The Eiger Sanction Disaster: Clint Eastwood's Deadliest Film Shoot
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- In the Summer of 1974, Spaghetti Western movie-star & director Clint Eastwood would travel to Switzerland to film a movie on the infamous North Face of the Eiger. This is the story of the true cost of completing this film.
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"actor and salad dressing mogul" not a phrase I ever expected to hear 😂
I wouldn't be surprised if more people know of him from the dressing, after a point. Like, if you're not into films from when he was working, to you, he might primarily be the salad-dude.
Your right, he’s more known for the dressing at this point. But I also respect him for declining a gig that he knew he wasn’t built for. That takes courage, especially for men.
@@luxuryxcoffin check his filmography (and dressing) you won't regret it🍻🍿👀😁🙋♂✌😎
it's the truth 😏and newman was a great actor and an even greater humanitarian😤👏😌rip🙏😁🙋♂✌😎
Don't forget race car driver also.
The person at 9:47 that you have labeled as David Knowles, is NOT David Knowles. It is in fact the greatest mountaineer of all time, Reinhold Messier. During the filming of The Eiger Sanction in 1974, he and his partner Peter Habeler made a record 10 hour ascent of the Eiger North Face. At the time, this speed ascent was considered unimaginable and rocked the climbing world (It also shows how far the level of climbing has advanced over the years with Ueli Steck's 2:22 ascent time in 2015). Peter Habeler is the male in the photo on the other side of the actress. They took the photo with Clint and the crew after their ascent. In 1978, Messier and Habeler made the first oxygen-less ascent of Mt Everest which had been considered impossible prior to them doing it.
Photos of David Knowles are apparently not easy to find on the internet. That does look a lot like a young Reinhold Messner (many photos of him easily available, most with very abundant curly/wavy hair, but in that photo in the video it's shorter than he usually wears it). There are many write-ups about Knowles' untimely death, but I didn't see any photos close up enough to make out his face. Ueli Steck made it all look like child's play. The guy must have had some amazing metabolism as well as superb climbing - I have no idea what goes into it all, but judging from accounts of Fritz Weissner, perception and analysis are a huge part of it. Yet Steck made even Weissner look amateur. Funny - I had trouble recalling Fritz Weissner, and spent some time paging through famous mountaineer lists, and did not see his name. I saw a "Fritz" and that jarred my memory. Weissner was known for his precision and incredible memory of rock faces, a real hardass by some accounts, kind of a Hyman Rickover austerity. I did see a photo of Messner (clearly it was Messner) under some other mountaineer's name. For the Himalayas, clearly the Sherpa are far and away the best.
Messner.
It is Messner.
From a climbers standpoint, not a very good film
You fukt up homes
Everybody remembers Eastwood for "Rawhide" and "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly"... or "Dirty Harry" and "Gran Torino"...
They forget about "Every Which Way" and "Million Dollar Baby" or "Two Mules for Sister Sara"... still western but funny as hell... The truth is he has a sharp wit and sense of comedic timing that only a remarkable smart-ass would be able to bring out... I suspect about half the people who cite his films as "Gritty" or roles for being "Angry, bitter, old guys" haven't really bothered to WATCH or pay attention to them.
He could and DID just about anything he set out to do.
While he certainly has done gritty and bitter types in movies, Clint is one of the old school who didn't type-cast himself and get pigeon-holed for his career. He might have his iconic side, but he could make you laugh hysterically with little or no real effort... like the empty-chair incident... if you know, you know. ;o)
I remember him talking to an empty chair
i think completing the film was the right thing to do. it is a riveting movie that still holds up well all these years later. RIP David Knowles
For 1974 The Eiger Sanction had the most realistic climbing sequences I’d seen come out of Hollywood. I thought it was a pretty good spy movie as well.
Idk, I think it's pretty hot garbage as a spy movie. It's not really a movie most people watch for the plot.
I thought is was a very good movie, so called critics be damned.
Really? It's terrible. He's an assassin with no gun silencer & then sticks his head out of the window. Climbs Eiger wearing a builders helmet. Script was poor and very little story.
The Eiger Sanction is one of my favorite Clint films along with Thunderbolt And Lightfoot and High Plains Drifter. The scene in the Eiger Sanction where Clint and George Kennedy are sitting atop that narrow Totem rock drinking a sixpack as there was not a lot of room atop that piece of rock, just enough for a helicopter to drop them off and pick them up, had to be harrowing, great cinematography though!
I had forgotten that scene until I was watching this and he was talking about the stone towers and then I remember the shots of Eastwood getting to the top and the helicopter camera shots out away showing the tower and it gave me vertigo just seeing those scenes. Lol
Was very enthralling movie that my dad always made sure to watch when we saw it was going to be on schedule.
I never underestimate any man that can survive plane crashes at night into the pacific ocean and swin for over 6 hours in choppy water to survive. Clint can attempt a mountain whenever he demands. Just saying.
You're not wrong about the unhinged plot of _The Eiger Sanction._ A more straightforward story is in _The Mountain_ (1956), where Spencer Tracy ascends Mont Blanc to look for survivors after a plane crash and ends up in life or death confrontations with his younger brother (Robert Wagner) who just wants to loot the dead.
That sounds cool.
@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 very🙌🍿👀😁🙋♂✌😎
@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 It's on You Tube, I'm watching it again now.
That sounds awful
@@bonefetcherbrimley7740 lol no, it sounds like a terrible plot. And Wagner was a terrible actor.
The Eiger Sanction was a fun and crazy movie!
Jemimah Brown
Clint was tougher than I thought, and I thought he was pretty tough.
Clint Eastwood one of the greatest actors of all time😊my first movie I saw him in was Dirty Harry😍
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for me.
The 1st Dirty Harry was just epic.. That opening intro was just awesome.
That is such a good movie! It seems more like current times than any movies made today.
Mine was pale rider. Saw it with my dad. You know who else loved eastwood?? My dad.
I worked on a Lowe climbing gear catalog equipment photo shoot with a guide who was part of the safety team on the eiger sanction movie. He had some crazy stories about that job.
1:30 "which is known as Isch mir" ?
I thought your sponsor was Babbel?!
It's called Eismeer. The Eis is the same pronunciation as Ice and means the same. The Meer is more difficult to explain but your words hair or fair (only with "M" in front obvious) come the closest. Eismeer means Ice-sea.
Confused me too, but maybe hia sources had Swiss-german names.
@@MagnificentlyHighAlien Yeah that is a possibility. Didn't think about that. Switzer german lol.
9
Your descriptions of Clint and Paul had me dying. Salad dressing mogul might be my favorite phrase you’ve said. 😂😂
Unforgettable film - who can forget running after Brenda Venus in the desert - topless ! Or dragging George Kennedy (all 230 pounds of him) to the top of the Totem Pole - with his classic reply at the top - how did they shoot that, without actually climbing the bloody thing ? The filming/editing was just so good in the climbing sequences. The book backstory was shit anyway, but the plot itself was both good and clear - I don't understand why others find it so ludicrous.
There are a ton of plot holes and a lot of it just doesn't really make a ton of sense. The movie is great to just kind of turn off the brain to though.
I had totally convinced myself that I imagined this movie lol
Climbing while six months pregnant.... Nope, that's not selfish at all.
I don't think The Eiger Sanction is that obscure, it might take a younger audience a while to discover it but it is a very memorable film and a lot fun, most people of my generation are certainly aware of it. The reviews are spot on, the story is silly, though fun, and it looks stunning (particularly the first reveal of the North Face). Combine that with a score by the great John Williams and it's quite the cult classic.
I grew up in the 80s. Knew about Clint Eastwood from Dirty Harry and his Westerns. Never heard about this mountain movie until much later, and only then because it was in reference to another one of the author's books, Shibumi.
I think it's pretty damned obscure, outside of the climbing world. I've had classes on Deadly Film Shoots...without this being mentioned. (Film Studies / Safety.) I'm also an Eastwood fan, and haven't heard of this either.
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking Out of interest I just checked on IMDB and it has over 20k votes, it's available on TH-cam Movies and BBC1 aired it one night a few months ago too. given the people involved in it, "Cult" seems more fitting....to me at least. Whatever we call it I highly recommend it, right from the opening shot it looks gorgeous.
@@ReclusiveDuck Usually, everyone's heard of a cult classic..."cult" just means most people hated it when it came out, or ignored it. I'm betting 19k of those 20k people - are climbing fans, or people who are old enough to see it when it came out, and remember it. (Many Clint fans will just see "every" Clint movie.)
The problem with many films being remembered - did they ever get a DVD release? Or VHS? If the answer is no to either - chances are, only the people that saw it in theaters remember it. (And perhaps nobody born after 1980 do!)
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking VHS, DVD, and now Blu-ray plus various streaming services, it's not as obscure as you might think. I don't think "cult" means people hated it, though that can apply to some films, it just means it wasn't a big success. Conversely, many films that were highly successful at the time don't age that well. Sometimes a film takes time to find an audience, a perfect example of that is E.T. vs The Thing. Both released about the same time, E.T. was a massive hit and The Thing was only mildly successful and kind of a cult film. Today The Thing is every bit as well known, possibly more so, and very highly regarded.
A classic film, it has everythiing libtards hate, sexism, some spicy jokes about aunt Jemimah and Uncle Ben, and most hilarious of all, a dog whose name ryhmes med raggot. I love it.
My dad was a huge Eastwood fan. Also, being a fan of spy novels, He had read the book. i have a clear memory of His excitement when He read in the newspaper that it would begin showing at the theater next week
Clint Eastwood is such a badass
I lost a high school friend who died on Eiger in the mid 1980s.
Wow! Never even heard of it!!! Now I'll have to watch it. Being crushed by a boulder though?! What a horrific thing to happen and witness!
You'll like it. Just remember it's Eastwood. In the 70s.
@@nomadmarauder-dw9re haha! I'll keep that in mind!!
Check out Thunderbolt and Lightfoot if you haven't seen that as well. Clint has always put out a good film but his work in the seventies was outstanding.
I always liked this film but it's amazing how far climbing has come since then
Yes… Climbing just keeps going up & up… 😉
I've always imagined that's got to be a pretty terrible feeling of guilt, having someone die while working on something you're in charge of.
Doubtful Eastwood cares. He’s not the greatest person if you actually read about his sentiments towards people.
@@Tsumami__ Sure he's not a great dude, but even pricks care about some things. He's still human, he's not like, the literal devil.
"No" -Alec Baldwin
Some people can compartmentalize things like that and chalk it up to “he knew the risks”. He was probably more concerned with the financial repercussions
One of my all-time favorite movies
The whole movie had a strange feel to it. All the people at the lodge waiting for the next death while viewing the face up close. Great movie and the wondering who the real spy was on the climbing team. Very underrated gem.
This is one of my most favorite Clint Eastwood films. Thanks for the review.
Happy Easter y'all
Thanks Dan, happy Easter to you as well.
It hasn't faded from my mind, but I am old now(or so I've been told). I watched it in my early teens. Great Video! Thanks. 😁
As a then climber, we lived for this movie. Usually, it aired on TV, often interfering with finals…
The Andes and other great limestone mountain ranges are actually made of, fossilized flesh. The term is actually called nucleophilic substitution, with our level Earth plane the actual Substrate ! Mega Titans existed, then ancien Earth was covered in Ice, it thawed out and oceans covered the remains and flesh was turned into stone. Yikes, I know that all sounds scary, but it's the truth, level Earth is made of numerous titans remains. The south Sandwich Islands is the massive jawbone of that mega titan dragon which was about 4500 miles long, tail near Panama. The Appalachains Mts. is a multi-head version, only about 1000 miles long though, a baby. lol 😉 You think that's a joke ? The north Canadian Rockies has two distinct titan dragon creatures, and of course this is where all our Oil, Coal and Shale etc. comes from, their venom ! lol ... I found over a dozen of these Titans all over our google Earth, but there are other ways to see them just open your eyes.
Some kid is the Eastwood.. damn fine actor, and still going at 92....credit where credit is due...
I find it fascinating that the first successfull ascend took them 3 days and Uli Steck did it in 2hours 22 minutes..
He climbed it on the much easier ridge.
No ,Steck did a variation on the Eiger North face and a more direct line. He got killed in an avalanche in the Himalayas..no surprise.
Better gear is huge. Modern aggressive ice axes, purpose built boots, well made crampons, light weight clothing, freeze dried food-it all combines to practically change every aspect of mountaineering. The early climbers were in wool suits, wearing boots with nails in them for more grip, tied together with hemp rope. If they wanted specialized stuff like pitons they usually had to make them themselves.
A stuntman was killed filming another George Kennedy movie, Steel with Lee Majors. There's a scene where a man falls 9 stories off a highrise under construction. The stuntman who filmed it died when the airbag he landed on split open. Apparently they kept the scene in the film at the stuntman's father's request. So when you watch the falling sequence, you're watching the stuntman's actual death fall.
I remember reading this and The Loo Sanction when I was in the Army, great books!
Just wanna say thank you for calling Dougal Scottish, a lot of our countrymen get labelled “British” when we don’t identify with British culture and have our own culture and history up here, really nice wee touch that was noticed. Tapadh leibh!
The Scots had nothing to be proud of until they joined the British lmfao, cope with it. Looking at your country now, ya still fuckin dont 😂 hows life under Humza Yousef 😂😂😂 clown country
I'm Scottish and British. 🏴🇬🇧
I've always really enjoyed Eiger. Sure the spy stuff might be standard Euro issue but the climbing sequences are absolutely amazing. At no time are you ever saying "Well that's done in studio". It all looks 100% real because it was. It has a decent story progression and a good score. I've watched it a few times and find myself very involved in the story.
I was a young rock climber when this came out. Me and my fellow teenage climber buddies thought the film OK. I have to say I say startled by the realism of the climbers falling in the void. One of our little local SoCal areas - Big Rock - sprouted a new climb named "Edger Sanction".
Paul Newman gave all the millions or dollars he made from his salad dressings to charity.
It's Eismeer, not ishmir.
To help you pronounce it, try it like this:
Ice-mär
The is ä is pronounced like this ä in MäcDonald. Or like the e in Hannibal Lektra.
Filming on location on an actual peak wasn’t new, it was just new for crappy American Hollywood films. Germans filmed plenty of mountaineering themed films pre-Nazi era and during. Pretty sure that’s how Riefenstahl started her career, before she became the creepy little darling of Hitler
Another wonderful episode
I honestly never heard of the movie. Very sad about his death though.
I think going into a low oxygen environment with a developing baby is a dick move. I think you have the right to do it, just for your ego, but I have the right to think that's selfish.
I had a very personal like for this movie. About 42 years ago I was lucky enough to run across the four novel set by Trevanian (now I guess we know the author's real name as Rodney Whitaker who died in 2005 at the age of 74). Even though I purchased the book because of the Eiger Sanction, it ended up being one of the weaker set in my opinion. I have read the books five or six times at least and still recommend all four. The Eiger Sanction along with the Loo Sanction I felt were not as good as Shibumi and my top pick The Main. What I liked about Trevanian as an author was his character development. I had trouble getting my book back from my ex-father in law. If I had it to do over again I would have let him keep it and bought another (rest in peace Clyde House).
I forgot sorry. I purchased the Summer of Katya after the initial four with high expectations. I was totally disappoint and threw the book away, I may have burned it. :(
@@CharlesWitsmanburnished blade by Lawrence schoonover
The narrator has an annoying nasally voice. However I can’t pass up anything about The Eiger Sanction.
Super interesting and well done! tfs ❤
Couldn't watch the whole thing. The narrator's voice turned me into a zombie.
I still have the VHS tape for that movie, the action was great, but like you said the plot wasn’t.
When I watch it, I just fast forward to the good parts. 😁
Do the Germans wear thier colorfull Kilts while climbing ?
Very interesting. Thank you so much.
Like most of Eastwood movies, being tongue-in-cheek at times, The Eiger Sanction was one of his better ones.
The movie was pretty cool, but the book's way better. It was a pretty tongue in cheek parody of the spy genre, but most of that went over the critics at the time and didn't translate over to the movie much at all. Trevanian has a lot of classics though, wish they'd made movies of Shibumi or Summer of Katya over this one but unlikely these days
I think had they embraced a bit more of the tongue in cheek thing, it would have been a better movie over all. It just takes it's plot and characters too seriously and would benefit by letting the air out a bit, so to speak, with some self deprecating humor.
Somehow , I just don't see Eastwood saying , " danger & difficulty be damned" !! Also , after getting all the details , the accident that took the man's life sounds like a freak / one chance in million kind of accident.
If I remember correctly, the movie opens with Eastwood as a professor of art history. A female student approaches him after class and coyly asks if there is 'anything' she can do to improve her grade in the class. He smiles and asks her if she is doing anything later that evening. The student smiles and tells him 'no.'. He smiles and says "Then you'll have time to study tonight," and walks off. It was a great line.
When I started watching the Morbid Midnight series my brain instantly flashed on the movie ' The Eiger Sanction ', I saw it as a child in the 1970s, though I forgot it was a Clint Eastwood movie, action movies typically have stupid plots which make them more ' FUN' to watch... Thanks Senior Morbid
That's not david knowles it's reinhold messner in the picture
I liked the book! No danger to reading 😅
First time I have heard if this thanks . Will try and watch movie.
WOW!! I didn't any of these things about the movie!! Thank you!
one of my all time favorite movies! Excellent job!
I'll have to check it out now.
Summited in 1858 !! 😮😮 that’s amazing
First recorded assent. FYI incan artifacts have been found at 20,000' mountain summits approximately. In South America.
@@larchman4327 What could be worth going all that way for? Religion, maybe?
@@Robocopnik see rock gotta climb
@@Robocopnik Why ask why??? Everybody in civilization is always asking "Why?" "Why?" and "What for?" and "Why?"...
"HOW" is SOOOOoooo much more interesting!!!
If you have even a drop of imagination, the difficulty is it's own reward! You climb it because "It's there."... hahahaha... ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 Because it's interesting to wonder what they cared about, what they were willing to go so far to achieve.
Thanks.
wow. incredible story
Just last week Aug 2024, I visited the Eiger. What an awesome mountain! I hadn't thought of the "Eiger Sanction" in 40 years, as I only saw it one time on TV. I rented it through TH-cam and was totally amazed with this movie. I will regularly keep renting this one.
The EIGER is in the Berner Oberland........you go up to MÜRREN and you can see RIGHT ACROSS the Eiger Nordwand.......
I almost got confused for this being the mountain that Teddy R. Slipped away from his honeymoon to climb, but that was matterhorn
The Matterhorn has killed more people than the Eiger Nordwand; on average about 4 people die each year. Now-as percentages go...
I remember (spoiler) loving the action but being baffled by "the bad guy walks with a limp" but he walked without the limp to fool people. I remember thinking "Why doesn't he just walk without the limp all the time, if he can walk without limping?" WTH??
a troubled production, informative content.
Yay I’m the first one🎉🎉🎉
To Summit
@@donbrashsux ...this episode🤣😁🙋♂✌😎
what about that western they shot on the nuclear testing grounds in Arizona where a bunch of the cast and crew got irradiated? I forget what it was called (and everyone found it a pretty forgettaqble movie) but it had a huge budget for the time...
Literally the only thing this needs to be a TV show is a simulation of what everyone thinks happened to help the audience have a better visual of what the victims saw
It sure was a lousy movie. The book was pretty good. That stupid green plastic hard hat was a joke...
Why are you zooming in on my boy Reinhold? You seriously need a mountaineering editor for your videos because they are so well researched, than you make mistakes like this
Don't understand how the plot is hard to follow. I've read the book and seen the movie a dozen times. Maybe hard to believe but not hard to follow.
Interesting behind-the-scenes look at the real-life dangers faced while filming in such circumstances. The movie may be less known than some of his others, but the Animaniacs did a terrific sketch in which Pinky and the Brain have to scale the Eiger in a parody of this film (that drum roll... : D ). Thanks for another intriguing video, and a trip down memory lane.
Kind of a fked up thing to parody considering there was a death. Disrespectful even.
@@MyDearGhoul No no! They did a parody of the film itself - the story of the Eiger Sanction, - not of the filming of it.
"The White Spider" is one of the finest mountaineering books of all time.
Great video. I saw the film in the theater when it was released, I loved it. I didn't find out about the tragic loss of life until some time later.
This is one of his best IMO!
I'm not surprised to hear Eastwood is impatient.
What a waste.
I do not live far from the Nordwand, but NO ONE (except UELI) ever went up there.......
Another fine video Midnight.
I did a lowe catalog photo shoot with a Brit who was a safety rigger on this shoot. Nites in the Ouray bars listening to his stories were a real treat.
I saw it recently and the Ebert review pretty much sums it up.
This movie sucks so bad that finishing filming is an insult to the dead...
Well, I thought it was a pretty great movie for its time...
Thats Messner in the photo. Do your homework !!!!!
It's a great climbing movie for it's time period.
An even better movie about the Eiger, Check out "North Face"
Sad event. Good film with a lame storyline.
How did they manage to get this movie to stick to the screen?
Great video!
Love Clint, and this movie
Climb every mountain as the song goes if you are foolish enough
Or play it safe just gaze at it
What goes up must come down
Sometimes with a thud!
7:17 is not entirely correct. I know the movie "Third Man on the Mountain" was filmed on location on the Matterhorn and the entire cast and crew had to take mountaineering lessons. One guy fell in a crevasse and another guy fell off the rock at one point but no one died. Nordwand has a deserved reputation but Matterhorn has claimed more lives and is not a joke.
It’s NOT “THE Monument Valley”. Just “Monument Valley”.
North face = expensive coats....
Has there been a video on Zack Milligan yet? If not, please consider one... esp since Polar Circus doesn't appear to be out of his range which hints at an accident.
What face on the Eiger is known as the murder wall. Was the death actually murder?