Three horsemen from the lost and ancient Crooked Sky nation kidnap a frontier girl (Jewel Blanch). Her brother (Stewart Petersen) teams up with a drunk (Richard Boone) a man with his tongue cut out (Henry Wilcoxon) and a dog (B'ar Killer) to find and rescue her.1975 film rated "G". I viewed on a 50 DVD 70's group. The script was similar to a Disney film. The story and acting was unrealistic in spite of a few stars. Similar to a made-for-TV fare.

This is a cute story about a pioneer family who have a girl and a boy and the girl is a few years older than her brother. The girl is religious and reads a scripture to her brother about a person giving his own life for a friend is the greatest show of love, this bit of advice stays with this young man. One day the girl encounters a different tribe of Indians who wore a gold head piece around his head and they kidnapped the young girl. The father goes out hunting for his daughter and then the son decides to put his life on the line for his sister and he devotes himself to finding her. There are many twists and turns to this film and Richard Boone plays the role as a drunken prospector and scout who knows all the Indians and speaks their many languages. This is a very entertaining film with many great film locations in the West. Enjoy.

This movie was released in the summer before my tenth birthday. It, along with "Where the Red Fern Grows," was one of the most moving movies I saw in my pre-teens. Coincidentally, Stewart Petersen starred in both films, so it may have been a quality in his character that particularly influenced me. Coincidentally, this same actor's portrayal of the young Joseph Smith in "The First Vision," which I saw two years later during a trip through Salt Lake City, changed my life forever. "Against a Crooked Sky" evokes all the most tender emotions and inspiration of high ideals. I haven't seen it again in the almost twenty years since then, so the fact that I remember this movie is a tribute to the lasting impression it is able to leave on young viewers.

A surprisingly engaging story on a very low budget works well for the most part. However, the striking presence of Geoffrey Land as the mysterious Indian kipnapper is largely wasted. The movie would have profitted a great deal by dwelling more on the the girl victim and Land's enigmatic character before the obligatory denoument.