Overlooked Movies: The Dark Valley (2014)

A mysterious stranger rides into an isolated settlement in a high mountain valley as winter is coming on. The settlement and the valley are ruled with an iron fist by an evil old man and his six brutal sons. (One of the sons wears an eye patch and another looks like Richard Boone, so you know they're bad guys.) The stranger has a camera with him, something that the settlers have never seen before, and claims that he wants to make photographs of them. He stays with an elderly widow and her beautiful daughter, who is engaged to be married to one of the young men in the settlement. Then someone starts killing the old man's sons . . . 

Now here's the oddball twist. The mysterious stranger is from America, but the settlement is high in the mountains in Germany. THE DARK VALLEY is, in fact, a German film, but it sure does look and play like an American Western. If you've ever seen or read a revenge Western movie or novel, you'll have a pretty good idea what's going to happen in this film, although there's a nice twist that I'll admit I didn't see coming.

Actually, a lot of the time THE DARK VALLEY seems like it wants to be a Spaghetti Western even more than it does a traditional American Western. There are bizarre characters, long, lingering, almost silent shots, sudden outbreaks of frenzied violence . . . What it really needs is an Ennio Morricone score and a few close-ups of squinting eyes, and you'd swear you were watching a Sergio Leone film.

A friend of mine recommended this movie to me, and I'm glad he did. Other than a few lapses in logic and being a little too slow and brooding at times, I thought it was very well done and enjoyed watching it. It's offbeat enough to appeal to viewers who aren't necessarily Western fans but has enough of the traditional Western to it that those viewers might like it, too. If you haven't seen it, I think THE DARK VALLEY is well worth watching.