Okay, so we suppose that technically the villains of Where Eagles Dare are the Nazis, in which case the bad guys have a pretty depressingly huge body count. That's entirely too morbid for us, however, so let's just take a look at how many people cark it over the course of this 1968 action classic. Which, as it happens, is pretty high, no doubt owing to the presence of Clint Eastwood in the starring role. Is there a Clint Eastwood film where he doesn't kill anybody? Any Which Way But Loose? Did they cut out the euthanasia scene from Space Cowboys? In Where Eagles Dare the chair-lover seemed to be going for some sort of world record, knocking off Nazis left and right. Eastwood's US Army Ranger Lieutenant Morris Schaffer and Richard Burton's Major John Smith lead a team of commandos deep behind enemy lines to rescue a chief planner of the second front, who was shot down by the Germans en route to Crete (we heard it's just lovely that time of year). The plan is to sneak in, infiltrate the castle he's being held in whilst disguised as Nazis, and sneak back out. Which obviously doesn't go according to plan. Over the course of the film Schaeffer personally stabs, shoots, and explodes a staggering 73 Germans during their stealthy espionage operation. And most of those were the exploding ones, thanks to the amount of dynamite he an Smith secrete about the place. Then they let their traitorous captain kill himself by jumping out of a plane. That's pretty cold. And way more kills than the Nazis manage. Not that you'd root for them or anything.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
