There's a great film waiting to be made about the notorious Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the most damning and hotly disputed events in the controversial history of the Mormon Church in America. Until then, we'll have to settle for September Dawn, Christopher Cain's resoundingly pedestrian dramatization of the cold-blooded slaughter of 120 "Gentile" emigrants in nineteenth century Utah territory, allegedly by Mormon militia carrying out the orders of Brigham Young. What could have been a galvanizing and all-too timely account of religious fanaticism turning violent has instead been reduced to the banal level of an Romeo and Juliet-type love story between a Mormon teenager and a pretty girl from the ill-fated, covered wagon party.
Although the Church of the Latter-Day Saints has vehemently contested the accuracy of the film's version of the massacre, Cain (Young Guns) and co-screenwriter Carole Whang Schutter reportedly pored over historical accounts, the Church archives, and transcripts of Brigham Young's sermons and speeches to insure maximum authenticity for September Dawn. In early September, circa 1857, the Baker-Fancher wagon train stops in the picturesque Mountain Meadows, part of the Utah Territory overseen by Territorial Governor Brigham Young (Terence Stamp). Resisting attempts by then-President Buchanan to remove him from office, Young has proclaimed martial law—and ordered his followers to resort to any means possible, even bloodshed, to keep "Gentiles" away.
Confronted by armed Mormon militia led by John D. Lee (Jon Gries), Captain Alexander Fancher (Shaun Johnston) asks Lee to let the covered wagon party rest for two weeks in the Mountain Meadows before continuing on to California. Meanwhile, Jonathan Samuelson (Trent Ford), the handsome oldest son of Mormon Bishop Jacob Samuelson (Jon Voight), catches the eye of "Gentile" Emily Hudson (Tamara Hope). Although his stern father forbids Jonathan from interacting with anyone from the Baker-Fancher wagon train, he falls hopelessly in love with Emily. What neither of them know, however, is that the Church has declared the members of the wagon train "enemy combatants" who must be killed, in divinely-sanctioned retribution for the earlier murder of Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith (Dean Cain, the director's son).
Not filmed in Utah, for obvious reasons, September Dawn only transcends its clunky, made-for-television-level of filmmaking in the genuinely disturbing recreation of the massacre on September 11, in a chilling, strange-but-true coincidence. Cain's powerful, gut-wrenching depiction of the betrayal and murder of the settlers is unsparing in its brutality. He portrays the Mormons as coldly calculating executioners who first try to dupe the local Paiute Indians to kill the settlers. It's therefore all the regrettable that the rest of September Dawn, with its glut of expository dialogue, western frontier clichés, and only serviceable performances, never comes close to packing the emotional wallop of the denouement.
— TIM KNIGHT
There's a great film waiting to be made about the notorious Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the most damning and hotly disputed events in the controversial history of the Mormon Church in America. Until then, we'll have to settle for September Dawn, 