User Reviews

This is perhaps the most interesting & disturbing film I have seen in a couple years. Interesting because there is a fantastic idea here and a certain amount of novelty in it's look + mood. And disturbing because the film apparently shows a scene of such barbaric cruelty to some of the animals used in it's filming that it stopped the fun cold in it's tracks. The story managed to re-interest me in time for the conclusion but it is little wonder to me that Paramount "shelved" the project, or at least quietly distanced themselves from it. I am not sure if it's a a bad movie, a good movie or a stupid movie, but it is fascinating.

THE PLOT: Mutton-chopped Confederate captain Joe Don Baker and his faithful mystic half-breed Native American scout survive the Civil War to go in search of a hidden cache of diamonds secreted in a haunted cave on a "cursed" mountain that has a history of general weirdness about it. On the way they collect Jesus Christ: Superstar (who shaved in time to be in the movie) to act as their geology expert, and rescue cinema waif Sandra Locke from the same fate that Clint Eastwood saved her from a year earlier in "The Outlaw Josey Wales". She even reprises her role: potential gang rape victim/white slave prisoner (her name is "Drusilla", one usually associated with half naked Roman Slave Girls) stumbling around the west in search of willing anti-hero types to save her. She finds some.

The motley band of explorers make their way up the foreboding mountain -- meeting up with your requisite "Deliverance" type bushwacker cannibal hicks upon the way, one of whom is even a mute who plays a musical instrument rather than speaking -- while dodging attacks from unseen hostile Injun warriors who have declared the mountain sacred. You get the picture, and my hat's off to the fellow reviewer who stated that it's "Predator" without the slack-jawed comments. Like "Predator" the film twists and mixes motifs from different genres: War, High Adventure, Western, Romance, Drama, Social Satire, and eventually Horror. The ending is *very* effective & creepy, with Sandra Locke in her best screen moments ever ... Never seen "Ratboy" but she is better here than in "The Gauntlet", if that is any comparison.

So anyway they search for treasure, fight off mystical demon braves, everybody falls in love with Ms. Locke (except for Half Moon the half-breed, of course, which is odd since he is the one whom she instantly identifies with & is most suited for as a mate) but this movie was made during the paranoid 1970's and concludes with as creepy of an ending as you can ask for. In fact, if it wasn't for the presence of one single sequence from the movie -- which is sadly too vital to the plot to be removed without throwing the logic of the film into the gutter -- I would rate this as a near miss mini masterpiece of alternative cinema waiting to be re-discovered by people who enjoy daring, adventuresome low budget 1970's cinema. Here is what happens:

The film is of course set on a mountain. A character is done away with by having him tumble over the side of the mountain to crash lifelessly on the valley below, presumably in the form of a mannequin or dummy thrown over the side to be filmed as it lands below. All well and fine, except that the character was leading a team of horses, who also go over the edge to crash on the valley floor below along with the dummy. I certainly do not know exactly how the sequence was staged, but you do not have to be a rocket surgeon to conclude that those were actual horses (hopefully deceased before being pushed over) smashing onto the valley floor along with the dummy of the actor. Even if they were cadavers of horses that were used (how sick is that??) it is still extremely disturbing to see their twisting, contorting forms smash into the ground just to get a really cool looking effects shot.

The event is so disturbing that it overwhelms the equally absurd use of "The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band, performed by The Band, during a battle scene montage depicting the South losing the war. One of the characters in the film is even named "Virgil Cane" right from the lyrics. I wonder how the deal to include the song in the film was struck, and if the producers promised Robbie Robertson personally that the song would be used in the most gratuitous manner possible within the first ten minutes. Fortunately it's a good enough song & well edited montage to allow a pass for bad taste. Or poor judgment.

But the horses thing ...I cannot get over it and would point to both potential soundtrack rights issues and use of animals without a "no-harm" disclaimer at the conclusion as the primary reasons no responsible media company is interested in reviving this movie. To make matters worse the "public domain" prints available on DVD in North America (look for it on Archive.Org) show an edited full-frame time compressed TV version which looks like it was transferred to home video by people who weren't actually watching the movie. A bargain price DVD from Britain did slightly better but quickly went out of print. VHS era pressings seem to have relied on the TV print ("Curse of Demon Mountain") with an extremely rare British tape alleged to show a more complete edit ("The Shadow of Chikara"). There was also a VHS release from Greece ("Shadow of Chikara") which had the adult language but damned if I know the runtime. Or where to find one.

Consider it another one of those mysterious cinema oddities that you sort of have to see for yourself to believe it was actually made at all.

6/10

Earl A. Smith was the writer of The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, but he only directed this one movie.

It's a Western horror, which is rare, and one that places Confederate soldier Wishbone Cutter (Joe Don Baker, who yes, was a 70s lead and near sex symbol) into a treasure hunt after he learns of a cave filled with diamonds from dying soldier Virgil Caine (Slim Pickens).

Wishbone assembles a team that includes Amos Richmond geologist (Ted Neeley, once Jesus Christ), Native American Half Moon O'Brian (John N. Houck Jr.) and eventually Drusilla Wilcox (Sondra Locke), a woman they find after a massacre. The Arkansas mountain is guarded by a demon bird, so of course everything gets strange by the time they get there. Wishbone is already haunted as his wife Rosalie (Linda Dano, who was on more than 1,300 episodes of Another World) has left him for a Yankee soldier.

Wilcox claims that the men that killed her people were silver naked beings and O'Brian claims that they're being attacked by demons. The movie never gives in and reveals to you what it's really all about and for that, I like it even more. It's also got the same crew that Charles B. Pierce used, so it gets the authentic Arkansas rough feel down right. Even the ending makes little to no sense, but hey, I kind of adore that.

The only downer I'll reveal is that there's a lot of real animal abuse in this, as several horses plunge off a cliff and I have no idea if any survived. Just know that going in.

On the positive side, somehow, the filmmakers got The Band to let them use "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

Also known as The Ballad of Virgil Cane, Thunder Mountain, Wishbone Cutter, The Curse of Demon Mountain, Demon Mountain and Shadow Mountain, this is a movie that combines the end of the Western 70s darkness with occult themes and a relentless downer edge. I'd never seen it before and it's definitely a film I plan on exploring again.

I saw this picture under the title "Curse of Demon Mountain', and it fits as well as any of the other multiple titles this one goes by. All the while I'm watching I get the impression it's a fairly adequate mystical Western with unseen enemies thwarting Captain Wishbone Cutter's (Joe Don Baker) quest to cash in on a fellow soldier's dying rant about valuable stones hidden somewhere up on the Buffalo River. If nothing else, the film would have hooked me with it's early inclusion of The Band's 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down', but as I sit here and think about the story's conclusion, I'm riveted by the ending that insinuates Sondra Locke's character as the mystical force that destroys the diamond hunting trio. What I'm left to contemplate is how a modern update of the picture with today's camera work and special effects could really take it from it's B film origins and vault it into a major A-list horror Western. You wouldn't even have to change the script all that much, just eliminate the confounding jump cuts and patches of missing dialog. Get the PETA folks on board with an adequate handling of the way those horses go over the cliff and you've got a winner. You know, I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

"The Curse Of Demon Mountain" was originally released back in 1977.

Anyway - As the story goes - A group of Confederate soldiers, survivors of the last battle of the Civil War, follow their captain in order to find their fortune. On the trail of a legendary cave of diamonds, the battle-proven veterans run into some bizarre events the make them think that there is more to the legend than at first believed.

A band of Confederate soldiers, including Wishbone Cutter and Virgil Cane (Joe Don Baker and Slim Pickens), barely survives a battle with Union forces. Cane is mortally wounded and tells his comrades where he hid a fortune in diamonds.

As the survivors set out in search of the treasure, they encounter major difficulties. They also believe that someone is following them. Along the way, the group picks up Drusilla Wilcox (Sondra Locke), the sole survivor of a massacre.

As they move along, they slowly realize that whatever is following them uses incredible stealth, leaving no tracks.

THE SHADOW OF CHIKARA is a slow-building thriller. If you enjoy newer, mixed genre -horror / western- films like THE BURROWERS, DEAD BIRDS, or BONE TOMAHAWK, then this is a must! It's one of the earliest and it gets the atmosphere of increasing dread just right. It also brings to mind films like THE RITUAL, DELIVERANCE, SOUTHERN COMFORT, SCARECROWS, etc., just to give you some idea of the stalking sense of impending doom. Others have seen it as a template for PREDATOR, and that's pretty accurate.

For fans of mysterious, creeping terror without the need of jump scares or explosions every ten seconds...

I normally don't watch 2 movies back-to-back consecutively as I get bad headaches - I just watched The house of lost Souls - but it's cold and raining outside and I feel like taking a little tour through, what is it called again, Legend of Boggy Creek? Nope, we're climbing some haunted mountain instead apparently. Let's saddle up and hike this hawk-infested trek. "There's gold in dem dare hills." I hope the quality of this DVD improves - looks like a blurry Western. My mistake - Gettysburg.

These 2 guys being blown sky high - that looked authentic. One point for that. Nice introduction.

I wouldn't want to have been the poor soldier holding the flag among all this crossfire. Some defence.

Is it a war movie or a horror movie - what cinema have I accidentally walked into? Is that Woody Harrelson and is that Sonny from Predator or Gene Symmonds from Kizz?

Surely that's Scotty J. From that Dirk Diggler movie? This sharp edit is sloppy and all over the shop.

Holy crap - they're editing the swear words out of my DVD copy. Never seen, or heard, that before.

Ouch, stitches in the scalp?

Doc Holiday here has those pearly white teeth one of Biff's goons talked about. Nice teeth. In fact everybody in this movie has perfect teeth. (Almost everybody.)

Now it's turned into Grizzly Adams or Little Predator on the Prairie.

Is that Sissy Spacek or Stevie Nicks? She looks familiar.

Drucila? Captain Wishbone Cutter? What sort of stupid names are those?

Won't surprise me if the Marlborough Man shows up anytime soon.

They're editing swear words out to protect my sensitive PG-13 ears.

Save your ammo, you're hitting nothing. Quick, arm Sissy Spacek. The actress is quite pretty actually.

So basically a handful of separatists go in search of some buried treasure but find themselves being hunted by Predator's cousin or the Foot Clan?

Love how they have unlimited bullets in these movies and never have to reload.

Check out this character with the harmonica. He's called Dancing and he's eccentric and has bad teeth. I've got it! This Doc Holiday character, the one with the pearly white teeth, I know where I've seen him before! He's that cowboy from the Village People.

(Didn't he shoot Liberty Vallance?)

And they being hunted by birdemic shock and terror?

Sneaky ending, I never saw that coming. I won't give it away though.

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it.

Something different.

Arkansas, circa 1865: After losing the final battle of the Civil War, sexist, sadistic Conferate commander Wishbone Cutter (a gruff, intimidating, but fairly restrained turn by the often overly hammy Joe Don Baker, here giving one of his better, less blustery and bombastic performances), faithful half-Irish, half-Native American companion Moon (beautifully essayed by Joy Houck, Jr., a good, engaging actor who usually toiled away in forgettable junk unworthy of his talent), and laid-back geologist Amos "Teach" Raymond (affable Ted Neeley, who played God's only son in "Jesus Christ, Superstar") venture into the dense, remote, uninviting Arkansas wilderness to unearth a diamond stash located on a sacred Indian mountain that's rumored to be guarded by territorial demons. Along the way the motley threesome pick up the comely, beguiling Drucilla Wilcox (the mesmerizingly winsome'n'willowy Sondra Locke, whose pale, haunted, crystal-clear blue eyes are vaguely redolent of Meg Foster's otherworldly orbs), the lone shell-shocked survivor of a brutal Indian attack. Pretty soon the quartet is being terrorized by some mysterious assailant(s). Could they be a strange tribe of inhospitable Apaches? Or is it the lethal woodland spirit Chikara, who rules over hawks and doesn't take kindly to interlopers trespassing on its terrain?

Writer/director Earl E. Smith, who wrote both "The Legend of Boggy Creek" and "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" for Charles B. Pierce, does a superlative job of keeping the viewer on edge, adeptly creating a spooky, yet somehow oddly plausible and flavorful period tone which slowly, but surely grows on the viewer as the film gradually, carefully, and skillfully reaches its genuinely chilling and startling conclusion. The top-notch acting greatly contributes to the film's overall gritty credibility, with particularly nifty bits by the ever-scummy and unnerving unsung Western supporting villain John Davis Chandler as a repulsive backwoods psycho, Dennis Fimple as a grizzled, cloddish fur trapper who refers to the forest spirits as "haints," and the magnificent Slim Pickens in a lovely, touching cameo as Virgil Cane, a sweet old-timer who's fatally wounded early in the picture and tells Cutter about the cache of diamonds right before he dies. The rousing, ferociously rough and pulverizing opening battle sequence starts the film on a stirring and striking note, with excellent, poignant use being made of the Band's terrific, tearful ballad "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down." There's also some surprisingly vicious violence that one doesn't always see in a PG rated flick (e.g., the scene where Cutter removes an arrow from Raymond's arm is especially painful) and plenty of supremely creepy skin-crawling enigmatic "what's really going on here?" atmosphere. Quirky, low-key, and above all refreshingly different and original, "The Shadow of Chikara" is undoubtedly the finest, scariest and most exceptionally well-crafted horror-Western to ever grace celluloid. It's an unjustly forgotten little jewel of a sleeper that's well worth the extra effort to dig up and check out.