Redemption for Robbing the Dead (2011)

When a brother shows up to claim the body of a dead outlaw who’s been buried and finds him naked in his grave, an ugly truth is uncovered in a town in the Utah Territory, 1862. Someone has been robbing graves.

And when lawman Henry Heath (John Freeman) visits the home of funeral home employee Jean Baptiste (David Stevens), it doesn’t take much detective work to figure out who’s guilty.

His home is cluttered from one corner to the other with clothing, hats and footwear he’s taken off the recently departed.

Baptiste’s forehead is branded with his crime. One of his ears is sliced.

Then he’s dumped on a small deserted island in the Great Salt Lakes. Every once in a while, someone drops off some food and fresh water so he won’t perish, but that’s his only human contact.

Often, that someone turns out to be Henry Heath, who slowly comes to sympathize, at least a bit, with the ostracized outlaw.

Perhaps it’s the concern Baptiste shows for his wife, who’s not exactly of sound mind. Perhaps it’s because she lost touch when reality when the Baptistes lost a child.

After all, Heath and his wife just watched their daughter Lucy succumb to illness.

The biggest question: How will Heath feel when he learns that Lucy’s grave was among those Baptiste desecrated.

Review:

The setting might be Utah Territory 1862, but this isn’t your standard Western shoot ’em up. The focus is on characters — the exiled outlaw struggling for survival on an island all alone, two wives trying to cope with the death of children and, most of all, Henry Heath.

Heath blames himself for his young daughter’s death. It’s punishment for the lives he took as a lawman, he reckons. Besides, he didn’t pray enough. At first, he’s also indifferent to the plight of Baptiste, out there all alone on his island. Over time, that changes. And conversations with Baptiste change his perspective on his own daughter’s death.

Of course, his willingness to help a man despised for desecrating about 300 graves might lead to him to be ostracized back home as well.

Margot Kidder plays Baptiste’s slightly deranged wife. Barry Corbin plays a judge who, haunted by a death from when he was a lawman, can’t bring himself to allow Baptiste to perish.

Directed by:
Thomas Russell

Cast:
John Freeman … Henry Heath
David Stevens … Jean Baptiste
Margot Kidder … Marlys Baptiste
Siera Somerville … Caroline Heath
Robyn Adamson … Lucy Heath
Barry Corbin … Judge Smith
Gavin Bentley … Heber Jenkins
Nathan Stevens … Ray Jenkins
Jon Gries … Tom Sutter

aka:
Robbing the Dead

Runtime: 105 min.

Score:
Spencer Russell

Memorable lines:

Judge Smith: “I’ve already let one man rot. I can’t do it again. We all got a history. God help us we do.”

Caroline Heath, of daughter Lucy: “You think she’s dead cause of you? Cause of something you did?”
Henry Heath: “I shot men. I cut ’em. And God put my wrongs on her.”
Caroline: “You don’t believe that.”
Henry: “Oh, don’t I? You never killed a man. There’s no forgiveness for that.”

Trivia:

Yep, that’s Margot Kidder playing the slightly deranged wife of Jean Baptiste, the same Margot Kidder who starred as Lois Lane in the Superman films of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Barry Corbin, who plays the judge here, has more than 175 film and TV credits, but is best known for starring as Maurice J. Minnifield in the hit TV series “Northern Exposure” (1990-95).

Rance Howard as the doctor who cares for the Heaths ailing child in Redemption for Robbing the Dead (2011)

David Stevens as Jean Baptiste, watching Lucy Heath’s funeral from afar in Redemption for Robbing the Dead (2011)