I think I might start prewriting these over the summer. I certainly have the time during the week and get oddly stressed fitting it into my Friday. So here I am on a Thursday. Got 12 titles from Tigs. May his reign never end.
The Klondike Mission
A young man stumbles through the snow. He clutches something close to his chest. He shakes mining tools off his waist trying to cut weight to run faster. We are in the mountains and it is clearly turn of the 20th century. We hear a growling behind him as he closes his eyes clutching closer to what we see is a huge chunk of gold. Title card.
We cut to an older man popping awake from a nightmare. We are still in the same era but have jumped a few months forward. This man who is referred to simply as Stevens is trying to put together an expedition into the Klondike Yukon area to look for his brother’s lost expedition. They had left several months earlier looking for gold in the mountains. Winter is quickly approaching and they want to find them now. He puts together a group with a brilliant tracker, some strong-arm hunters, a native, and a few prospectors who know the area and where they would be searching for gold.
Their journey is perilous and a bit tense. Clearly Stevens isn’t the best suited for such a trek, his brother was more the outdoors explorer. The prospectors seem to be a bit more interested in actually finding gold themselves. The native seems skittish about where they are headed. The hunters seem standoffish and the tracker is upset since it looks like the cold winter weather is coming earlier than expected.
They find the remains of the first expeditions camp. It’s a bit torn up and disheveled. There are no signs of anyone. The native is even more freaked out. The tracker says something is near. One of the prospectors screams out in pain. He is slashed across the chest and says he didn’t see what it was. The groups huddles up and makes camp taking watches. They awake the next morning to find 2 of the prospectors dead with wounds like they first attacked.
The group argues about where they should go, back or press on looking for more signs. They end up pressing on under order of Stevens. The tracker picks up a trail and they end up finding Stevens brother Nicholas huddled in a cave. He has blood on his clothes. Some of it fresh as the tracker points out.
Nicholas is quiet about what happened and doesn’t want to talk. The hunters seem to think he is responsible for the attacks last night and the native tells stories of evil in this area. They begin their trip back and at camp that night Nicholas tells of the great vein of gold they found. He has a large sample, the one he was clutching to his chest from earlier in the film.
That night one of the hunters tries to steal the chunk of gold from Nicholas, who kills the man violently. He slashes his chest with some tools, which make wounds similar to that which killed the prospectors. The native starts spouting lore of the evil that curses men in these parts, an evil stuck in the mountains. The tracker and the native try to subdue Nicholas but Stevens fights alongside his brother and they kill the two.
The two brothers are left and Nicholas seems to calm and tells his brother more details about their find. Stevens starts to eye the gold chunk greedily. Nicholas catches him staring and the two fight. Stevens kills his brother and runs off clutching the gold to his chest. He ducks behind a tree his eyes closed as he hears a growling approaching him.