UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Steineded How sad is this?

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

annualman-1 On Friday 14th May 1982 this was the first film I ever recorded on a VCR - thats why I remember it so vividly - and I loved it. Yesterday I finally tracked it down on DVD under the title Curse of the Demon Mountain in the UK.This has to be the worst official DVD release I have ever seen. I was still able to enjoy the movie, it is (in my opinion) a masterpiece of the horror/western cinema subgenre, but the film transfer was awful.Sound was poor, colours went from over exposed to faded, the film was full frame (despite being shot in Panavision) and the sound went totally muted whenever an insult was hurled! Talk about censorship! The horse fall was there, the bloody battle at the start, the arrow in the arm, but any old insult gets censored out! Unbelievable.Its about time Chikara got the DVD treatment it deserves. Full 2.35 to 1 widescreen, with loads of extras. I would love to see it that way.And I would happily pay good money for the chance!

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) 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

Woodyanders 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.

brandon-o The best thing about this movie is Don Kellams (played the bartender). He is just fabulous! It's almost as if he lived as this character. It's too bad that this is the only role he ever tackled. The rest of the cast is mediocre, and the script is bad. But, bravo Mr. Kellams!