Klamath County

Prologue 1885: Cornpone Johnson runs a gold mine in Klamath. Insane, he kills all his workers. The local community sentences him to death. The night before he is hanged, he curses the town and promises vengeance. Fade to black and move forward 100 years... The descendant of Mister Johnson, Frank Johnson, moves to the area to restart the gold mine. Johnson brings his troubled family with him: his wife Angela who is drunk and checked out, his jock bully son Brad, and his nerdy misfit daughter Connie. The area is economically depressed and devastated. Frank meets with Chief Klamath who has built a new casino on his Indian land but hasn’t opened yet. Frank reopens the mine and finds many willing employees. Angela spends her time getting drunk and staring out the windows of the old house. At a street festival, Brad gets into trouble with booze and women. Connie participates in a sweat lodge ceremony and after a troubling hallucination, she is led in her dreams to a loose floorboard in the house where she finds a secret journal kept by Cornpone Johnson. Cornpone Johnson reveals that he believes he is the only real person, and that he must destroy the entire town. Connie stays up through the night reading. A few weeks have passed. Frank and Chief Klamath have a successful partnership: Frank mistreats his workers but pays them over-market because they funnel into the Klamath Casino and lose all their money. Angela starts speaking in tongues one morning and attacks the family so Frank bribes the Doctor at a local sanitarium to have her committed. Frank makes Brad take Chief’s daughter on a date but Brad thinks she is ugly and lame, barely pretending to be polite. Frank uses blackmail, extortion, and murder to crush a unionization attempt at the mine. The town is now plagued by poverty, drunkenness, drug abuse, crime, and worse. Connie is accosted by drunk hooligans but mysteriously saved when they all turn on each other. Chief Klamath meets with a state senator to make sure their evil plans aren’t interrupted, and bribes him with money, drugs, and sex. Cornpone Johnson reveals he stockpiled explosives at a secret location. Connie wanders the town while reading the journal, imaging where the stockpile could be. Frank is now unhinged and violent, frequently attacking his harem of mistresses. Brad is engaged to Chief’s daughter in an attempt to unite the two powerful families. Drug abuse, drunkenness, and safety violations mean that the gold mine is barely profitable. The Chief tries to bribe the governor who just laughs and leaves. At the asylum the corrupt Doctor tries to rape Angela but she kills him and then releases all the other patients who are locals that were locked away for being troublesome. The night before the wedding, Brad beats up Chief’s daughter when she confronts him about cheating while Frank kills his mistress and then conceals the crime Cornpone writes that even if he fails to destroy the town, he knows that someone else will complete the mission. Connie finds a hidden passage leading under the lake. At the wedding, Chief sees his daughter’s injuries and in a fit of rage he shoots Brad dead. All the slot machines start pouring blood. Connie finds a hidden cache of dynamite and nitroglycerin under the lake and accidentally detonates it, killing her instantly. The lake drains into the mine shafts, drowning all the workers and making mining impossible for decades. The casino starts to collapse from earthquakes and Frank kills Chief Klamath. Frank barely escapes into the street but is captured by the escaped mob of locals from the asylum, now featuring the chief’s daughter and now led by his wife Angela. Angela lets the mob decide what to do with Frank and they leave it to the Chief’s daughter. The chief’s daughter starts to scalp Frank and the mob cheers. The National Guard deploys in the destroyed town but the mob is mysteriously gone. All they find is the BLOODY SCALP waving from the town flag pole.