THE GOLDEN SICKLE

The title is the name of a cutthroat's tavern in post-Revolutionary Virginia, a labyrinthine structure built by a river pirate and central to the solution of the cryptic map to a fabulous lost treasure he sent by way of a fallen priest to the thirteen-year-old son he had abandoned. Dan Cresap tells the tale, of the night the priest came to him pursued by a demoniacal dwarf (what a role for Michael Dunne) who led a band of pirates bent on getting to the treasure first. From Christmas Eve to the New Year. Dan and blind girl companion are seldom out of danger and always near death at the hands of the pirate band. Some of the scenes are Hitcheockian in their magnificently visual horror-potential; the last has Dan and his motley helpers in his father's old wine cellar, with drunken pirates about to descend and the murerous midget creeping in by way of a secret tunnel to the river. An evening's entertainment in old-fashioned storytelling.