I just this minute finished seeing this movie, unfortunately in Spanish which may have caused the stars to shine rather less brightly, but I doubt if I would have given it more than 5 had I seen it in the original American. I am not at all surprised that there is a great divergence of opinions about it. I do like westerns which are not just shooting matches but give us a picture of how the life of ordinary people was, but I do not think this does the job very well. When one thinks of "Westward the Women" with Robert Taylor and Corinne Calvet, this opuscule with only a handful of mail-order brides going in the opposite direction shrinks into insignificance. The pace is sometimes jumpy and generally too slow. The women, not because of attractiveness or lack of it, are of very limited interest. Though many a movie has brought a tear to these (ancient, male) eyes, I felt really no empathy with any of them, even the gun-toting uncharismatic heroine. The soundtrack score is tastefully written but too pretentious and grandiose in the style of "Dr Quinn Medicine Woman", in which the ambling along a dusty trail of a mule team pulling a small covered wagon and nothing happening is treated like "The Entry of the Queen of Sheba". There were some other flaws: At the very beginning, it was not made clear, at least to me, that it was the sheriff's wife whom he inadvertently killed, and, in fact, one does not actually see that she has been killed. It is true, however, that the version I saw was only 77 minutes long, so it is conceivable that there had been some (additional) clumsy editing. The female rejects that we had been told had been driven mad at least partly by life in the wagon train that brought them to their husbands-to-be recovered their wits remarkably quickly on a similar but more cramped return journey: Sigmund Freud, eat your heart out! The amazonian, somewhat overweight lady said to be of great strength we were not allowed to see demonstrating it, though asked by ex-Sheriff Briggs to help raise up the damaged wagon (as Jean Valjean did and was seen to do in "Les Misérables"), and apparently did so. The two idiots who had shared the sexual favours of the religiositous, bible-reading spouse now officially on the way to the nut-house,shared unbeknownst to the husband and against the will of his new wife, pursued the wagon jointly and with great fervour, presumably to reclaim said spouse/sister-in-law, though it must have been quite obvious to the adulterous brother that his sins would immediately be revealed. Which indeed came to pass leading to the smiting and slaying of both the aforementioned idiots. There was generally too much pointing of guns at each other without firing, and worse, permitting the opponent to draw his sidearm whilst already covered by a pistol. Oh yes, and the igniting of the bottles of whiskey and the throwing of them in the path of two pursuing baddies at the hands of the women ordered by Briggs to do so. The baddies seemed to hold back to give the ladies time to prepare and execute this delicate task, and when the great conflagration occurred as intended did not skirt round the flames on their swifter mounts, but politely allowed themselves to be halted by them, presumably muttering under their breath some cowboy equivalent of "A thousand thunders! Foiled again!" These villains also failed to sneak up that night on the wounded hero (couldn't the girls have found a smaller knife to take out the bullet?), which was also jolly sporting of them. Kevin Sorbo I only know as a scantily clad mythological hero from episodes of "Xena", which did not make great demands on his talents, and this rôle too failed to show whether he is capable of better things. Lance Henriksen, on the other hand, has greatly impressed me in earlier movies as a black-hearted villain in the traditions of Sweeny Todd and Maria of the Red Barn - a man you love to hate. An actor with much less talent could easily have given what was expected of him here. Oh dear, I hadn't realised I disliked this film that much!
Review of Prairie Fever
