September Gun (1983 TV Movie) User Reviews (3)

An Old Gunfighter With A Few New Tricks

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 7 May 2007]

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.

git outta ma church!

[petershelleyau · 8 December 2002]

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.

Tacky movie made for lightweight viewing

[qljsystems · 3/10 · 23 March 2006]

Right from the opening credits, showing an Arizona desert landscape, the patchy and faded quality of the film, and the credits' lettering style synonymous with early-1970's Westerns, it's clear that September Gun is a low-budget, made-for-TV movie. Though laced with a charming humour and good-natured American-values, the protagonist characters could've come out of a just-add-water-and-stir sachet, and the bad-guys are equally clichéd. Each character follows a role that's almost formulaic, and a made-for-TV copy of similar roles from more memorable movies.

The story essentially revolves around nun Sister Dulcina's attempts to relocate Apache children to Columbine, a ne'er-do-well town, where the church has been turned into a "licquor-house" and the corrupt mayor (played by Christopher Lloyd - "Doc" from Back To The Future) is the law. They're escorted by Ben Sunday, an aged gunslinger, who dispenses truisms and witty observations to his nephew.

The Apache children are a caricature of Apache-ness, like those encountered on an episode of the High Chaperal, essentially playing the role of the hated redskins whose lands were stolen and in desperate need of education. (None of which can be disputed, despite the movie's cheesiness.) The plot unfolds prosaically. Rather predictably, Sister Dulcina is a feisty little lady in a habit, and Ben Sunday is a wizened mischievous old gunslinger whose humanitarian conscience hinges more on the dollar-cost of bullets than concern for human life. Ben Sunday and Sister Dulcina start off in disagreement and, by the end of the movie, come to appreciate the value in each other. The prostitutes give up their lives of ill-gotten gain with laughable readiness. And Jack Brian, the corrupt mayor, winds up injured in a shootout with Ben Sunday. Nicely and neatly, the town is cleaned up and put on the right tracks, and all within a 90-minute script.

September Gun is a poor-man's version of movies such as True Grit, Rooster Cogburn, The Searchers, and others.

Despite its overtly 1970's production-values, it came as a complete surprise to discover in the end credits that 1983 was the year of the movie's production, which is about the same time as the A-Team, V, Automan and Blue Thunder were televised, which makes September Gun's impoverished script and quality even more surprising.