Savage Journey

Here's a quick question: Did I watch this because I have an active interest in the Church of the Latter Day Saints or because I'm a moron who just has to watch every film in Mill Creek's Drive In Classics box set? Answer: Only two to go! (now that I've also watched Invasion of the Bee Girls).

So as you should know unless you stumbled upon this page by accident is that this film is the story of the early days of the Mormon Church, what with the Joseph Smith and the….Brigham Young guy? And wee Jimmy Osmond.

Thing is, I didn't hate this one! I didn't think it was great either, but nonetheless it wasn't boring. I'm no god-fearing person (I worship Massimo Vanni) so the 'God will provide' speeches did rankle up my heathen gland, but then again it was interesting to watch how xenophobic and intolerant Americans were even back then. I knew of Joseph Smith but didn't realised he was murdered. Nor did I know that Jimmy Osmond parted the Red Sea and (must think of something funnier and more asinine before posting).

You're not going to be seeking this one out but if you have that box set please know that this isn't the worst film on there (that's Black Hooker, or maybe Who's Killing Her Now).

Or now that I've started watching it, Throw Out the Anchor.

After an apocalypse, the world is in some weird post apocalyptic pioneer era, imagine "Little House on the Prairie" meets " A Serbian Movie". This guy gets tarred and feathered and then ends up being cleaned up by the preachers wife. He then has sex with the older woman and then does the walk of shame, only he can't run far enough to escape his secret cuckholding activities, He goes on the run with Bull from night court, who aids him in his quest to build a utopian society of where men own as many women as they like and breed litters of child laborers. The rest of the people outside of their group are an angry stupid and violent group of survivors that cannibalize their victims. They kill Bull by burning down his quarters forcing him through a window , then they lynch him. The rest of the group wander further west being chased by scavengers and other survivors of the Defcon 5 event. They make friends with a Native American that is so realistic in his appearance and demeanor that you can actually tell your friends that you know a real Native American and can actually call yourself an expert on Indian culture after seeing this film. The utopia is built and Brigham Young becomes their king, until one day, he runs into the Wu-Tang Clan. After a series of fights up to the top of the tower, a battle to the death takes place with the Mormon Masters of Kung Fu. In a violent free for all the marbles, young bites his opponents to death. Triumphant is Young in the 20 minute brutal breakdown a scene that is a must see for for the true Post apocalyptic Mormons. Young rules his land with violent blood reign of kung-fu and swordsmanship that he believes to be prophesized on Golden plates from God, which also supplement as flying guillotines. What this film does so effectively is to give the secular viewer a romanticized story about the the start up of the post apocalyptic society that we know as Utah, which oddly is almost exactly the same as it has ever been.

Savage Journey tells the story about the original founders of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints as they trek across the United States looking for a home in the 19th century. Persecuted wherever they go, the Mormons end up in the unsettled land that will one day become known as Utah. The drama centres on the two founding members Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

This film is certainly pretty ambitious in scope but it ultimately fails primarily on account of its poor production values which are not good enough to execute such an expansive story. It has to be said that this is a highly biased presentation of the Mormons, which whitewashes such contentious issues such as the groups endorsement of polygamy. The Mormons in this story are shown to be very worthy and good to a level that seems unlikely. The film itself gets plus points for its educational value, yet despite this it's still not exactly very good and simply does not engage the viewer as much as it should.

I only about the Mormon Church through the haters that run it today. I have no knowledge of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. I am told that this portrayal is accurate about the early years of the church and of the men.

I only remember Richard Moll as Bull from Night Court. Here, he plays Joseph Smith to a Brigham Young played by Maurice Grandmaison, who also played Brigham Young in the 1977 movie of the same name.

Watching the massacre of women and children at the hands of the rednecks was tough.

The acting was terrible and the production values were decidedly amateurish, but the story was compelling about the struggles of a people who have lost their way.

Savage Journey is the story of the Mormon Church if not from the beginning when Joseph Smith was visited by the Angel Moroni on his farm in Palmyra, New York, it does tell the story from its early days of wandering and persecution until the church settled in what is now the state of Utah. I presume it was made with the full cooperation of the LDS church and made with an audience of non-believers in mind. A kind of Mormon primer.

It certainly is more accurate than the Hollywood classic Brigham Young, Frontiersman that starred Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell back in the day with Dean Jagger as Brigham Young and Vincent Price as Joseph Smith. Though more historically accurate than that one, Savage Journey surely does lack the production values that 20th Century Fox could give it.

The only name familiar to most of us is Richard Moll who was Bull Shannon on Night Court and who played Joseph Smith in the film. It's kind of hard to accept Moll in the part, possibly not his fault, but I kept seeing the intellectually challenged Bull as I watched him. Someone like Vincent Price who was also tall as Joseph Smith was, but who also played cerebral characters when he wasn't scaring us to death on the screen was perfect.

I did enjoy Moll telling the Illinois jailers before he was lynched by a mob that as a prophet he foresaw blood and destruction on the USA within the lifetime of these people. Now I don't think it would have taken any metaphysical insights into predicting the Civil War. Many saw it coming and none of them claimed God as their source of information.

The seminal event of the LDS Church, the one that convinced them that the Deity was giving them a special providence was the sea gulls appearing to eat the locusts that were devouring that first crop of their's in the winter of 1846-47. That part was handled well given the limited budget this film must have had.

Still Savage Journey does not claim to be more than an educational and evangelical tool and it really doesn't rise much above the level of the Christian films from Protestant evangelical churches.