The Winds of Autumn

Chuck Pierce Jr. Is a Quaker boy living in a small enclave of Quakers in Montana. Pme day his parents are gunned down. The Quaker elders try to decide who should foster him, but he goes off to kill the murderers.

The charms of this movie lay in its photography of Montana during winter, its supporting, albeit top-billed players -- Jack Elam, Jeannette Nolan -- and its despairing attempt to make sense of evil in a chaotic world, I won't claim that it succeeds in the last, any more than John Wayne's THE COWBOYS did, but in a form still struggling to find stories outside the Spaghetti Western, it's a valiant attempt.

It's Montana territory in 1884. The criminal Hankins family leads a breakout from a prison work detail. Their son gets shot and they find shelter with the Quaker Rigney family farm. The Hankins son tries to rape the Rigney daughter. They end up killing the Ridney family except for eleven year old Joel Rigney.

Jack Elam is the only familiar face in the cast. This seems to be filmed in Montana. That's the best aspect. I like the outdoor filming. The movie needs something. It needs to pick up some speed. Maybe it needs a better lead although one can't expect greatness from a child actor. Then it dawns on me. The kid needs a partner. He needs someone to act against. Also the movie doesn't need to show the Hankins family until the boy catches up to them. I don't actually care about them other than being bull's eye targets for the boy.

This film straddles the border between a B film and an A film. It's essentially a family film with adult themes. Considering the filth children are exposed to these days, this film is a walk in the park and is likely suitable viewing for those 11 years old and up.

The best part is that it's directed by the man who brought us The Legend Of Boggy Creek. For those of us old enough to remember, that movie was a cheesy, independent film that was a box office smash, long before Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity were even seedlings of ideas. It seems Mr. Pierce chose to reinvest his profits into what he wanted to be a higher form of entertainment and art; and he succeeded, for the most part.

The acting is led by veterans Elam and Nolan, both with around 30 years of experience at the time of filming. Dub Taylor is typecast, as usual. Mr. Prine, a fine actor in his own right, is given a less than meaty role. The remainder of the cast, I'd never heard of.

Nice cinematography. Wonderful music score. Good costuming. Decent script. Questionable dialogue at times.

And get this: the non-speaking roles of the girls in the brothel were provided by "Playboy, Inc.", according to the end credits. Playboy models! Whodathunkit?

Very well made film by little known director and writer. Mr. Pierce and Mr. Smith have given us a great film. Good acting by a well mixed cast. Very good sound effects. Fantastic cinematography. Good film for every one to see except the very young. Life lessons to be learned included. Good against evil. Is vengeance the answer? It takes us on a trip to find out the answer to right and wrong. I have seen most of Mr. Pierce's films and this is his best. I hope he is still around to give us more films of this type.

It's an uneasy combo of "True Grit" and "Ma Barker" and of the two, as you might imagine, the later is more fun, especially when it features such masters of Hollywood redneck, psycho villainy as Andrew Prine, Jack Elam and, most gloriously, Jeannette Nolan. Indeed, the movie's best scenes center around these pieces of human flotsam, most notably the holdup in the cat house. Conversely, the scenes with the Quakers and the inevitably cute little boy out to avenge his family's slaying is, even though Chas. Pierce Jr. Is a decent actor, a bit on the enervating side (i.e. Lots of pretty scenery to distract you from the logorrea). C plus.