Valley of Eagles

Valley of Eagles recently came on BBC2 one afternoon so I set the video and was certainly pleased I did.

A scientist who has invented a machine that can convert sound waves into electrical energy has this stolen by his wife and assistant and this results in a chase across the frozen wastes of Lapland. The scientist teams up with a copper and they join a party who is transporting reindeer the same route. They face many dangers on the way: blizzards, a pack of hungry wolves and avalanches. A lot of the wolves are killed by some eagles that Laplanders use for killing instead of guns to reduce the risk of an avalanche which would result in their village being destroyed. The scientist catches up with his wife and assistant and escape and once the assistant stars shooting a gun, this results in an avalanche and both are killed but the village is safe. The scientist also finds a new love at the end.

Valley of Eagles contains some fantastic scenery in Lapland and has a good score too. Animal lovers probably won't enjoy this though. The snow scenes remind me of the Wilderness Family movies.

The cast includes Jack Warner (Dixon of Dock Green, The Quatermass Xperiment), John McCallum, Anthony Dawson and Nadia Gray. Horror legend Christopher Lee (Dracula) has a small part as a copper.

Valley of Eagles is certainly worth seeing, just for that scenery. Excellent.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

When Dr Nils Ahlen develops a device that can capture and utilise the energy of sound he naturally becomes the target of the government, be it in the energy field or weapons development. Having convinced his employers of his discovery, Ahlen returns to his home to get his full files only to find that his wife and his partner have gone missing – along with information vital to the development of the technology. With the help of the local police (Inspector Peterson), Ahlen sets out after the two to prevent them getting the information into the hands of the Russians.

In the opening ten minutes of this film things look good – the tone is dark, the wartime plot looks like it will produce a slick and exciting conspiracy/chase thriller and I must admit I settled down for a good "romp". However, not long into the chase the film decides to dump all this silly stuff and becomes some sort of wilderness adventure instead. At this point I tried to stay with the film but it became too stodgy and uninteresting for its own good and the melodrama of the whole affair failed to engage me. The script is pretty talky and, without character development, it didn't keep me with it; instead it throws in wolves and vultures and elements of "savage" life but not in such a way that is fun or entertaining in any sense of the word.

The cast can't do much with it and they come off pretty clunky and wooden. McCallum and Warner have the hardest jobs as they try to lead the film but, from their performances I can only assume that they were as unconvinced and as bored by the whole thing as I was. Dawson and Wood have potentially interesting characters and Wood does have some good scenes but the film doesn't help her by developing those around her to support her emotions within her marriage. The direction is OK but the stock footage is far too obvious and obtrusive.

Overall this starts out well but then becomes a plodding adventure story in the snowy wilderness; near the end it tries to look at the emotions of Ahlen's marriage briefly but it doesn't spend the time on it that that thread deserved. The end result showed potential but the majority of it is boring and flat and produced a film that is watchable at points but mostly not really worth a look.

The Cold War was seldom chillier than this travelogue set in Lapland that begins with wintry location work in Stockholm (were we encounter Isak Borg's mother, Naima Wifstrund, and Gösta Cederlund, who had recently featured in Bergman's own Cold War drama, 'This Can't Happen Here'), before hero John McCallum and copper Jack Warner set off it hot pursuit of the film's 'MacGuffin': rectifiers & condensers for a device for converting sound waves into enough energy to light an entire city or (if the Baddies get their way) level them.

But this is just a pretext for a chase thriller framed around footage of reindeer, wolves and an avalanche with the Swedish actors dubbed into English and most of the rest shot back at Pinewood (which is presumably where the scenes featuring Christopher Lee & Euan Solon as a grim-faced pair of detectives were shot). Director Terence Young was reunited a few years later with villain Anthony Dawson on 'Dr No'.

The storyline is typical of post second world war drama, with an inventor's electrical creation being stolen by his wife. Jack Warner gives the film strength with a solid performance as a police Inspector, and John McCallum gives a good account of himself as the inventor.

This film scores heavily with magnificent snow scenes, the mass of reindeer, being chased by wolves, and the eagles then combating with wolves. The avalanche brings you the power of nature.

At first, I could not place Nadia Gray, but then I remembered her from earlier films.

The storyline appears to drift between a Cold war story, a detective investigation, and a broken marriage.

It could have been better, but Valley of Eagles was a good effort.

A below par British action thriller. I use both words in their broadest terms as what is supposed to be a chase across the Finish mountains turns into a nature film on the lives of the Laplanders for a large length of the film.

The lead characters deliver their lines so woodenly that if you closed your eyes they could be reading out loud from a drawing room in Hampstead Heath, so any attempt at pace is lost, not that there was much of an attempt in the first place.

If anything you have to sympathise with one of the villains, on the grounds that they want to 'get away from it all'.

Only worth while if it is on TV on a wet afternoon, when it is marginally better than watching rain hitting the window.