Nightwing is a 1979 American horror film directed by the Canadian filmmaker Arthur Hiller. The screenplay was written by Martin Cruz Smith, Steve Shagan and Bud Shrake, based on the 1977 novel of the same title by Smith. The movie's tagline is "Day belongs to man, but night is theirs!" It was one of many imitators of the 1975 film Jaws.
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Plot
Youngman Duran, a deputy on a Hopi Indian reservation in New Mexico, investigates a series of mysterious cattle mutilations. Abner Tasupi, an ancient and embittered medicine man who raised Youngman after his parents died, reveals that he has woven a spell to end the world that very night. However, Youngman assumes Tasupi is simply babbling while under the influence of datura root. The following morning, Youngman finds Abner's bloodless body on the floor of his shack, and nearby he discovers a dead shepherd and most of his flock.
Tribal Council chairman Walker Chee has discovered a stratum of oil shales in Maskai Canyon, the most sacred ground in the tribe's domain. Walker is dynamiting the caves in an effort to unleash oil, and is planning to sell the rights to process them to tycoon Roger Piggott of Peabody Oil. Walker is desperate to keep word of the attacks from leaking to the media before he completes the deal.