Copper Sky (1957)

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

One of the greatest romances on the screen was "The African Queen". That improbable affair between two persons with different social backgrounds had a fantastic chemistry. This western tells the same story and manages to keep the heat on with the beautiful and sexy Coleen Gray and the taciturn Jeff Morrow. Gray criticized her performance in this film in a book interview (Western Women), stating that without a director controlling her " I acted all over the place". Welcome Coleen, I enjoyed your performance, only wish we had more of it! Probably the director Charles Marquis Warren thought the same and stimulated her "acting all over". With a good screenplay by Eric Borden the story flows easily slowly building the the attraction between the two main characters. Great scene when Coleen bathes in the river. Nice, pleasing western.

The first problem that Copper Sky has is that when you give a film a title of that with all the images of desert heat that the mind conjures up, color would have been essential. But this was a B western and the budget just didn't call for it.That was a pity because this could have gotten a notch or two higher in the ratings from me. Pedestrian direction was also a problem. The obvious comparison to The African Queen has been made by many. Let's not forget that in addition to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, The African Queen also had the services of John Huston.Jeff Morrow plays a former cavalryman jailed for shooting an Apache because he was in the vicinity of the killing and scheduled to be hanged. But an interesting twist of fate as Morrow is locked in his cell passed out dead drunk, the entire town is massacred with him the only survivor. I'm still trying to figure out how he got out of the locked cell.But he did whereupon he runs into new school teacher Coleen Gray, fresh from Boston and experiencing her first encounter with hostile Apaches. The two are forced together by circumstance to seek shelter and safety and to do it they have to cross the desert.Like Hepburn and Bogey, Morrow and Gray are on screen together most of the film and they have the burden carrying it. A director like John Huston would have helped enormously.Copper Sky is a decent enough programmer, but it had potential that was squandered.

I thought it was a good movie. I've watched it several times and I keep noticing things I have not seen before. I know people just like Nora, played excellently by Coleen. Her facial expressions speak as loudly as the dialog. Jeff Morrow as Hack was also great casting. He knows that when he is condemned to die that it was useless to protest. Strorther Martin also added a bit of humor. I think it was courageous of Hollywood in 1957 so make a film with such an overtly religious theme. I doubt it would pass today, where everything stresses the insignigicence of life. Every time I see the movie, it becomes more and more real. A great movie.

I think there is a real problem here with what could have been a real 'sleeper' - a modest, but potentially good, film. That problem is the continuity. This movie has a thrown together look, with scenes that don't match, and with dialog that is sometimes spoken as if some climax is about to happen, but never does.I loved Jeff Morrow in this - he seems to be in a completely different (and better) picture than most of the rest of the cast. Colleen Gray is very pretty, but why is she all dolled up and coiffed in a 1950s beehive-type hairdo if she's out in the Wild West? In typical Hollywood style, no matter what befalls her, her lipstick never smears.The actors are called upon to suffer many hardships, and one minute they are walking in the desert, and the next they are walking next to a stream near some woods, and how they got there is never accounted for. I couldn't keep track of when they had a wagon and horse, and when they didn't. Events sometimes seem to unfold backwards.That isn't the actors fault. It's annoying, but it shouldn't detract from the performances, and the kernel of a good story that just never develops properly. It should lead the viewer to speculate about how this movie could have been a bit better. Maybe someone will remake it some day.