Breakheart Pass (film)

Breakheart Pass
Theatrical poster, artwork by Mort Künstler
Directed by	Tom Gries
Produced by	Jerry Gershwin Elliott Kastner
Written by	Alistair MacLean
Starring	Charles Bronson Ben Johnson Richard Crenna Jill Ireland
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	Lucien Ballard
Edited by	Byron Brandt
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	December 25, 1975 (premiere in Finland)
Running time	95 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$6 million

Breakheart Pass is an American 1975 western adventure film that stars Charles Bronson, Ben Johnson, Richard Crenna, and Jill Ireland. The movie was based on the novel by Alistair MacLean of the same title, and was filmed in north central Idaho.

In the 1870s, residents of the garrison at the Fort Humboldt Army outpost are reported to be suffering from a diphtheria epidemic. A train is heading towards the fort filled with reinforcements and medical supplies. There are also civilian passengers on the train – Nevada Governor Fairchild (Richard Crenna) and his fiancée Marica (Jill Ireland), the daughter of the fort's commander.

The train stops briefly in Myrtle, where it takes on board local lawman Sheriff Pearce (Ben Johnson) and his prisoner, John Deakin (Charles Bronson), a notorious outlaw who was identified via a picture in a newspaper advertisement offering a $2,000 (approximately $44,000 today) reward. But as the journey goes on, several train passengers, including most of the train's soldier escort, are mysteriously killed or go missing. Deakin, who is actually a Secret Service agent, discovers en route that the "epidemic" at the outpost is actually a conspiracy between a group of killers led by the notorious outlaw Levi Calhoun (Robert Tessier), and a tribe of Indians under Chief White Hand (Eddie Little Sky). Instead of medical supplies, the train transports a large secret shipment of weapons, ammunition and dynamite stolen from U.S. manufacturers for sale to the Indians, in return for allowing Calhoun and his men to mine and smuggle gold from their lands. Most of the people on the train, including Governor Fairchild and Sheriff Pearce, are Calhoun's partners in crime, and those innocents who discover the evidence for his sinister plot are quickly silenced. Eventually, Deakin narrows his list of allies down to Marica and Army Major Claremont (Ed Lauter), who agree to assist Deakin in his efforts to prevent the arms delivery.