Mountain movies come up on forums now and again. and I must confess the ones I like are the ones that have machine guns in them. More specifically Where Eagles Dare (In which Daphne to our left, could easily have featured in a supporting role, being so keen as to have brought her own rope).
Cliffhanger is enjoyable because of Jon Lithgow’s funny arch-villain performance and The Waltons Ralph Waite getting gunned down just because he was in The Waltons and they wanted to tug at the audiences heart strings by gunning him down. The hilarious Vertical Limit sticks in my mind simply for the fact that Scott Glenn was so upset by the earlier mountain shenanigans that he felt he had to start modelling himself on Obi Wan Kenobi.

But there is actual good stuff. The Eiger Sanction features some really badass climbing and Eastwoodness and also some really bad dialogue, but is extremely watchable. The Mountain with Spencer Tracy should be seen. Yes yes, there’s a lot of studio stuff, hush now. There’s some good stuff in The Ascent, in between the love-triangle mince.
But on average it’s a barren wasteland of low budget US TV movies, usually a family trapped on a mountain kinda thing.

I think we should have a proper Culloden aftermath movie and track Chas’s progress across the Highlands (as I once argued on the old Trail forums, the worlds first adventure race, won by a bloke in leather trail shoes…). Or a Dougal Haston movie, with all the controversial stuff intact. A Whillans movie starring Ray Winstone, Boninginton starring Christian Bale? Ah, with a 70’s soundtrack too…
We should get that stuff done while there are still people to talk to and memories to ransack for information. I mean, the life story of these guys modern replacements would look like something you’d find on Sky3 at 0400 set in Ibiza.