Dark Hills, Dan's Project : Movies : Amazon Studios

Dark Hills

In the early days of the 20th century, four people empark on an adventure through an unforgiving wilderness in search of lost treasure that involves legends of the undead protecting it. That's right, it's a comedy. Short film coming soon!

Project collaboration: Open

Full synopsis

Synopsis:
"1880" On a mountain trail, a man named Red unwraps a bottle of whiskey covered by a chunk of hide with a crude map drawn on it describing the location of his gold stash.
After retrieving some gold, he makes his way down the mountain side unaware that a large shadowy figure (Farley) wearing a ratty full length fur coat (the sleeves are 3 inches too short exposing clammy, moldy blue flesh) has caught his trail.
With the cracking sound of gunfire, panicked Red scrambles and wrestles with his pistol only to find it broken and useless.
Running as fast as he can, Red comes to the top of a towering cliff as the gunfire stops because his pursuer has run out of ammo. Red turns to find Farley facing him eye to eye as the rifle stock brains Red and sends him over the edge of the cliff, falling for what seems endlessly, smashing into the wall all the way down.
Broken, twisted and dying, Red awakens to find a small mine entrance. crawling inside he unwraps the whiskey that has somehow survived the fall only to drop it spilling the contents completely. Hands shaking violently, Red covers his head with the hide, map side in and dies.
Farley finds Red's body and searches his pockets looking for a clues where his gold stash is hidden. Not touching the hide and finding nothing but a small pouch of gold, Farley takes Red's large Bowie knife and slowly approaches the corpse making a slurring groaning noise.
The scene ends with the silhouette of a coatless Farley with an arrow sticking out of his neck rotating part of a human leg on a spit turning it with a blue foot while picking an out of tune banjo howling at the moon as bushes rustle with fleeing coyotes looking back in disgust at the scene of Farley making a meal out of a piece of Red.

"1926" A menacing limping man (Slim) wearing black worn out clothes pulls a dog out to a trash heap to shoot it. While pulling a junky pistol out of his coat, the dog slips away as Slim mumbles about saving the cost of a bullet.
As he turns to leave the dog is at his feet with a human shin bone that has a foot attached to it. Shocked, Slim follows the dog back to Red's death site to find that the corpse has a hide covered skull.
Pulling the slimy disgusting hide off, Slim discovers that the skull has a map drawn on it (unaware the map transferred off of the hide). Perplexed but not questioning the odd map, gold fever kicks in as he re-wraps the head bone, puts it into an old doctors bag that won't close and heads off to the Flickinsnot pub with the dog in tow unaware a tail of the map is hanging out of the bag.
At the door to the pub, a pretty girl of average height and weight (Sally) stands ringing a bell gathering spare change to feed orphans as delivery men stack crates of booze and barrels of beer beside the entrance.
Slim approaches and demands Sally hold his dog while he's inside. Shaken, Sally obeys Slim as he walks toward the door grabbing a handful of change out of Sally's money pot.
As he walks, the dog bites onto the piece of hide unwrapping the skull without Slim noticing, keeping the original map with Sally.
Slim walks by the bar at the Flickinsnot passing odd characters that includes a raving lunatic (Gerry). Gerry rants wildly telling the story of a sasquatch like creature that lives in the Dark Hills that he sees only at dusk on cold days that makes a sniffling snorting sound like he has a terrible head cold.
Ignoring him, Slim proceeds to a dark corner where he recruits Andre LePooter to help him search for a treasure using the skull as a map.
While sitting with the dog, Sally discovers the piece of hide, comes to a conclusion of what it means and decides to leave taking the dog with her.
Preoccupied with the search for treasure, Slim is glad the dog is out of his hair and heads off to gather items for their trip up Saw Tooth mountain in the Dark Hills.
Slim And Andre start to make their way up Saw tooth unaware that Farley is watching from afar with sagging eyes through binoculars.
After only a few minutes on the trail, the weather has started to turn finding Slim and Andre unprepared so they decide to turn back to the Flickinsnot and make the trek up the mountain when the weather clears.
Back in the dark corner of the pub, the two men are surprised by the arrival of Farley slamming his way to their table while Gerry is Screaming and crying "IT'S HIM! GOD HELP US! IT'S HIM!!.
Farley sits down and in short, almost unrecognizable words, tells the men that he will be joining them on their search. Terrified, the men agree.
The group return to the mountain to search for Red's stash, Sally is also up on the mountain on the opposite side leading her orphans on a camping trip using the map as a guide around the mountain.
While Slim uses the skull to locate the hidden treasure, Andre tells the story of the Dark Hills and how the natives said that they were haunted by the souls of a long dead pioneer family. As the day stretches on the men set up camp and bed down.
As Farley drifts off to sleep with his eyes opened wide, he slips back in time:

"1850". A thin, sickly gold miner hits pay dirt and rushes home to tell his wife and identical 9 year old twin boys of their new fortune.
One of the boys has bright red hair (Red) the other is sickly sweaty with bluish colored lips (Farley).
Full of self pity, feeling abused and unrewarded, Young Red's cunning and greed propels him to murder his father with a bed of nails booby trap and steal the gold for himself. While searching for her husband, the mother is done in with a swinging log on a tripwire with the twin brother falling victim to a Burmese tiger trap lined with Indian arrows.
His dream ends with a glowing Red laughing hysterically at him and waving his large Bowie knife.

Farley has never realized that he actually died in that tiger trap and has been in pursuit of the family riches since his mother and father disappeared.

Throughout the rest of the script, Farley finds that he is being pursued by Red's evil spirit, taunting him and teasing even though the sad fact is the Farley is actually the unfortunate victim of a young murdering Red.
He finally runs off from the men only to find the corpses of his parents where their souls have been waiting for him to grant him his peace. As Farley and his parents gradually fade, Red is left behind screaming angrily at them as they disappear.

Red turns away sobbing as a hand from hell raises from the ground and squashes him like a bug.

Slim finally realizes that the skull is a mirror image of the actual treasure map only after Andre questions why the skull only leads them into danger and leaving them penniless.

Final scene has Sally leading a bucket brigade of orphans passing bags of gold nuggets into the back her car as she tells of the new home she is going to build for them.

End

Latest Work

Creative Notes:

Straight up I'm not a script writer so please be patient. My experience is behind camera building sets and props so visually the script would is very interesting.The setting is a tough clapboard town (ex: T.V.s Deadwood) surrounded by a rocky mountain terrain.The charactors have a human approach to Ed Roth's (Rat Fink) style that I could see being built by someone like Guillermo del Toro .