Avalanche Express
| Avalanche Express | |
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| Directed by | Mark Robson |
| Produced by | Mark Robson |
| Screenplay by | Abraham Polonsky |
| Based on | novel by Colin Forbes |
| Starring |
Lee Marvin Robert Shaw Linda Evans Maximilian Schell |
| Music by | Allyn Ferguson |
| Cinematography |
Jack Cardiff (uncredited) |
| Edited by | Garth Craven |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
| Country | United States Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12 million |
Avalanche Express is a 1979 cold war adventure thriller film produced and directed by Mark Robson (his final film), about the struggle over a defecting Russian general. It starred Lee Marvin, Robert Shaw (in his last performance), Maximilian Schell, and Linda Evans. The screenplay by Abraham Polonsky was based on the novel by Colin Forbes. Both Shaw and Robson died near the end of shooting.
Russian general Marenkov (Robert Shaw) decides to defect to the West and CIA agent Harry Wargrave (Lee Marvin) leads the team that is to get him out. Wargrave decides that Marenkov should travel across Europe by train, on the fictional "Avalanche Express". The idea is to lure the Russians into attacking the train and thus discover who their secret agents in Europe are. Consequently, during the train journey they must survive both a terrorist attack and an avalanche, all planned by Russian spy-catcher Nikolai Bunin (Maximilian Schell).
During production in Ireland, both director Mark Robson and starring actor Robert Shaw died of heart attacks within weeks of each other. Monte Hellman was brought in to finish the direction and Gene Corman (Roger Corman's brother) was called in to complete Robson's duties as producer.
Robert Rietty was hired to re-voice Robert Shaw's dialogue in the opening scene, as it was decided to redo that scene in Russian with English subtitles instead of having the Russians speak broken English. As a consequence, for continuity, all of Shaw's dialogue throughout the film was re-voiced by Rietty.
Hellman, Corman and Rietty were not credited for their work, but the film's end credit contains a note stating: "The producers wish to express their appreciation to Monte Hellman and Gene Corman for their post production services."
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Wikipedia