The Eiger Sanction (1975)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Production Notes Biographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Web Links
Rating
Year Of Production	1975
Running Time	123:29
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (63:40)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Clint Eastwood
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Clint Eastwood George Kennedy Vonetta McGee Jack Cassidy
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$29.95	Music	John Williams

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 1.0 (96Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 1.0 (96Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (96Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (96Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0 (96Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.40:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Portuguese Danish Finnish Swedish Norwegian German Dutch Czech Polish Turkish Hungarian Bulgarian	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    During the late 1960s and all through the 70s, Clint Eastwood made a huge name for himself in both his Spaghetti Western appearances and as the quintessential anti-hero personified by his roles in the Dirty Harry movies. Back to that in a moment.

    The Eiger Sanction was a book that, seemingly, had all the right ingredients for a successful transition to the big screen; exotic locations, lots of action and some spectacular mountain-climbing. The problem was that the source material was more black comedy than serious action thriller and the movie never reached any great cinematic heights as a result.

    The original novel, penned under the name Trevanian, was written by Roger Whitaker, an American born in Japan in 1925. A teacher of communications at the University of Texas, Whitaker originally conceived The Eiger Sanction as a parody of sorts of the novels by Robert Ludlum. He maintained that The Eiger Sanction, and the lesser-known The Loo Sanction, were written in a way to make the Hemlock character 'caustic' and 'detached'. Eastwood's innate acting style, which underscored his success with 'Dirty' Harry Callaghan should have made him the ideal choice for Jonathon Hemlock, only somehow he falls a little flat. His interaction with the other characters in the movie is meant to be cold and aloof - the callous assassin - but there is a little too much fire in his portrayal. It somehow just misses the mark the book had intended, but for all that The Eiger Sanction remains an entertaining piece of work with some excellent scenic shots.

    Professor Jonathon Hemlock (Clint Eastwood), a retired operative with a covert government agency known as C2, works as an Arts teacher and is called out of retirement after one of C2's agents is assassinated while carrying plans for a germ warfare device. Dragon (sanguinely played by Thayer David), the head of C2, a total albino who has low tolerance to direct light and the cold (his office is maintained at a constant 90°F), offers Hemlock $10,000 and a Pissarro painting currently on the black market to 'sanction' (exterminate) the two enemy agents that have stolen the plans. Hemlock only agrees to a single termination in return for a letter from the IRS protecting his art collection and $20,000.

    After successfully terminating his quarry, Hemlock is 'induced' into undertaking the second sanction by a combination of the theft of the additional $10,000 and his letter of coverage from the IRS, plus the added knowledge that the agent originally killed was his old friend Henri Bach (who saved his life in Indo-China). The reason Hemlock is coerced into the second sanction is because the killer is suspected to be a mountain climber, one of three who is currently planning an ascent of the north face of the Eiger mountain, a mountain that has twice before nearly killed Hemlock. Hemlock's assignment is to find out which of the three is the assassin, or if that proves impossible, to terminate all three climbers.

    There are some excellent supporting roles in the cast. George Kennedy is Ben Bowman, Hemlock's friend and former climbing buddy who gets him into shape and also commands the base camp on the climb. Jack Cassidy is perfectly cast as the outrageously campy Miles Mellough, who was responsible for the betrayal of Henri Bach and is offered up as a sacrificial lamb to Hemlock. Veronica McGee is the naivé Jemima Brown tasked with keeping tabs on Hemlock, and Gregory Walcott is the racist Pope, who constantly tries to best him, but fails miserably.

Video

    The original theatrical aspect ratio of this movie was 2.40:1. This transfer is presented in a measured aspect ratio of 2.43:1, which is fairly close to the original theatrical aspect ratio. The biggest problem with this transfer is that it is not 16x9 enhanced, one of the biggest gripes I have with any DVD release. The movie is just simply squashed into too small a space and it really suffers because of it.

    The transfer is reasonably sharp, but much fine detail is often lost because of the lack of 16x9 enhancement and the compressed nature of the picture. Shadow detail ranges from fair to poor with the outdoors scenes being the best on offer. Many backgrounds simply blur due to overly poor lighting in many scenes, leaving you with the impression of a dark and dingy movie, and the less said about the grain the better! To paraphrase an old rhyme; 'grain grain go away, come on back some other day'. The whole movie is cursed with it although after a time you got used to it (almost). Low level noise does not appear to be an issue.

    The colour palette used is fairly dark and bland at the beginning of the movie. There was little vibrancy in many scenes, with the transfer offering up unintentionally dark and moody interiors and ill-lit streets and alleyways. Worst of all is Dragon's office, utilising almost nothing but a single light bulb and some red halo lighting. Much of this was probably deliberately done for effect, but it does detract overall from the quality of the movie. Various outdoors scenes are more appealing and there was definitely more colour on offer as the movie moves into the Alps (as well as lots of white snow and blue skies).

    There were three other major problems with this transfer. Grain I've already noted, but there were copious amounts of aliasing, moiré effects and film artefacts. The aliasing, like the grain, is endemic throughout the transfer. I'll only list a few examples of it due to the incredible amount of it spread throughout the transfer. At 9:21, all the lines in Hemlock's office break up. At 44:54, the rock face that Hemlock is running up almost 'separates' with the amount of aliasing. At 48:13, check out Hemlock's shirt, and at 69:28 the jeep coming towards you looks like it is blinking. There were also many instances of moiré artefacting, especially on any Venetian blind or car grill. Two particularly bad examples are at 3:01 on the side of a van and at 67:07 on Miles' shirt. As for film artefacts, they simply occur endlessly throughout the movie. Most are the the standard black and white specks you often see, but there are also little line marks and what looked like dirt marks as well.

    There is quite a considerable array of subtitles to choose from. The subtitles are fairly easy to read, unlike the opening titles which were a mess. Utilizing an horrendous choice of font, the opening titles were further made unreadable by over-compression. The subtitles occupy the lower black letterboxed portion of the screen and are in white.

    The RSDL layer change occurs at 63:40. At first I thought it was a missing frame, because it occurs mid-scene and happens as George (one of the trainers Bowman uses) enters Hemlock's room. Since there is no audio at this point, the layer change is only noticeable because of the visual jar. It doesn't disrupt the flow of the film, but the effect was a bit unfortunate.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Production Notes

Biographies-Cast & Crew

Theatrical Trailer

Web Links

    The Region 4 version misses out on;

• A higher bitrate 192kb/s Dolby Digital 1.0 soundtrack

• 12 alternate subtitles

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall