A low-budget western horror film was shot in Yellville and along the Buffalo River. Released in 1977, Wishbone Cutter – also called The Shadow of Chikara and The Curse of Demon Mountain – featured Joe Don Baker as a Confederate soldier who loses the last fight of the Civil War and discovers his wife is living with a Union officer.
A dying soldier played by Slim Pickens tells Baker’s Captain Wishbone Cutter that he hid a stash of diamonds “in a mountain the Indians are scared of.” A character called Half Moon O’Brian warns that the mountain is haunted by a powerful demon and warns that they are being followed by foes who “leave no tracks. They move like fog.” While Cutter and his crew defeat a group of backwoods deviants, they come out second best to the demon.
One reviewer of the obscure movie called it a “fair horror western,” while another wrote that “after a promising beginning, the film runs rapidly downhill.” Recent film historians, though, say the movie “even today … has blogosphere enthusiasts.”
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
You can read the entire Encyclopedia entry at Wishbone Cutter - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
