Baby Health in Winter
Author’s note: In this time of quarantine, I thought a few movie suggestions might be in order. While most readers will be familiar with films like Free Solo and Dawn Wall, I thought we could take this space to suggest a few less-known films that are also excellent. Climbers Steve Bosque and Jim Disney suggested a few for this list. The ultimate selection was mine, and one important criterium was that the films be available for free on the internet—where possible.
Grit Kids won Banff’s Best Climbing Film in 2008. It’s a terrific little film by Paul Diffley, a Brit filmmaker who runs Hot Aches Productions. In this film, we meet two siblings, Pete (17) and Katy Whittaker (19), trying some very bold leads on Yorkshire gritstone. Pete starts with Warm Love (5.13b) and takes a near ground-fall. Then another. Then another. And another. That’s just the opening scene. Then, Katie decides to try Nosferatu (5.12a X)—onsight. Mum, a climber herself, watches on contentedly.
British Climbing Team coach Dave Binney points out that the two siblings don’t have an agenda for their climbing; they just want to have fun. He also believes a lot of Katy and Pete’s success is due to the fact that climbing is a family affair and there’s no pushiness, just encouragement. Makes sense.
Next, Pete puts up a new route: Captain Calamity (5.12c X). Then we watch videos of the kids when they were really little. Then Katy climbs Kaluza Klein (5.12c X)—“a classic gritstone frightener,” as British guide Jack Geldard puts it. You think?
“They’ve both got pretty good heads when they’re trad climbing,” Mum explains. “It’s always been very controlled.”
Pete puts up Grandad’s Slab (5.13a R/X), then a 5.13c X direct start to Braille Trail, which is hard to watch. Mum, who belays, tries to figure out which way to jump if Pete falls, thereby taking some of the slack out of the rope and hopefully catching Pete before he goes splatter-cakes on the cliff. This is a nutty family.
Trivia moment: “Top-rope” is a state of mind. You see Seb Grieve saying the same thing in Hard Grit.
As the title suggests, this film is about the origins of sport climbing in Britain. Not mentioned is the fact that this is also a film about gorgeous squalor.
This story starts with the summer of 1983 in Pen Trwyn in Wales when dozens of young climbers from Sheffield and other places move into in Parisella’s Cave and live there, cheek to cheek, ’nad to ’nad while they climb dozens of new routes.
This was in the Thatcher years. When she came to power there were two million unemployed people in the UK. During her reign that number doubled. Young men were happy to be on the dole so they could concentrate on their climbing.
Said young men whip off to the Grand Hotel in Llandudno, sneak in the back door, grab a bath, then go back to the filthy cave to sleep. (You can smell this scene through your laptop.) All the while, they push British climbing standards higher and higher.
Cave living is bad, but later we see the beloved gang of Sheffield-based misfits move into their infamous digs on Hunter House Road, a more squalid existence than thought possible. Dogs shit all over the house, people sleep in rubbish, and Syph the cat (named after the disease of the nether regions) one day eats a huge stash of psilocybin mushrooms. All good fun and games and no OSHA anywhere to be seen. Towards the end of the war on cleanliness, one resident even starts putting bottles of urine on the kitchen table to see if anyone will clear it away. Nope. The environmental health department eventually closes the house down.
The movie settles in on the relationship between Jerry Moffatt and Ben Moon, several years his junior, whom the former takes on as a protégé. They travel to France together. Then they come back and Ben bolts a climb in an overlooked part of Pen Trwyn (Lower): Statement of Youth. It’s worth noting that a lot of the climbers are wearing swami belts in this video.
Antoine Le Menestrel and Jean-Baptiste Tribout arrive in England and our lads show them around. One highlight is Le Menestrel soloing Revelations.
From 1984 to ’86, Jerry’s out injured and the friendly (mostly) rivalry between Ben and Jerry intensifies. Finally, Jerry comes back, poaches a traverse from Ben, and the lads head off to France where they knock off three 8b+s. We also see Ben succeeding on Agincourt (8c) a few years later (to see him on these routes 30 years later, click here). Climbing in the UK went from 7c to 9a during the 1980s. “It will never happen again,” notes Ed Douglas in the film.
So, pull your neon tights (or super short shorts) on and get ready to pogo around the living room. You’re about to see some of the smallest woodies ever erected.
Trivia moment: Mostly good dentistry in this film.
This is based on the true story of Toni Kurz and Andreas Hinterstoisser and their 1936 attempt on the north face of the Eiger. There’s a great tension in the beginning of the story: Hinterstoisser wants fame and adulation for the first ascent. Kurz climbs for his own personal reasons and thinks the Eiger’s a death lottery. In between these two is a woman (Luise Fellner) they’ve both known since childhood who is given the task of writing about them and their likely ascent for a big Berlin magazine. Kurz gives in.
Of course, Kurz and Hinterstoisser bicycle the 700 kilometers to Switzerland while Fellner and her magazine publisher boss, Henry Arau, take the train.
Kurz and Hinterstoisser meet the competition in the field below the Eiger, where a crew of first-ascent hopefuls are camped, including Austrians, French, and Italian climbers. The French and Italian teams think conditions are bad, so they opt out.
The Germans and Austrians (Willy Angerer and Edi Rainer) start climbing, simultaneously, up different routes.
Angerer takes a rock to the head. Then a fall. He’s bleeding out and Kurz decides that he and Hinterstoisser should help him down. It’s a mess. Half the film is an epic and very sad retreat. Hinterstoisser carks it. Kurz is left to himself. Rescue attempts fail. He snuffs it.
The great dichotomy of this film lies is the lavish lifestyle of the wealthy in the hotels below the mountain and the absolute deprivation of basic comforts going on, on the mountain. We can all relate to this.
There’s even a scene in which a hotel manager presents a three-foot-tall cake to the guests in Kleine Schiedegg celebrating the first ascent of the north face, which will surely happen on the morrow. The cake is shaped like the Eiger, but it looks more like a pointy overgrown blackhead. The climbing scenes in this film are excellent, all done in the real locations where these guys operated and climbed and croaked. This film also shows you why you don’t wanna get into alpine climbing; the morning starts are brutal.
This film seems to be available via Kanopy, a film service many libraries and universities use. You should be able to log in with your library card or student ID.
Most of the 8,000-meter peaks of the Himalaya are associated with a European nation, typically the nation that achieved that mountain’s first ascent. Everest is English, so to speak. Annapurna, French. Nanga Parbat, German/Austrian. Makalu, French. K2 was nearly an American mountain.
Fritz Wiessner is the early star in the film, via his 1939 expedition. This is the expedition made famous in the book K2: The 1939 Tragedy. This film helps by recreating that infamous attempt and explaining how Dudley Wolfe died.
Next, we get the story of the 1953 American expedition, put together by Bob Bates and Charles Houston. Bob Craig, George Bell, Dee Molenaar, Art Gilkey, Tony Streather, and Pete Schoening also appear in interviews. The team arrive in Pakistan a week after Everest has been climbed for the first time. They make good work up the mountain, but one morning Gilkey falls down, struck down by blood clots. They start lowering Gilkey down the mountain. George Bell falls and the tangle of ropes brings down all eight climbers. Somehow, Pete Schoening arrests all the tumbling men with a single ice axe.
The first ascent was made by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli in 1954, making K2 an Italian summit. Compagnoni and Lacedelli appear in the film.
Trivia moment: I once edited the obituaries section of the American Alpine Journal. While working on Bob Bates’s obit, Charlie Houston told me his neighbor and he would often share a beer at the end of the day. The neighbor? Trey Anastasio of Phish. No kidding.
Frenchmans Cap is a stunning mountain in western Tasmania. It has a 350-meter wall on its southeast side. The Lorax is a route established on this face by Garn Cooper and Peter Steane in 1988. It has been climbed only a few times. In this film we follow Peter Wyllie, a doctor who grew up near the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. At a young age, Wyllie caught the climbing—then base jumping—bug. In 2015 he landed a year-long job in Launceston, Tasmania. There he started exploring the island’s incredible landscapes. These landscapes are shown via stunning aerial footage.
Wyllie befriends a young German traveler Martin Buchauer, and they start planning an ascent of The Lorax and a subsequent jump off Frenchmans. They rope four others into the project: Kamil Sustiak, Lee Jackson, Jared Irwin, and Simon Blair. Somehow, they get a clear weather window, an elusive blessing in Tasmania’s west.
The climb is well recorded via several angles and helmet cams, as well as at least one drone. The quartzite looks incredibly bad, and Wyllie admits he was more scared during the climbing than during the jumping. A very rewarding adventure.
Trivia moment: The Lorax is a book by Doctor Seuss about the destruction of the environment. The incredibly bitter logging debate currently raging in Tasmania began heating up when Cooper and Steane made the first ascent of, and named, the route.
This is not strictly a climbing film but there’s quite a bit of climbing in it. It’s about our need for danger and the way in which mountains supply that. Essentially, narrator Willem Dafoe explains that a few hundred years ago humans saw mountains as the abodes of gods and monsters. No one in his or her right mind would go there. Certain death awaited. But as the centuries progressed, humans became curious about mountain regions and began exploring and mapping them. The mid-19 century saw the evolution of mountain climbing a sport. By the middle of the twentieth century (after the Wars) mountain climbing took off and has today become a sport that millions of people from around the globe pursue. This film examines the reasons we are drawn to high places and looks at the downsides of all this human attention. Ultimately, a lot of us seek out the mountains for risk, the kind of risk our day-to-day lives don’t offer. The film is highly critical of commercial mountaineering, especially the kind of commercial climbing found on Everest.
The film was a collaboration between the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian director Jennifer Peedom (she also made Sherpa) so the music is as powerful as the exceptional photography, most of which was shot by Renan Ozturk (some of this is obviously stock footage). Think Koyaanisqatsi for climbing.
Trivia moment: Mountain is the highest grossing (non-IMAX) Australian documentary of all time.
These three are older films about Yosemite that are still fun today.
El Capitan is the original Yosemite film. Made by Glen Denny and Fred Padula during May and June of 1968, it follows the story of the three climbers (Gary Colliver, Lito Tejada-Flores, and Dick McCracken) as they go up the Nose (Denny goes up with them to film, but is not seen in the film).
This is really a visual diary. The shots are artful and abstract and bring the wall to life. It’s edited with a running stream-of-consciousness-type dialogue, which is eerily effective. The pendulum off Boot Flake is a sweaty-palm maker; it’s filmed from across the Valley with a long lens.
The white-throated swifts and cliff swallows are amazing. There’s a six-minute night scene, which is curious and strangely worrying.
Trivia moment: The old joke about having a watermelon strapped to your butt while climbing originates with this film (but these guys actually bring one up).
Sentinel: The West Face was made in 1963 (not 1967 as it states on Youtube) and it stars Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, climbing the 1960 Chouinard–Frost west face route on Sentinel Rock in Yosemite Valley. Another visual diary which shows the techniques and equipment of the day. The amount of freeclimbing with 30 pounds of chrome-moly pitons strapped to the waist in impressive.
Freeclimb: The Northwest Face of Half Dome is the story of Jim Erickson and Art Higbee’s 1976 tenth attempt to free the northwest face of Half Dome. The film was directed by Bob Godfrey, who also co-authored Climb!, the classic book on Colorado climbing history. The interviews around Boulder in the mid-1970s (when houses cost $60k) are fun. The film can be watched in full at Archive.org, though sometimes loads poorly. It’s also available via Amazon Prime.
I read someplace that this 1998 film was quite out of date. That might be true, but the climbing and more importantly the falling are eye-popping. A must-see film for Americans who wanted to get some of the flavor of British grit climbing. It features some of the most frightening and dangerous rock climbing leads ever captured on videotape.
Hard Grit follows a year in the activities of some of the UK’s greatest rock climbers, including Neil Bentley, John Dunne, Johnny Dawes, Seb Grieve, Leo Houlding, Jerry Moffatt, Ben Moon, and Sam Whittaker.
From literally the first scene (French climber Jean–Minh Trinh-Thieu on Gaia), the film shows crazy belay techniques, micro pebble-pulling, and heart-stopping falls. All without helmets.
Then we march through a long list of routes, each seemingly scarier than the previous, the falls growing longer and longer. The music gets more ominous. The climbers are clearly nervous.
It depicts mostly repeats of routes like Parthian Shot, New Stateman, Samson, End of the Affair, Braille Trail, and Gaia. Seb Grieve’s repeat of Parthian Shot is especially rattling (the only good gear being a cluster of RPs behind “a shipwreck of a flake”) as is his final route, the first ascent of Mesuga.
I couldn’t find Hard Grit free online. Director Richard Heap asked that anyone interested in buying Hard Grit contact him directly at rich@slackjaw.co.uk and he’ll organize Paypal details.
Also, check out this list of the climbs graded by “fall survival chances.”
Watch a clip of Seb Grieve going airborn off Parthian Shot below.
Watch Brave New Wild:
Many readers will know Valley Uprising, but you might not be familiar with Brave New Wild, a more personal and offbeat look at the events as they transpired in Valley climbing history. It’s told through the eyes and lens of Flagstaff filmmaker Oakley Anderson-Moore, whose father Mark Moore was a pioneer in Red Rock during the early 1970s.
The film starts with Warren Harding and Dean Caldwell waving off a rescue from the Wall of the Early Morning Light (aka the Dawn Wall). Then we get some instruction in what was going on economically in America for climbing to take off—and for counter culturalism to take off. Anderson-Moore starts out with the Vulgarians and their plight (lots of nudity, sheep, cuss words, etc.) as they visit the Tetons and meet Western climbers. Then we get to Yosemite and we meet Royal Robbins and Harding.
As with Valley Uprising, much of this film centers on the relationship between Robbins and Harding. But she also weaves the story of her own interest in climbing, which came via dad. He travels around on freight trains, working as an itinerant fruit picker to support his climbing. It’s a heartwarming story that Oakley tells.
Some of the more endearing parts of the film are the sections of footage shot by Mark Moore. Nearly every time Moore starts shooting his daughter the camera gently pans away from the little girl and fixes on whatever mountains, cliffs, or boulders are nearby. “I began to notice a pattern,” she comments.
Like Valley Uprising, Brave New Wild is worth seeing for its superb visual recreations of the climbs mentioned, with moving still pics (yup) and route lines crawling up black and white photos. Some footage from El Capitan and Sentinel: The West Face get repurposed in both films. Sheridan Anderson’s cartoons are brought to life in Brave New Wild (worth the price of admission alone).
Trivia moment: The interviews in this film were done using a light that flickered; the goal was to mimic a fireside chat.
Trivia moment two: The guy pulling the car out of the ditch on the Amazon Prime page is yours truly. That was near Buena Vista, Colorado.
This film is about five French climbers (Arnaud Petit, Stéphanie Bodet, Toni Arbonès, Nicolas Kalisz, and Evrard Wendenbaum) and one Venezuelan (Igor Martinez) who set out to climb a 1,000-meter overhanging wall to the left of Angel Falls in Venezuela. Getting there takes two days in boats. Basecamp is a nasty place with mosquitoes, coral snakes, and giant spiders. They get on the wall as quickly as possible. For the first 300 meters they’re doused with water drifting from the falls over to their line. Above most of the moisture, the climb starts to gain a rhythm. Pitch after pitch of scary loose rock fly by as the team reach the summit of the tepui.
There are some interesting things in this film. For one, there is a food czar (Igor) who decides if or when they should ration food. They also explain how one goes to the bathroom and point out that diarrhea would not be a good thing up there. Thanks for that.
The English narration is laughable at times, but quite good.
This modest film was made by English climber Mick Burke in 1971. It’s about eight climbers going to Baffin Island and climbing a big face. It sat tucked away out of sight until a filmmaker (“Cap Expé” on Youtube) who knew one of the climbers (Canadian Rob Wood) was invited to Wood’s house and shown the film. Cap Expé was blown away. With permission, Cap Expé put it on Youtube.
Besides climbing, the film offers a discussion on the ills of modern society and what wilderness is and how it should be protected. We are shown what’s wrong with human systems and the sickness of our contemporary predicament: pollution, crowded cities, traffic, stress. (The formal narration reminds me of a Monty Python skit, but this narrator is dead serious.) “We’ve got cities, we want alternatives to cities,” one climber says. So they go on a big old road trip.
They head to Baffin Island where the climbers discuss encroaching development and the potential for a hotel in the Mount Asgard area, which seems ludicrous but concerns like this were rife in early 1970s UK. After a three-week wait for clear weather, the climbers take on a mountain called, ironically, Boulder.
The climbing is mostly straightforward, but the narration is a long, thoughtful discussion about protection, adventure, self-rescue, friendships, sleeping, surviving, and why people climb.
We are then treated to the climbers return to the city, which leaves them wondering once more about modern life. It’s not the greatest cinematography (actually it’s pretty crap), but it’s an interesting film from an interesting time, especially in Britain where the green movement was coming on strong.
Trivia moment: Friends of the Earth was established in Britain by American climber and environmentalist David Brower in 1970, a heady time in the environmental movement in Merry Old. Brower was part of the first ascent of Shiprock in 1939.
Okay, this is marginally a climbing film, but I liked it. In it, three 13-year-old girls—Avi, Estefany, and Cindy (who is pregnant)—from a shanty town in Santiago, Chile, climb buildings and rob homes. The film starts slow, and they don’t figure out their MO until 30 minutes into the story. Then all heck breaks loose as they go from high rise to high rise across Santiago, getting into tall buildings and moving around them via the exterior walls’ features. It doesn’t take too long before a security camera catches them, and they’re on the local television news.
Suddenly, everyone in the shanty town knows it’s them.
They keep climbing into apartments, stealing shit, and then get caught. They escape, climbing down the side of a building, then get caught again. Then they go to the Chilean version of juvey. And two of them escape by, you guessed it, climbing. Then they’re pretty much shut down in the shanty town, hiding from authorities and generally lying low. Then, the pregnant girl, Cindy—who looks like she’s about to pop—suggests they go “climbing” one more time. And they end up in an apartment where a girl who dates Avi’s crush lives. Then they quit stealing. Unbelievably sad stuff.
This film seems to only be available via Kanopy, a film service many libraries use. You should be able to log in with your library card.
I’m not a fan of bouldering films but this one caught me because the people in it are so wonderfully low key. This is what modest European climbing looks like—the antithesis of the uber Huber-bahn.
The film opens with Thomas “Steini” Steinbrugger talking about the Magic Wood and how he found it and started cleaning blocks for bouldering.
Then, the filmmakers follow various groups of kids as they boulder in a variety of Swiss venues: the Magic Wood, Chironico, Cresciano, Brione, San Gottardo, and Valais.
We see what Europe’s best unknown (to me, anyway) boulderers are doing (in some instances, American climbers’ problems) and how they dodge the weather, injuries, and motivational issues. There are quite a few first ascents recorded during the filming. Robert Leistner brings his baby to the crag and nearly lands on him. Julie Winter and Juliane Wurm are strong heroines.
What’s apparent about Swiss bouldering is that the undersides of boulders in the Confederation are all razor-cut and clean. The tops of Swiss boulders are mangy mush piles of lichen, moisture, and worm poop. And every Swiss boulder problem is above either a lumber yard of deadfall or a dozen super-pointy rocks.
The film’s score is atrocious. I recommend turning the volume down and streaming Rick and Morty through your headphones. Or stream this.
Some of the other star climbers are Michele Caminati, Paul Robinson, Chris Webb Parsons, Anthony Gullsten, Olivier Mignon, Anton Johansson, Antoine Eydoux, Fred Moix, and the legendary Fred Nicole. This film will make you realize how bad you are at bouldering. It’ll also make you wonder why humans do the stuff that they do.
This film starts out with actor Chris O’Donnell on a climb with his dad and sister, Annie, who is belaying him…or maybe dad is belaying him. Who can tell? Then another climbing party comes ripping off the sandstone of Monument Valley (off-limits to climbing, of course). Suddenly, everyone is falling, regardless of whatever roped group they’re a part of. They all end up on one rope, swinging like chile ristras or that dangler you couldn’t pinch off. Cams rip, more pinching, more scariness. Dad dies, Annie blames Peter. Much regret.
Next thing we know, Chris O’Donnell is in Asia, photographing animals for National Geographic. His porter has an accident, so they are choppered to a Pakistani army base then K2 basecamp.
Annie, who is now a pro climber (and on the cover of Sports Illustrated like most good climbers), is there, prepping for K2. Typical Himalayan basecamp scene. Billionaire Elliot Vaughn arrives with his team of people.
Ed Veisturs is in this film. Man, incredibly embarrassing for him. I used to get socks from him at OR trade shows. No bueno, man. I’m going to Walmart for my socks now. Fucking A, Ed, man. I’m in a sad space now.
The best part of this film is around the 21-minute mark where the rad climbers have a giant party. Booze, brats, and babes (there’s even a bonfire with logs and two guys with a rasta flag have set up a still). Everyone’s getting wasted. Some smoke cigarettes.
Speaking of the 21-minute mark, I couldn’t stand it much longer. I watched this film when it first came out. I watched it again to 30 minutes and that’s enough for any human. I’m cutting off my Youtube-finding fingers and feeding them to rats.
Rotten Tomatoes reported: “The plot in Vertical Limit is ludicrously contrived and cliched. Meanwhile, the action sequences are so over-the-top and piled one on top of another, they lessen the impact on the viewer.”
To correct my Tomato colleagues, this film is a beautiful lesson for all film school students. Both what not to do and how not to do it, piled one on top of another.
The director of this film, Martin Campbell, seems to think he’s a clever sausage. I wish there were laws in the creative world. Martin would easily warrant a lifetime ban from directing.
Voted in by no one. Liked by no one. This film is a classic.
Trivia moment: At one point the subtitles actually say “Urdu continues” while there’s no English translation. Genius.
I spent $4 to re-watch this film so I could report to you, the unsuspecting public. Please donate to my venmo account (Cameron-Burns-23). Now go take those cold meds.
Martini ranking: You’ll need 150 to get through this film.
This is the Gräfenberg Spot of the genre from Hollywood. The Big Kahuna. The pièce de résistance. Two climbers are stranded high atop a tower in the Italian Dolomites, which they call the Rocky Mountains in this film (I’m guessing because blowing up crap and smashing stuff all over the Dolomites was OK with the Italian government; the National Park Service in this country would never condone it). Anyway, Rocky Mountain National Park ranger Sylvester Stallone solos up to the stranded climbers just as a helicopter arrives. Sly and the folks in the helicopter set up a zip line from the tower to the chopper. The first climber zips over to the helicopter. As the second climber, Sarah, is zipping across her harness buckle both breaks and unravels at the same time. She hangs on to a couple of straps as Sly zips out to get her. Sarah drops the teddy bear she is carrying. Then she falls. Much rugged guilt flows.
Next we’re treated to the mid-air robbery of a U.S. Treasury plane via—you guessed it—a zip line between the Treasury plane and the crooks’ plane. The cases of cash fall out of the plane. The crooks call for a rescue, and Sly and his pal Hal go out for them. They kidnap the two rugged rescuers.
Then there’s a long running cat-and-mouse story of the baddies versus the goodies, and so on.
One interesting tidbit is the selection of ropes in this film. One minute they have a hawser-laid sailor’s rope, the next a skinny strand of hemp rope. At one point they actually have kernmantle ropes. It’s more random than your next sleep-over in college. There’s one scene where Sly sleds downhill on top of one of the baddies. At one point, Sly and his lady friend start a campfire with thousand-dollar bills. There’s a cave scene with loads of (presumably vampire) bats. This is the kind of film Donald Trump will star in once he’s done presidenting. And he’ll be bigly. You absolutely have to see the snow bollard at 1: 09: 20. That could hold a truck. A tiny plastic one.
This film has it all: racism, sexism, elitism, sloth, coveting your buddy’s girlfriend, rage, thieving, misogyny, mindless brutality, OSHA infractions, and loads of the f-word. I’d call this a non-stop roller coaster of thrills, but it’s more like that version of the roller coaster ride where the vodka-drunk 15-year-old gets on and we know how that ends: chunder country. There’s even a scene where a baddie reenacts a footballing scene as he kicks Hal’s face in. And don’t forget the now-infamous bolt gun. This is the granddaddy of climbing films from Hollywood, and it’s required viewing if you’re a real climber. Or want to be. The climax of this film is more climactic than any high point I’ve ever reached. Quoting Wikipedia, which is always true to life: “The film has been criticized for its unrealistic portrayal of rock climbing. One example is the feature of the piton gun which fires pitons directly into rock, forgoing the usual rock-drilling and piton-hammering used in rock-climbing.” Uh-huh. I’m checking REI and Neptune’s for piton guns tomorrow.
Trivia moment: Michael Rooker is much better in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Trivia moment two: Sly Stallone was much better in The Party at Kitty and Stud’s.
Trivia moment three: This film was nominated for three Academy Awards; it should’ve won about three thousand.
Quote: “Gravity’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Hal, when talking to the baddies.
Martini ranking: Forget martinis; you’ll need to drink bleach to get through this.
Watch Star Trek V: The Final Frontier on Amazon Prime.
I watched this film when it first came out and I’ll be hog-tied and batter-schnitzeled if the editor of this rig is gonna make me watch it full-length again. So, I’ll touch on highlights.
The guys from the Enterprise are on leave, which means going cragging in Yosemite Valley, a place known for its rock climbs. Birds chirp, the sun rises, and we all feel good as we are introduced to “Yosemite National Park: Planet Earth.”
We are immediately presented with Captain Kirk soloing (is that the Free Blast?) on El Capitan, which is what most intergalactic space captains do on their days off. There’s a chimney in this sequence—remember, we’re on the Free Blast, so that makes no sense. That’s followed by soloing a route on the Cookie (can’t quite tell which one) and Separate Reality. Then he’s soloing around Boot Flake. Then Spock shows up on rocket booster boots or whatever they are. He says: “I don’t think you realize the gravity of your situation.”
Then, distracted by Spock, Kirk falls. It’d be wonderful if this film ended here, but it doesn’t. There’s another hour and 25 minutes’ worth of logic inanity, clever expressions, and colorful retorts. This is cold medicine country. Eat a bucket’s worth.
This film shoulda been the final frontier for whoever wrote and/or directed it. Launch that goober into space, huh? Watching this is like watching a headache. Impossible. But not here. No no.
Slate magazine said this about this flick on the film’s 25 anniversary (which I’m sure you all celebrated): “Today marks the 25 anniversary of a dark day for Star Trek fandom, the release of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”
It was also a dark day for basic human intelligence. Zero thumbs up, all thumbs into the dirt.
Voted in by CB.
Trivia moment: What is a Gulf + Western Company? Go here.
Quote: “As a reviewer, I’m as speechless as I am flattened by bad news on an ugly day.”
Martini ranking: There is no final frontier for the number of martinis you’ll need for this one.
Rent The Eiger Sanction on Amazon Prime.
Along with Cliffhanger, this is the pinnacle of Hollywood’s involvement with climbing. It actually belongs in both the best and worst categories. The film begins with some bad spy juju, and Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood), a former spy turned art professor is pulled out of retirement to deal with a spy mess in Europe. His boss is an albino named Mr. Dragon, who can’t stand light or cold and has a nurse who monitors his visitors. Dragon threatens to reveal Hemlock’s collection of rare paintings to the IRS if Hemlock doesn’t take the job. They arrange a deal. Hemlock goes to Europe, kills a couple of bad spies, and launches one out a window. He lands on someone’s lunch. Then Hemlock meets Jemimah Brown on a plane. She mentions the idea of climbing gear being used like S&M gear. They crash the custard truck together.
Hemlock then trains in Zion and Monument Valley, Arizona, like most spies. At one point he’s turned over to an indigenous local lady named George (played by Brenda Venus) who puts him through a work-out. They crash the custard truck together. The magic of Hollywood really comes together when he and sidekick George Kennedy climb the Totem Pole and drink a six-pack on the summit. An old gay enemy (Miles Mellough) shows up and tries to kill Hemlock. Hemlock dispatches him by driving—according to his speedometer—30 miles around Monument Valley but ends up near where he started. He dumps Miles off for a long hike home.
So, they get to the Eiger, and start up. Jemimah Brown learns that the whole thing is a farce—tit for tat spy stuff. But Hemlock’s already on the hill. They climb awhile, then everyone falls off the mountain in a big climax (real custard-truck business).
Hemlock survives and learns the bloke he was supposed to kill is his buddy, the “ground manager” for the climbing team. Then he’s back on the ground with Jemimah Brown. More delivery-van-with-dessert action.
The one-liners are to die for in this film. There are dozens of websites devoted to them.
There’s some great piton nailing footage. It even shows Clint placing an ice screw in snow.
Anyone who’s ever wanted to go nail a crack in Eldorado Canyon should watch this film for tips before they head out. Oh, and bring your RURPs.
This film has it all: racism, sexism, homophobia, elitism, sloth, coveting your buddy’s girlfriend, rage, thieving, misogyny, mindless brutality, OSHA infractions, and loads of the f-word. Jack Cassidy as Miles Mellough is the best role ever performed in the climbing-film genre.
Trivia moment: There’s an exclamation point at the end of every sentence of dialogue in the script.
Trivia moment two: My old pal Eric Bjørnstad and Ken Wyrick did the rigging for this film, and in 1992 Eric gave me a handful of bongs used for the rigging. Anyone wanna buy them?
Trivia moment three: “You saw he was dead and then you made a pot of tea?” “Drink it before it gets cold.”
Martini ranking: You’ll need 20 Wild Turkeys on the rocks.
This film begins with a bloke named Rick—in a sorta hoods in the woods-type program—on a bus. The bus goes into a tunnel, and when it comes out the other side there’s a guy rappelling onto the road. Actually, there are three guys and a girl. They’re jumping around celebrating because they just did the rappel. Then the leader of this crew walks all over his rope while celebrating his rappel.
Then, Rick arrives at his uncle’s wilderness home to escape the rat-bagging he’d been up to in LA. Rick doesn’t like it. He walks. Meets the rappellers again. And they’re tough with him. “We don’t wanna be attracting any attention” as they rappel off water tanks and the like.
They challenge him. “You climbing or talking?”
“Climbing” he says. Then the lead rappeller dude Batmans up the doubled-over rope he’d just rappelled down. Rick spends the night on the water tower that they all climbed.
Next day he’s rescued and gets climbing gear so he can hang out with the pricks that left him on the water tower.
There are several scenes where Rick goes all handbags with his uncle because Rick is from the city and is as lame as the film he’s in.
There’s loads of Rick versus locals stuff. And a scene where his uncle is training on a woody with leather gloves on.
Then Rick and the lead girl go cragging. But they have an accident then have to bivouac. And there are wolves. There is more of the Rick-versus-the-local-rock-jocks stuff. It’s terrifically bad.
I watched to 50 minutes and am appalled at how awful this film is. If you watch past 50, please let me know. You’ll go into the wall of shame.
Even if you watch this movie with the volume off, you will stick a garden tool through your eye.
Watch this film with the volume on and you will gnaw your limbs off.
This film is beyond messed up.
Take It to the Limit should be taken to the plastic DVD recycling center immediately.
Martini ranking: You’ll need Lake Tahoe–sized adult beverage to get through this film.
Mission Impossible II, which has Tom Cruise performing a scary-looking piece of soloing on desert sandstone. Until he leaps for a hold about 30 feet away and sticks it. Ya ha. Then slips and catches himself until ultimately he’s facing away from the cliff, both hands on an edge he can’t see because its behind him. He then does a moment’s worth of meditation then makes a giant swing for a better part of the edge and pulls himself to the top of the formation. I’ve soloed that route a few times and Tom has the sequence wrong.
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