Unless I’m forgetting something, Clint Eastwood only has two movies that could be classified as spy movies, and both involve a mission to a mountain in the Alps. One is WHERE EAGLES DARE (1968) and the other is this one, THE EIGER SANCTION (1975). I’d say it’s about 65% suspenseful mountain climbing thriller, 25% assassin intrigue, and 10% colorful James Bond type shit. That last portion includes all the sexy stuff and the sinister boss, an albino war criminal named Dragon (Thayer David, ROCKY).
Clint plays Dr. Jonathan Hemlock, a great pulp hero because he’s an ex-Green Beret, secretly a retired assassin, but famously a retired mountain climber (there are fawning magazine profiles of him), now working as a college art history professor, and has a side gig as a book critic. I wondered if this might’ve been an influence on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when I saw one of his students (Candice Rialson, CANDY STRIPE NURSES) making eyes and spreading legs at him in class. He turns her down because he doesn’t take advantage of students or drunks, he says. Good to know he has some limits. (read the rest of this shit…)
