The overall story isn't bad, but the details are ridiculous.
4 cowboys try to beat up the lady scientist, Jennifer, and the deputy marshal catches them in the act and they just get to walk away. Maybe that's the way things were done back then. Two federal agents shoot at the town marshal for no valid reason unless it was that their bosses told them to assassinate Jennifer and Wayne. The Prospector goes around mutilating cows in order to "scare away" Jennifer, but then he resorts to mutilating humans. And don't ask me what the end was all about.
I guess the director thought he had to mimic Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the way he used lights and musical tones.
Given who the actors are, the acting is bad. Maybe it was the direction. Martin Landau is just silly. Raymond Burr plays just like all the stories we know him in like Perry Mason. Cybill Shepherd and Jan-Michael Vincent are mostly stiff. All the minor players are way over-the-top, especially the cowboys.
There isn't much to recommend this, but if you can put up with all the detail junk, you might suffer through it for the overall story.
4 cowboys try to beat up the lady scientist, Jennifer, and the deputy marshal catches them in the act and they just get to walk away. Maybe that's the way things were done back then. Two federal agents shoot at the town marshal for no valid reason unless it was that their bosses told them to assassinate Jennifer and Wayne. The Prospector goes around mutilating cows in order to "scare away" Jennifer, but then he resorts to mutilating humans. And don't ask me what the end was all about.
I guess the director thought he had to mimic Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the way he used lights and musical tones.
Given who the actors are, the acting is bad. Maybe it was the direction. Martin Landau is just silly. Raymond Burr plays just like all the stories we know him in like Perry Mason. Cybill Shepherd and Jan-Michael Vincent are mostly stiff. All the minor players are way over-the-top, especially the cowboys.
There isn't much to recommend this, but if you can put up with all the detail junk, you might suffer through it for the overall story.