The Eiger Sanction

Mike:
It's a curious thing, coming to this movie for the first time. I guess I overlooked it back in 1975, though that, I realise now, was a grave mistake. As an appreciator of really bad movies I can say with pleasure that The Eiger Sanction, starring Mr Clint Eastwood, is a jaw dropping showcase of every imaginable cliche with a cartload of stunningly misogynist sexist claptrap thrown in for good measure. A reeking, wobbling cartload of manure at that. Watching it now, in 2011, is to experience time travel in a very real but jolting way as if there is some serious malfunction with the machine itself. Oh God. What if its problems are irreversible and I end up stranded in this Jurassic time period? Or maybe I should just chill with it and go along with the unrivalled guilty pleasures it may offer. Trouble is there are not too many of them to be had. I couldn't figure out why it was necessary to climb the bloody Eiger in the first place, nor did I care what happened to anybody climbing it and you know that whatever perils befall Clint won't harm him really. It's not particularly thrilling, it has toe curlingly bad dialogue (things have not changed, you've only got to rent Gran Torino for proof of that) and it has the sad spectacle of Mr Jack Cassidy in a supporting role that really has to be seen to be believed, but even THEN! Oh, and we are asked to believe that Clint is a college professor...that's messing with our minds and it's sick.

Didn't Sly Stallone make something similarly mindless co starring the wonderful Janine Turner from the late lamented Northern Exposure?

Suzanne:

I'm having difficulty thinking of anything to add to that, Mike, unless it is to continue the listing of faults. I wonder if the movie was intended to be the first in a long series with Eastwood as a sort of James Bond character? If so, we can only be grateful that the box office spoke so loudly.
It is, of course, sexist in a thoroughly 1970s fashion, as well as homophobic, but let's not cannot forget the tokenism as well. These movie makers got two for one in the minority/women's lib department, with a black and a Native American female, both of whom engage in non-traditional female careers. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from melting at the sight of a "real man." All of the men, as I recall, are white, by the way.
Tellingly, the Native American female utters not a single word; she is literally, as well as figuratively, silenced. What are we to make of the fact that her name is "George?" Are we to smile at the naivete of the Native American who doesn't know which names are for women and which for men? Or is she meant to represent all of "her" people, a two-for-one? That theory is hard to reconcile with the fact that we are to believe that George Kennedy is her father.
And speaking of George Kennedy -- his character is as much a parody as Jack Cassidy's. Two sides of the same coin, as it were.
As for the identity of the second "sanction" -- that was obvious as soon as he appeared. I didn't know how or why, but I know who it had to be simply because of the formula on which this movie was based.
Possibly Sly made such a movie. I can't begin to list the number of movies made during that time period that featured 1)disaffected hit men; 2)disaffected government agents; 3)mountain climbing or similar edgy sport, complete with jargon and shots of specialized equipment. Politic commentary married with vicarious thrills.