WHERE EAGLES DARE Movie Review

1968 Brian G. Hutton

Give novelist Alistair MacLean credit for recognizing what works. He went back to the film version of The Guns of Navarone and figured out which elements were the most effective and reworked them for another piece of crackerjack escapism.

To begin with, he needed two good actors to replace Gregory Peck and David Niven as the sometimes testy protagonists. The producers chose well with Richard Burton, an established international star in 1968 when the film was made, and Clint Eastwood, fresh from the success of his trio of Sergio Leone westerns. Both of them have screen presence to burn and, remarkably, they work well together. Next, he wanted a location as scenic and exotic as the Aegean, and so he turned to the Bavarian Alps. Where the original made use of huge cannon mounted in a cave, the new film has an aerial tram ending at a castle carved into the edge of a towering mountain. At the conclusion of the first film, the Nazi villains had to laboriously break through heavy locked doors. Ditto here. The first films ends with a massive hidden bomb; this castle is filled with about a dozen of the cutest little prepackaged dynamite bundles, each complete with its own little timer, mounting strap, and tripwire. Just the thing for the commando who has everything.

Once those elements were in place, it was time to come up with a plot, and MacLean let his imagination run free, with little regard to realism, to create a yeasty confection. On the eve of D-Day, it appears that American Gen. Carnaby (Robert Beatty), who knows all the plans, has been captured when his plane is shot down. German intelligence has him ready for questioning (Remember the scopolamine “truth serum” from Navarone? It's back, too.) at Schloss Adler. The ever-alert British intelligence people whip up a crack team of agents led by Maj. Smith (Burton) and Lt. Schaffer (Eastwood) and five others, dress them up in German uniforms, put them in a German plane they just happen to have handy, and run them over to Bavaria, where they parachute out into the snow. They've barely landed before we know that at least one of them is a traitor. Much later, when it's all being explained, one German general stands up and screams “THIS IS PREPOSTEROUS!” and no one in the audience can disagree. They won't care either. It's preposterous but fun.

Journeyman director Brian G. Hutton understands how important the right pace is to this kind of story. He lets things move slowly in the first half and dwells on the nuts and bolts of the plot — planting bombs, preparing climbing gear, setting up escapes. Many contemporary action films tend to gloss over such mundane details, but they provide a much-needed appearance of reality to the adventurous fantasies.

The key scenes are set on the vertiginous aerial tram. They depend on some fair special effects and excellent stuntwork. For his part, Eastwood squints, shoots, and stabs his way through a fairly high body count. Even if Burton was slumming with the material, he seems to be having a good time with it, and with that incredible voice, he could make even a cliched radio conversation—"Broadsword, calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Come in Danny Boy!"—sound like Shakespeare. In the second half, though, the action takes over, and on the simplest “Bang!Bang! Boom!Boom!” level, it's completely satisfactory, if predictable and derivative.

Cast: Clint Eastwood (Lt. Morris Schaffer), Richard Burton (Maj. John Smith), Mary Ure (Mary Ellison), Michael Hordern (Vice Adm. Rolland), Anton Diffring (Col. Kramer), Ingrid Pitt (Heidi), Patrick Wymark (Wyatt Turner), Robert Beatty (Carnaby), Donald Houston (Olaf Christiansen), Derren Nesbitt (Maj. von Hapen), Ferdinand “Ferdy” Mayne (Rosemeyer), Peter Barkworth (Berkeley), William Squire (Lee Thomas), Neil McCarthy (MacPherson), Brook Williams (Sgt. Harrod), Vincent Ball (Carpenter); Written by: Alistair MacLean; Cinematography by: Arthur Ibbetson; Music by: Ron Goodwin. Producer: MGM, Elliot Kastner. British. MPAA Rating: PG. Running Time: 158 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Letterbox.