The Eiger Sanction * (1975, Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy) – Classic Movie Review 4112

Director-star Clint Eastwood slipped in the picturesque but poor-quality 1975 mountain thriller The Eiger Sanction between Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). They are two of his finest movies and this is virtually his only uninteresting film of the Seventies.

Eastwood plays Dr Jonathan Hemlock, a classical art professor and collector, for heaven’s sake, who, luckily for the plot, returns to his former glory as a CIA-style professional hitman when is coaxed out of retirement to avenge the murder of an old friend. So Hemlock climbs up the treacherous Swiss Eiger mountain to get his man – and the writers have to work hard to explain that one away. But first he has to find out which of the members of the mountain climbing team is the Russian killer he must target for sanction (assassination).

The Eiger Sanction at least has the virtue of affording pretty shots of mountains, and there is a diverting John Williams score, his only movie for Eastwood. But the action is thick-ear Sixties-style spy stuff, flaccidly directed by Eastwood, with an unattractive gallery of repellent caricatures, including a shamefully stereotyped gay spy called Miles Mellough (played by Jack Cassidy). George Kennedy adds a bit of menacing character as Ben Bowman, and has some good lines (‘He looks like he could change a nine-dollar bill in threes’).

With the screenplay adapted by Warren B Murphy, Hal Dresner and Rod Whitaker from the novel by Trevanian (aka Rod Whitaker), it all seems too exploitative and cynical, which would be good in a spy movie, but here it is not in a good way.

Eastwood performed his own mountain climbing stunts for the suspenseful climax on the sheer face of the mountain, including the scene where he cuts his safety line over a drop of at least one thousand feet as well as hanging off the side of a mountain by a cable himself without the use of a stunt double.

Tragically, climber David Knowles was killed by a boulder on the second day of shooting.

They filmed at the Eiger, Bernese Alps, Switzerland. It is also, for the Arizona scenes, the last time that anyone was allowed to climb the Totem Pole in Monument Valley, Arizona.

Also in the cast are Heidi Bruhl as Mrs Montaigne, Thayer David as Dragon, Reiner Schoene as Freytag, Brenda Venus, Michael Grimm, Jean-Pierre Bernard, Gregory Walcott and Candice Ralson.

The Eiger Sanction is directed by Clint Eastwood, runs 128 minutes, is made by Malpaso Company, Jennings Lang and Universal Pictures, is released by Universal Pictures (1975) (US) and Cinema International Corporation (CIC) (1975) (UK), is written by Warren B Murphy, Hal Dresner and Rod Whitaker, based on the novel by Trevanian (aka Rod Whitaker), is shot by Frank Stanley, John Cleare, Jeff Schoolfield, Peter Pilafian and Pete White, is produced by Jennings Lang, and is scored by John Williams.

Eastwood and Kennedy appeared together in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974).

Though Jack Cassidy (March 5, 1927 – December 12, 1976) plays a shamefully stereotyped gay spy called Miles Mellough, David Cassidy said his father was bisexual. Jack Cassidy’s wife Shirley Jones wrote that he had many same-sex affairs, including one with Cole Porter. Suffering from bipolar disorder, alcoholism and increasingly erratic behaviour, he died in a fire at his house in the early morning of 12 December 1976, aged 49,

The venerable Oscar winner George Kennedy died on 28 February 2016, aged 91. He won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Cool Hand Luke (1967).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4112

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