A Coyote Killer
Denny Traynor (Peter Coyote - Murder in My Mind) has a good relationship with his wife. Barbara (Michele Lee - Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story), and their two children. But that marriage gets turned upside down when one night police raid their home and arrest Denny for a murder from 27 years earlier. Despite denying having anything to do with the murder the prosecutors have evidence which is enough to remand him in to custody to face trial. When Denny admits to Barbara he did kill a man but in self defence she wonders whether she can trust him especially as there is no proof it was self defence. Despite this she still tries to help by finding some sort of proof over what he tells her.
It is always interesting to watch an older Lifetime movie after a run of more recent ones as you can see how much they have changed over the years from what sort of characters they feature to the type of story they use. It is some thing you will notice if you come across "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" as whilst the crux of the movie is as often the case about a woman doing some crime solving what we have is a wife trying to clear her husband's name despite being shaken by the fact he has kept a secret from her their entire married life and lied when a secret from his past is revealed.
Now what that means is that "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" is filled with Barbara trying to understand what happened back in 1972 by asking Denny and doing some investigating whilst questioning whether she can trust him anymore. And every time she learns something we get a flashback to 1972 with each time a bit of the mystery of what happened being cleared up. Now as the mystery as to what happened is a big part "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" I won't say what actually happens but I will say that Denny discovered something about someone and felt he had to stop him.
The knock on effect is that whilst Peter Coyote and Michele Lee are the stars of "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" a lot of the scenes are flashbacks and so we have Josh Keaton as the young Denny and Tim Kelleher as the man he killed. In fairness all those involved play their parts well but this is the sort of movie where the characters whilst enough do not have a huge amount of depth and so ultimately are quite forgettable.
What this all boils down to is that even over 15 years later "A Murder on Shadow Mountain" is an entertaining Lifetime movie but it isn't the most memorable of movies and really only the sort of movie which entertains in the moment.
