Year of Eastwood #41

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

Starring: Richard Burton, Eastwood
Directed by Brian Hutton

Now for a rarity in Eastwood’s career … a movie where Clint doesn’t receive top billing. Sir Richard Burton (from Englund) is the star of Where Eagles Dare. A WWII espionage thriller with so much double crossing going on that by the end of the film, everybody’s paranoid. Clint’s really along for the ride in this one - but on the plus side, he gets to kill more people than probably any other film he’s made.

An American General has been captured by the Germans, and a rag-tag team of commandos is instructed to sneak into the German headquarters and rescue the American. The prisoner is being held in a fortress high in the Alps, where eagles dare not perch (Shakespeare).

The team of 7 operatives parachutes down into the snowy Bavarian town. Among the team is the leader (Burton) and a marksman (Clint) ... A moment of silence for the guy who didn’t survive the jump from the plane. So the mission’s barely started and already we’re down to 6 operatives. The men hide out in a cabin, warm up with some hot Cocoa, and prepare to sneak into town bright and early the next day.

The team makes their way into town, disguised as German soldiers (Clint‘s got a nice tan for a German). Since it’s Germany, the guys end up in a Bierhaus. Burton gets drunk, makes out with a couple of women, and another operative gets killed … silence … now we’re down to 5. That’s a more comfortable number to deal with anyways. It’s hard to keep track of all those people when the only recognizable ones are Burton and Clint.

Up on the mountaintop (via a long cable car ride) - all the usual Germans are assembled … the Nazis, Gestapo, and Secret Service. Burton and Clint ditch the cable car and decide a real man would climb up the side of the castle instead of taking the stairs. If you find it hard to believe that a group of soldiers could sneak their way inside Nazi Germany … wait till you see Boozer McTipsy rock climb that sucker.

But wait a second, turns out the prisoner is just an actor pretending to be the American general. And the whole mission is a double cross to rat out some British spies. Burton convinces those Germans that he’s the spy - but it turns out those other 3 guys on the team are actually the traitors.

Then all hell breaks lose. Clint blows up a lot of stuff, kills more Germans than you can shake a stick at … and they make their way back to the cable car. A couple of the spies battle Burton atop the cable car. Good thing he was drunk or he probably would have been a little scared, but he jumps across to the passing-by car and the bad guys go boom.

After all this, the guys still need to make their way out of Germany. Good thing one of the women Burton was making out with arranges them a ride. But those pesky Germans are still in pursuit. I’ve seen enough Clint movies by now that the best way to escape is blow up that damn bridge - so they make it to the airstrip, crash into a few planes, and are rescued by the British army. Clint could use a good night’s rest after this one…