3 Stars out of 10.<br /><br />Someone apparently loved The African Queen with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn and decided they wanted to do a western version - and by golly they did. Only Copper Sky is a far cry from The African Queen.<br /><br />Nora Haynes (Coleen Gray) from Boston, arrives in town to be the new schoolmarm only to discover everyone there has been killed in a fight between the towns people and the Apaches. One Apache isn't quite dead yet and shoots the man who picked Nora up from the stagecoach station before he succumbs.<br /><br />She seems to be alone in the town with a whole lot of dead bodies when Heck Williams comes staggering along. Although there was no indication he had a drinking problem prior to being put in jail to be hung for a crime he didn't commit - from this point on he drinks like a fish.<br /><br />Heck agrees to drive Nora to a small settlement some distance from there and so the two set out grumping and bumping, in a wagon.<br /><br />This is one of the longest most boring wagon journeys ever undertaken on the silver screen.<br /><br />Nora chatters at a soured Heck who grunts his replies to her.<br /><br />Eventually one of their horses goes lame. In real life, usually with a little rest, the lameness clears up, but not in this film. The only answer is to shoot the horse.<br /><br />They then travel for awhile with the one horse hitched to the wagon. Now just how they were able to get a single horse to pull a wagon with a double tree hitch is a trick they failed to show us.<br /><br />A wagon wheel goes out on them. So then she's riding the horse, which he is leading. Suddenly, with no explanation, the horse is gone and they're barely crawling across what has abruptly turned into the Sahara desert with sand so white it looks like snow.<br /><br />Desperately they turn to prayer. There's a river on the other side of the ridge. I guess that river wouldn't have been there if they hadn't of prayed.<br /><br />So there you have it - boy meets girl, boy and girl snipe at each other, boy and girl fall in love, girl of course admits she's the one that's been completely in the wrong and everything has been her fault, never mind HIS rudeness or drunkenness - it's not necessary in a film made in 1957 for him to admit to any faults or apologize for anything.<br /><br />Definitely one of the poorest western films I have ever seen. Perhaps if she'd come into town and the only person left was a dyke it could have at least added a bit of spicy interest to the film. <br /><br />As it was - this film had pretty much zero going for it except for a little unintentional humor - like the very brief battle between the Apaches and the cavalry, where the Capt. suddenly just hollers: "All right, your Chief's dead. Give up." And they immediately do so, although the Chief was the only one of them who had gotten killed.