Edge of Eternity | |
---|---|
Directed by | Don Siegel |
Screenplay by | Knut Swenson Richard Collins |
Story by |
Ben Markson Knut Swenson |
Starring | Cornel Wilde |
Music by | Daniele Amfitheatrof |
Cinematography | Burnett Guffey |
Edited by | Jerome Thoms |
Production
company |
Thunderbird Productions, Inc.
|
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
80 min. |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Fight scene in the US Guano cablecar |
Edge of Eternity is a 1959 CinemaScope Eastman color film directed by Don Siegel shot on location in the Grand Canyon.
The film begins with an attempted assassination of a man looking into the Grand Canyon with his binoculars. The assassin disables the emergency brake from the man's car and attempts to run him over as the car goes off the edge. The man leaps out of the way and kills his assassin by throwing him off the rim. He is seen wandering by Eli, an old prospector who attempts to tell a Deputy Sheriff (Cornel Wilde). However Eli has a reputation for telling tall tales, so the deputy ignores him to chase an attractive woman (Victoria Shaw) speeding recklessly down the road. The unidentified man is later found dead, hanging bound and gagged in a former mining office in an abandoned gold mine.
The Deputy and Janice Kendon, the speeding woman, team up to solve the murders and a plot to illegally mine gold to sell in Mexico.
Filming took place in Kingman, Oatman, and Gold Road, Arizona. The climax of the film, involving a fight on a U.S. Guano cable car suspended above the Grand Canyon, was filmed in the aerial tramway to the Bat Cave mine, in the western Grand Canyon of Arizona. U.S. Guano, owned and operated the Bat Cave Mine at the time. Guano was considered a good organic fertilizer, prior to the use of modern synthetics. The mine played out in 1960 and was closed. The head house, for the cable car and some of the relic equipment as seen in the film, have been preserved and may be viewed today, almost as it was in the film.