User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Being a pillar of society in the little town of Cartwright Oklahoma hardware store owner and all around moonlighting handyman Danny Traynor, Peter Coyote, got the shock of his life the evening that his world was turned upside down. It was then when the local police, acting like a bunch of Nazi Gestapos, burst into his home and dragged Danny away in front his terrified wife and children.

Hauled into the local police station for a murder that he supposedly committed some 27 years ago, on the night of August 12, 1972, Danny claims that he was totally innocent of the charges against him. In fact Danny swore that he never even set foot in the state of Oregon, where the murder was committed, in his entire life. Danny's wife Barbara, Michele Lee,who totally believed in her husbands innocence soon got the shock of finding out that her loving Danny had lead a double life for the some 20 years that she lived and was married to him. A life that finally caught up with Danny the night that they, the cops, came and took him away in handcuffs.

The made for TV movie "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" goes through a series of long and somewhat confusing flashbacks as it painstakingly reconstructs what happened that fateful night in the deep and dense woods on Shadow Mountain. Danny, played by Josh Keaton as a young man, got caught up with the wrong and bad crowd in the person of serial rapist Wayne Kennedy, Tim Kellecher. Wayned offered to give Danny, who was just discharged from the US Navy, a ride up to Seattle Washington for a very important job interview. It turned that Wayne just wanted Danny along to keep him company as well as participate in him picking up hitch-hiking young women and then, after getting them drunk, forcing himself on them.

It was during the brutal rape and possible murder, Danny never found her body, of young collage student Shelly Gaines, Courtney Peldon, that Danny in his attempt in trying to stop the both drunk and out of control Wayne ended up shooting him dead and leaving his body in the woods where it was found by the state troopers the next day. The gun that Danny used to shoot and kill Wayne, in fact it was one of Wayne's two guns, was found 27 years later and a fingerprint was lifted off it belonging to Danny Traynor. This secret of the Wayne Kennedy shooting, after Wayne pulled a gun on Danny, had Danny keep under wraps all these years but it wasn't the killing of Wayne that was eating Danny up. It was his not being able to save poor and helpless Sherry's life that was.

Barbara doing everything that she can to get her husband Danny Traynor freed is stymied by him at every turn in his constantly changing his story and leaving him open to both perjury, if he's put under oath, as well as murder charges. Danny becomes a total wreck of a man behind bars not even wanting to be freed for shooting Wayne, which it turned out he was fully justified in doing. Danny's biggest obsession is that he promised Shelly that he would protect her from Wayne and the fact that he didn't is the real crime that he feels that he committed and thats, in Danny's mind, worth putting him on death row.

Danny's muddled philosophy, about crime and punishment, is unexpectedly corrected when Barbara unearths the truth not only about Wayne's victim Shelly but also unearths the gun that Wayne pulled out and took a shot a Danny causing him to get shot and killed, in self-defense, in return.

I usually have a difficult time watching a TV movie, the extra long commercial breaks will break my concentration and I give up and find a good book. This one however made me put up with the adds and stay with it to the end. I realize the movie was based on a true story but it was not brought out why it took so long to find Denny? They had his name and I would presume his social security number. While he did move around a lot it would seem he would be found as soon as his number was entered for a job etc. The actors seemed a bit old for the part and a buried metal object when dug up had no rust. These were only technical glitches and did not take from the file. For a LifeTime Movie it was better than most.