As anyone who reads this site knows, I really like this film although it was very much a B picture – a supporting one – but like so many of them often at least as enjoyable as the main feature.

I don’t think that this was the case in England, but in the USA ‘The Secret of Treasure Mountain’ was second feature on a programme with ‘The Great Locomotive Chase’ from Walt Disney – as this very poor scan below indicates

The bottom pictures are taken from the film print – and centre on one of the key scenes in the film – the finding of the third Braganza Cross – not quite what we thought but a clever twist

We had better not fill in the blanks or give away the ending – just let you see for yourselves from the DVD

The best part of the film was a sequence taken directly from Lust for Gold 1949 where the Indians attack gold prospectors in a remote valley many years before. Very much a studio set but extremely well done with production quality well ahead of the rest of the film. Interesting to note that the Englishman that played Valerie French’s father in the film was Reginald Sheffield who was the father of Johnny and Billy Sheffield who were boy stars in films – Johnny playing Boy in the Tarzan films and later Bomba The Jungle Boy.

I well remember seeing ‘The Secret of Treasure Mountain’ as a youngster and somehow the plot has always stayed with me. The production values of the film were not top class by any means but the flashback sequence to the man who had discovered the treasure 200 years earlier when the Indians attacked and killed the searchers and Braganza himself in the cave, was very well done – these scenes were pinched from an earlier – and much more expensive looking film – ‘Lust for Gold’ with Glenn Ford.

BELOW – a scene from ‘Lust for Gold’ 1949 with Ida Lupino

ABOVE – ‘The End’ – ‘The Secret of Treasure Mountain’ 1956