A pair of bushwhackers flee from a posse and find themselves in a peculiar Indian burial ground. There is eerie howling that doesn't sound natural. Suddenly, one is shot in the throat and the other flees for his life. Eleven days later, he finds himself in the town of Bright Hope. His manner attracts the attention of Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell). As he tries to run, Hunt shoots him in the leg. With the town doctor drunk, Mrs. O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is summoned to the jail to extract the bullet. By morning, the prisoner, the deputy, and Mrs. O'Dwyer are missing along with half a dozen horses. The stable boy is dead. An unusual arrow is found and a local Indian identifies it as belonging to troglodytes, a savage band of cannibals who reside in the Valley of Starving Men. Sheriff Hunt, Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) set out to rescue the missing people.
Though the story has a horror element to it, it mostly plays as a standard western until the final act. The four men who set our are not well-suited to the task. O'Dwyer has a broken leg, the reason why he was still in town rather than herding cattle north to Wyoming with most of the town's other men. Though urged to stay behind, he must try to rescue his wife. Brooder is a dandy who kills without compunction and has a special dislike for Indians. He is the best equipped of the group. Sheriff Hunt is competent but has only nominal command over Brooder and O'Dwyer. Chicory is an elderly fellow who talks endlessly, much to the irritation of his fellows.
As promised, the troglodytes are cannibals who speak by howling and keep their 'meals' alive until it's time to dine. Their weapons are amazingly crude but lethal. Of note, they use an animals jawbone as an axe, the titular bone tomahawk.
The movie has one particularly funny bit. Brooder claims to be the smartest member of the posse. When challenged on that by Chicory, he states that O'Dwyer and Hunt are married and Chicory is a widower. So? "Smart men don't get married." QED. :)
The movie is overlong and spends much of its time on the journey to the Valley of the Starving Men. Though they encounter hazards along the way, it is never the troglodytes. Imagine Aliens where three quarters of the movie is spent before the characters engage the aliens. There is a lot of time spent on the interrelationships of the posse and not a lot of fighting the monsters.
Just okay.
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