Valley of the Eagles

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'.

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.

I watch this by accident, wet Sunday waiting for a visitor. Yep plot weird, wife and lover soon forgotten, reason for chase soon lost, wooden performances...but...it was different.

The safari part watching the reindeer herding and their loss in the ravine, the the arrival of the hunting eagles it was interesting, no CGI, pre Gortex and some of the cast could actually ski.

The somewhat novel idea that people are not savages because they have different standards is interesting as is the acknowledgement of how near the brink people living traditional lives can be. The herd is lost so the herders must work for minimum wage in the logging camp to scrape together enough money to start another herd. The situation is the same now for many previously nomadic communities.

How many other films are set in Lapland and feature the Sami and their way of life?

Suspend your disbelief and watch it on a wet Sunday afternoon.

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.

Interesting early work from director Terence Young who directed the first James Bond film Dr. No.

A scientist (John McCallum) in Norway invents a machine that converts sound-waves into electricity. The scientist initially thinks that his wife may have been kidnapped but his wife has conspired with his assistant to steal it and sell it to the Soviets. The inventor and a police officer pursue them in the icy wilderness of Lapland.

Anthony Dawson plays the treacherous assistant, he played a villain in Dr. No.

The film starts out as a cold war espionage thriller then becomes a survival film with bears, wolves and eagles. Yet with Jack Warner as Inspector Peterson who plays disbelieving policeman at first it becomes a police procedural until he joins the scientist in the hunt.

This is an unusual British B film for the time, it shifts focus too many times and by the end has lost the plot somewhat. It does not help that film has little tension and the leads are rather wooden.

Still it is worthwhile to spot early parts for the likes of Christoper Lee and see how the director's subsequent career was shaped.