Where The Eagles Dared To Land

I watched one again for the first time in ages, the other for the first time ever.   Here’s the brief story on each.

The Eagle Has Landed (1976).   An elite squad of German Luftwaffe commandos, led by Major Steiner (Michael Caine) attempts to assassinate British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – fairly late in the war.  Admiral Canaris (Anthony Quayle, the luckless broken-leg guy from “The Guns of Navarone”) questions the practicality of the mission at that late stage.  Robert Duvall plays the German Army colonel who puts the whole thing together – and gets rewarded later.  Donald Sutherland is a snaky, oily Irish nationalist, Devlin, who accompanies them as a traitor.

The team lands in a village close to where WC is supposed to be coming by.  They’re dressed as UK paratroopers, but with German uniforms underneath – that erroneous memo from Hitler’s JAG about “not violating the rules if you’re not caught actually shooting in enemy uniform” – the whole thing gets messed up when a German soldier rescues a young girl who fell in the water and ends up impaled on the water wheel.  Then all hell breaks loose.  Despite that memo, the Germans STILL wear the UK uniforms even while shooting.   The Allied response is a large group of Americans including Larry “J.R.” Hagman, Jeff Conaway, and Treat Williams.   Steiner sneaks out the back door of the church with Devlin to take out Churchill personally.

A major tidbit of this movie: it’s filmed in Mapledurham, a small village west of London in the English countryside.  That town’s landmark is its still-operating watermill, which exposed the heroic Luftwaffe man on the waterwheel.  Although the camera angle is never quite close enough to compare, the same watermill can be seen on the cover of Black Sabbath’s first album, which was released 6 years before this film.

Where Eagles Dare (1968).   Somehow Clint Eastwood managed to make this AND “Coogan’s Bluff” in 1968.  He was busy.  I’d never seen this one before.

            A team of British commandos, dressed as Germans, tries to infiltrate a German fortress up high up in the mountains (Dr King Schulz: “It’s a German story, there must be a mountain there somewhere”), supposedly to rescue an American general who has knowledge of D-Day plans – so the story takes place in early 1944.  The leader, Smith (Richard Burton) invites along an OSS (American), Schaffer (Eastwood) for reasons which become apparent much later.  Midway through the film, the plot takes a few swerves, then comes back to them simply shooting their way out of the castle, back down to ground level, and get on the air transport (a captured Ju-52) back to England.  Derren Nesbitt, who plays one of the #2’s in “The Prisoner”, is here as the black-uniformed SS officer.  Lots of good action, some confusing spy nonsense, and decent acting, make this another good WWII film.  Worth seeing once - or more.