Just looking through what is coming on the Film Channels this evening 11 June 2022 – and ‘Lo and behold’ here is one that I have been waiting on for decades – one which I am pretty confident has never been shown on British Television before – ‘The Secret of Treasure Mountain’ from 1956 – It is on the TCM Channel.

I do remember seeing this film as a young schoolboy and somehow the plot has always stayed with me – the search for the Braganza crosses – small metal crosses – that if found would lead to the famous Braganza treasure in Treasure Mountain.

I have looked for the name Braganza before – and not been able to find it – and thought I had this wrong but I was pretty sure I had it right – and so it proved to be the case. The production values of the film are 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 for an earlier film Lust for Gold with Glenn Ford.

Back to today and this evening I have watched the film on TCM – a much better print than I had managed to get hold of three or four years ago from my own 16 mm copy which I was lucky enough to acquire about the same time.
Here are a few screen shots from the film. The background to these pictures is that in the story we are told of an ancient legend of treasure being hidden in a mountain – however once hidden by Braganza and his men – a tribe of Apache Indians carried out an attack on them and killed them all so that no-one would ever discover the location of the gold as it was in a location that the Indians had settled in for many years and they didn’t want it disturbed

This was a thrilling sequence – extremely well done on a vast Studio Set

‘The Secret of Treasure Mountain’ 1956 – Please make a note and watch it the next time is is screened.

It would have been just a second features at the time – but a good one at that