September Gun

Patty Duke is Sister Dulcina, a Sister of Hope in Sante Fe, New Mexico who hires gunfighter Ben Sunday (Robert Preston) to transport her group of Apache children to Colombine, Colorado where she plans to use the standing church as a school. However when they arrive at Colombine, they see the church has been turned into a saloon by town mayor Jack Brian (Christopher Lloyd), and Sister seeks refuge in a barn until she can work out a plan to repossess the church.

Duke wears a Catholic black and white nun outfit, and Sister Dulcina's `contrary' nature is demonstrated by passive-aggressive clumsiness where she steps on a foot, backhand slaps a face, and messes a mercantile store that refuses to sell to her. She punches a forward drunk in the face at the saloon, and though we see her practice firing a rifle, she doesn't get to shoot anyone. Duke scores laughs from the vow of silence that is imposed on her as Ben's deal to take her low-paying job, but otherwise the drama here is pretty undemanding.

The teleplay by William Norton, based on characters created by Hal Goodman and Larry Klein, is post modern in it's presentation of the Apache as innocents victims, made orphans by the white men who stole their land. Apart from Ben's pearls of wisdom dispensed to his nephew Jason (David Knell), the only thing that passes for humor is Brian referring to Sister Dulcina as a `squirt', a reference to Duke's lack of height, and the expectation of a black gloved person departing a carriage that turns out to be an old woman. Director Don Taylor's treatment is forgettable, and both Lloyd and Sally Kellerman as the Colombine madam Mama Queen seem miscast.

Borrowing heavily from True Grit and Rooster Cogburn and the Over the Hill gang movies, Robert Preston is old time gunfighter Ben Sunday hired out by a nun to escort some Indian orphans to a town with a soon to be infamous name of Columbine. Sister Patty Duke Astin is going to take over an old church and start a school there.

Bad enough she's defying her own church priest Father Jacques Aubuchon in undertaking the journey. He'd just as soon see the army take care of these children of the recently hostile. But the good sister finds when she gets to Columbine, the abandoned church has been taken over by another gunfighter Christopher Lloyd who now runs a saloon there. That ain't sacramental wine he's serving either.

Of course true to the cowboy code of Hollywood, Preston just can't let this situation stand.

September Gun is pretty dependent on the considerable charms of Robert Preston and they are considerable. Preston has some nice chemistry with young actor David Knell who is his nephew and who he's teaching the gunfighting business with the emphasis on staying alive by whatever means available.

If this had been a bigger budgeted film, I could see Clint Eastwood or a few years before, John Wayne, playing this part in a theatrically released film. Still September Gun will entertain and satisfy fans of the western genre.