocre and more like the 1970s when it was made than the 1880s when it's set.

That having been said, although it's a disappointment, it's an interesting disappointment, and probably deserves one watch so that you can judge for yourself.