The Eiger Sanction is a 1975 American action thriller directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Based on the 1972 novel The Eiger Sanction, by Trevanian, the film is about an art history professor, mountain climber, and former assassin once employed by a secret United States government agency who is blackmailed into returning to his deadly profession and do one more "sanction", a euphemism for killing. He later agrees to join an international climbing team in Switzerland planning an ascent of the Eiger north face in order to complete a second sanction to avenge the murder of an old friend. The film was produced by Robert Daley, Richard D. Zanuck, and David Brown in a co-production with Eastwood's The Malpaso Company and Universal Pictures. The film co-starred George Kennedy, Jack Cassidy, and Vonetta McGee. Principal photography started on August 12, 1974, and ended in late September 1974. The picture was filmed on location by cinematographers William N. Clark and Frank Stanley on the Eiger mountain and Zurich in Switzerland, in Monument Valley and Zion National Park in the American Southwest, and in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Monterey in California. Special equipment and handheld cameras were employed to film the climbing sequences. Eastwood did his own climbing and stuntwork under dangerous conditions. Twenty-six-year-old British climber David Knowles died on the Eiger during the production. The film was edited by Ferris Webster, and the soundtrack was composed by John Williams.
The Eiger Sanction was released in New York City on May 21, 1975, and received mixed reviews. The general reaction among many reviewers offered criticism for the story and screenplay, and praise for the climbing footage and action sequences. The Variety critic noted that Eastwood "manages fine suspense both in the Swiss and Monument Valley climbs, as well as delineation of character". Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, writing, "It has a plot so unlikely and confused that we can't believe it for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don't care." Other reviewers criticized the film's depiction of a homosexual character and excessive violence, including Pauline Kael of New York magazine who described the film as "a total travesty". More recent critics have treated the film and Eastwood's direction in a more positive light. The film, which operated on a budget of $9 million, earned $14,200,000 at the box office. The Eiger Sanction was first released in DVD format on December 15, 1998, and in Blu-ray format on November 10, 2015 by Universal Studios.
