The Passage (1979)

Malcom McDowall manages to portray the epitome of Nazi SS nastiness in this story with a worryingly natural aplomb! He is leading a party pursuing James Mason ("Prof. Bergson") who, alongside his family, is being smuggled from France into Spain by the wily shepherd Anthony Quinn. Their journey is fraught with danger as they must cross the inhospitable terrain of the Pyrenee mountains with snow up to their thighs - whilst McDowall ("Capt. Von Berkow") uses just about every brutal technique in the book to strike fear into everyone who has seen/helped them as he tries to apprehend the professor. The production standards are a bit on the low side (not that the cold and variable light quality could have been of much help); the dialogue is badly captured with a poor audio mix and although there are certainly some horrific scenes - the end of Christopher Lee's brief contribution comes to mind - it's is all just a bit on the procedural side. Quinn portrays the cantankerous, brave, Basque very much it style of many of his previous roles - he sort of grunts his way though the thing with little by way of engagement with us, the audience, and the ending goes from thrilling to silly in a matter of a few frames!. The photography is splendid, and the story has a taut pace to it - it just isn't very good.