Share with:
Native American themes combined with supernatural and eco-gothic elements dominate this Eureka ‘Killer Creature’ double feature, presenting two films from the 1970s on Blu-ray for the first time: NIGHTWING starring Nick Mancuso and David Warner, plus SHADOW OF THE HAWK starring Chief Dan George and Jan-Michael Vincent.
NIGHTWING (1979) was perhaps unjustly promoted as a horror film upon its theatrical release and although it doubtlessly contains elements of horror there is more to it than meets the eye. When Youngman Duran (Nick Mancuso), a deputy on a Hopi Indian reservation in New Mexico, is tasked with investigating a string of bizarre cattle mutilations initial enquiries lead to nothing. However, embittered old medicine man Abner Tasupi (George Clutesi), who raised the inquisitive Youngman following the deaths of his parents, shows the young deputy a so-called Hopi sand painting he’s currently working on – depicting a spell that the universe would end that very night. Dismissing Tasupi’s revelations as the ramblings of a man under the influence of a hallucinogenic plant he is later shocked to learn that the medicine man’s lifeless body has been discovered the following morning, just as a dead shepherd and his flock have also been discovered nearby… all of them drained of blood. Meanwhile, ambitious tribal council chairman Walker Chee (Stephen Macht) is much more interested in a recently discovered stratum of oil shales in the Maskai Canyon, which happens to be the tribes’ most sacred ground. Soon he finds himself at loggerheads with Youngman who doesn’t like the idea that Walker is planning to dynamite the sacred caves in order to unleash the oil whilst the chairman is of the opinion that the future of the Native American people doesn’t lie in hocus-pocus rituals but in wealth and money… which is precisely the reason why he’s eager to hide the recent attacks from the press so he can sell the rights to process the oil to tycoon Roger Piggot (Ben Piazza), head of the almighty Peabody Oil Company.