The Iconic Clint Eastwood Stunt That Left Him Traumatized

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Clint Eastwood isn't just one of the most towering figures in cinema history; he's also proven to be as hardy as many of his tough guy on-screen personas, from The Man with No Name to "Dirty" Harry Callahan. But it seems one particularly dangerous stunt for 1975's "The Eiger Sanction" shook the veteran star for several days.

According to Eastwood, a scene in which he falls from the side of a mountain and is saved by his safety rope was actually more mentally challenging than it was physically demanding. As he recounted in an interview contained in the book "Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated," the actor was shaken for three days after doing the stunt, which he performed on a real cliff on the Eiger mountain in Switzerland.

"The Eiger Sanction" — which is basically a James Bond parody — saw Eastwood play professor and former assassin Jonathan Hemlock, who's forced back into action for one final mission. Of course, this job isn't exactly the easiest, with Hemlock having to join a group of explorers on their trek up the side of the titular Swiss mountain. During the mission, Hemlock is charged with identifying a Soviet spy and taking him out while also navigating the perilous terrain. As it turns out, actually shooting the mountain scenes was almost as dangerous as Hemlock's deadly mission.

In 1975, Clint Eastwood had reinvigorated his career by starring as Harry Callahan in two "Dirty Harry" movies, and while he would end the decade starring opposite a cheeky orangutan in the controversial project "Every Which Way But Loose," he spent the mid-70s climbing real mountains in "The Eiger Sanction." When the film — which was also directed by Eastwood — debuted, critics weren't all that impressed with the story or script, but they couldn't help but marvel at the realistic action scenes. As Roger Ebert wrote in his review, "[the film] 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."

It's a good thing the critics at least recognized the spectacle of "The Eiger Sanction," considering Eastwood went to great lengths to pull off real-life stunts in real locations. Evidently, the actor had become "wrapped up" in the idea of shooting all the mountain climbing scenes on real mountains instead of "papier-mâché rocks," as he put it. "We did everything, dangling two thousand feet over the first splatter," he explained, before being asked specifically about the shot in which several of his fellow climbers fall from the mountain face before Hemlock himself is pulled over the precipice and only saved by his safety rope, leaving him dangling thousands of feet up in the air. 

"We hung off the cliff and built a ladder out from it for the downshot," explained Eastwood. "I had to cut myself loose. That was a psychologically damaging thing to do." The actor went on to describe that sort of stunt as being "against your nature," adding, "You do it and for three days afterward, you're just staring off. You don't say much."

Sadly, somebody else did succumb to the dangerous filming conditions when 26-year-old British climber David Knowles died after helping climbing advisor Mike Hoover shoot a scene involving falling boulders. The danger on the set of "The Eiger Sanction" was, in other words, very real, and Eastwood was lucky to make it out of filming unharmed, save for some possible psychological trauma.

As perilous as shooting "The Eiger Sanction" was, Clint Eastwood wasn't going to let a single dangerous stunt affect his career all that much. This is a man born at the very beginning of the great depression, who grew up in those austere years before serving in the Army (though he was never deployed) and even survived a plane crash while enlisted — only to come out the other end and become a screen legend. Still, hanging off the edge of a notoriously treacherous mountain thousands of feet up in the air would affect anyone, especially when the tragic death of David Knowles had occurred on just the second day of shooting.

Eastwood was said to be understandably shaken by the death of Knowles, but decided to press on with production so the climber's efforts on the film prior to his passing wouldn't have been in vain. By the time he found himself swaying off the side of the Eiger, Eastwood also had the death of an employee on his conscience, which almost certainly added to his fraught mental state in the days after.

Thankfully, while "The Eiger Sanction" certainly wasn't the most well-received Eastwood project, it has its fans, and /Film listed Jonathan Hemlock as one of Eastwood's best roles. With a score composed by John Williams, scenes that provide the best glimpse we'll ever get of how the actor might have played James Bond, and some of the most thrilling real-life stunts performed in a pre-Tom Cruise era, "The Eiger Sanction" is arguably an overlooked entry in the Eastwood oeuvre, and in that sense none of the hard work and sacrifice that went into making it was in vain.