Operation Cross Eagles is the only film Richard Conte ever directed. Great at playing bad guys and constipated good guys, in Conte’s one and only go calling the shots he never quite works out what he’s meant to do with the camera and the film is a bit of a mess. That said, it is a fine example of a particular type of movie made at a particular time and came out the same year as Where Eagles Dare, 1968, which does the same thing but better.
We’re talking not just about the adventure movie but about the adventure movie stacked with ageing thespians, in reality too old for the action hijinks their characters are getting up to on screen. King of these is The Wild Geese, in which a bunch of fat guys (Richard Harris, Richard Burton, Roger Moore), supposedly a crack team, have a larky, bullets-flying adventure in Africa, though Escape to Athena and The Sea Wolves also fit the bill. David Niven seems to turn up in them quite often.
But anyway, back to Operation Cross Eagles, in which 58-year-old Conte leads a commando outfit including Rory Calhoun (46, but looking ten years older), on a mission to spring a British army captain from the clutches of the Nazis. The captain, who is being treated in a civilised fashion by cultured German Admiral Von Vogels (Relja Basic), apparently knows the whereabouts of the allies’ plans to invade the Balkans. Together with a band of rough-and-ready partisans, Conte’s Lt Bradford and Calhoun’s Sgt McAfee run, climb and swim towards their target, en route picking off rentagoons with knives, bullets, grenades and fists, while the partisans’ inside woman, Anna (Aili King) – who might be playing both sides – tries to work her magic with Von Vogels.
We’re in the realm of the mid-budget adventure, shot for reasons of economy out in Yugoslavia (Slovenia, mostly), and director Conte makes good use of the locations around Piran – rugged hills, wide blue seas, picturesque salt pans. His local actors are good. Aili King smoulders away like something a German admiral might be attracted by. Basic also does well as the admiral himself, while Rada Djuricin is excellent as the admiral’s right-hand woman, a butch lesbian character clearly inspired by Rosa Klebb.
There are plenty more, and it would be good if they got more to do than just scowl, but it leaves some space for Calhoun, who is the best thing in this. Implausible though he is in terms of action physicality, Calhoun’s Sgt McAfee is a likeable dude and the essence of this commando group’s ethos – they’re rogue operators, men with the right stuff and no time for niceties like army etiquette or uniform.
The story takes an entirely unnecessary digressive turn when the commandos kidnap a German officer and use him to set up a hostage swap for the British officer their mission is all about, but it’s typical of the whole film, which is strangely disjointed and often goes the long way round when direct would be better. Is Conte trying to arthouse things up a bit? It might explain the jerkiness of the filming style, matched by a score by Mladen Gutesa which leans on Ennio Morricone’s use of discordance and unusual instrumentation.
Conte would be dead within seven years of making this, of a heart attack aged 65. It’s not a good testament. Remember him instead for his fine acting in great films like The Big Combo, The Blue Gardenia, even Thieves’ Highway (he’s a goodie in that one). He turned up in The Godfather too, en route to his final performance in Naked Exorcism, aka The Exorcist III aka The Return of the Exorcist. In other words, it did get worse than this!
Operation Cross Eagles – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
