There just about to show Where Eagles Dare on Channel 5, and what with my digital reception being state of the art but my taping of digital being as crap as ever, I'm going to watch it and, more to the point, listen to the start of it.

For how did they pre-announce ("after the break") this movie? Why, with a single ra!-ta-ta-ta-tat! from a drum of course, because the music that starts this movie is as unmistakable as Ravel's Bolero. The film is junk, pretty much, with a plot the Clint Eastwood surely doesn't understand to this day. But oh those opening credits, a mixture of militarised and Wagnerised Elgar (Enigma Variations in particular) on the rest of the orchestra, and Nazi oppression (i.e. scary but with artistic flare) from the drum section. It must have been on the strength of this music that Ron Goodwin was chosen to replace William Walton, no less, as the composer of the music for The Battle of Britain, unless I have my dates in a twist and it was vice versa.

Lion growling. And here it is. Blue mountains. And now the drumming starts. Red gothicky Germanicky lettering with the opening credits. Heaven. Pure heaven. I'm extremely glad that Hitler didn't invade my country, during the years just before I was born, because I just might have made a great little Nazi. As it is, I'll never know, thank goodness.

The one other thing worth mentioning about Where Eagles Dare, unless you are obsessed with those ski-lift/microbus thingies or with the German actor (who actually ran away from Hitler in 1939 but spent the rest of his life playing Nazis in English language movies) Anton Diffring, is that it is where Broadsword Calling Danny Boy got their name. Richard Burton says that into his radio set, a lot.