BY JOHN M. WHALEN
In the early 1970s best-selling author Alistair MacLean (TheGuns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare)
was having a hard time of it, suffering through a rough marriage that eventually
ended in divorce and alcoholism. His friend, movie producer Elliot Kastner, who
had produced several movies based on MacLean’s books, gave him an office at
20th Century Fox and told him to write his next novel there as therapy. MacLean
took the task on and decided to do something a little different from the
straight adventure stories he usually wrote. He came up with the idea of
mashing up two different genres—a tale of the Old West and an Agatha
Christie-type cozy mystery. He basically took the plot from Murder on the Orient Express and set it
on a train carrying medical supplies through the Rocky Mountains in 1870 to
Fort Humboldt, which was besieged by an epidemic of diphtheria. Instead of
Hercule Poirot on board trying to figure out who’s murdering all the passengers
one by one, John Deakin, an outlaw with a price on his head, is given the job of
figuring out who the culprit is.
No sooner did Breakheart
Pass hit the bestseller list than Kastner asked MacLean to write the
screenplay for a film based on the book, and Kastner and company began casting
the characters. In 1974, Charles Bronson, who was in his fourth year as one of
the top 10 box-office moneymakers in Hollywood, was brought on board to play
John Deakin. A lot of the other parts went to what might be called “Bronson
regulars,†actors that Bronson liked working with. First and foremost among
them, of course, was Bronson’s wife, Jill Ireland, who appeared in 15 of his
movies. She plays Marica, the fiancé of Nevada Governor Fairchild (Richard
Crenna), who is on board to make sure the needed medical supplies get to their
destination. Ed Lauter, who made four films with Bronson, plays Army Major
Clairmont, whose first inclination is to hogtie Deakin and leave him be until
they get to the fort. Robert Tessier, who would appear in Bronson’s Hard Times as one of his boxing match opponents,
plays Levi Calhoun, the murderous leader of an outlaw gang that has taken over
the fort. The strange makeup and costume he wears somehow makes him resemble a
member of a way off Broadway production of Cats.
There are other familiar faces in the movie that you’ll recognize from other
Bronson flicks.
Also in the cast is veteran western actor Ben Johnson as
U.S. Marshal Pearce, who shows up to take Deakin into custody, Bill McKinney (Deliverance) as Rev. Peabody, David
Huddleston as Dr. Molyneaux, former boxing champion Archie Moore as the train’s
cook, and Charles Durning as O’Brien, the conductor.
As the plot progresses we discover that almost none of
the passengers is who he says he is, and the medical supplies on board are
actually boxes loaded with rifles and dynamite. Deakin eventually solves the mystery
but not without the usual amount of violence and mayhem one expects from a
Bronson flick. One of the highlights of the film is a sequence in which the
last three cars of the train, containing soldiers on their way to Ft. Humboldt,
are decoupled and allowed to jump the track, roll downhill and fall off the
side of the mountain. Unlike moviemakers today, director Tom Gries (Will Penny) did not have CGI technology
to help create the scene. The production spent $800,000 for the purchase of
actual box cars and sent them crashing down the mountainside. The sequence is
noteworthy for being the last to be done by legendary stunt coordinator Yakima
Canutt (Stagecoach, Ben-Hur). Unfortunately,
according to the audio commentary provided by film historians Howard S. Berger,
Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson, the dummies dressed in Army uniforms
that were supposed to fall out of the cars as they went down the cliff,
remained hidden from the cameras. They couldn’t reshoot it so instead they dubbed
in the sound of men screaming as the cars plummeted down the mountainside.
Breakheart
Pass
is an entertaining movie even though the plot literally makes no sense at all,
and the characters have about as much depth as you’ll find in any SpongeBob
Squarepants cartoon. But the ease and sense of “who cares what it’s all about,
I’m just a Pennsylvania coal miner’s son having fun with some friends of mineâ€
that Bronson displays, makes it enjoyable in a weird sort of way. His casual
pursuit of clues from corpse to corpse, as they fall off trestles, or are found
buried in the locomotive’s wood pile, or catch on fire and leap out of the
locomotive in flames, manages to hold your interest—if you try not to think
about it too hard.
Gries directs the film with a suitable lack of rigor and manages
to keep the action going at a steady pace. He keeps the characters and their
shifting identities straight, while giving Bronson a chance to play a Wild West
detective without letting the whole show go over the cliff, so to speak. Lucien
Ballard’s cinematography captures both the beauty and rugged treachery of the
Rocky Mountain locations and the great Jerry Goldsmith provided a spirited,
pulsing soundtrack for the film.
Kino Lorber’s 1080p Blu-ray disc transfer of Breakheart Pass is adequate but could be
better. The color is good but the print is definitely in need of a good 2K
restoration. Audio is 2.0 mono and seems flat, with little dynamic range.
Goldsmith’s score deserves better treatment. Among the extras included on the
disc are the previously mention audio commentary and trailers for other Bronson
films available from KL. There is also reversible sleeve artwork. If you’re a Bronson fan, or just want to see box cars
careening down the side of a mountain, you’ll probably want to see this.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon)