Sky Riders (1976)

Sky Riders (1976) came at that odd time in the mid-seventies when action movies seemed out of vogue, largely banished to the ranks of low budget exploitation films.  Even those studio backed action movies that saw the light of day always seemed slightly under-nourished in the action department, as if ashamed to admit that they really were action films.  Even stalwarts of the genre, like Sam Peckinpah, seemed to faltering in a haze of cocaine and booze, turning out flawed and compromised films which were largely ignored at the box office.  Those that did come out, though, like Sky Riders, could, more often than not, boast casts of quite high-profile, but either slightly past their prime or not quite A-list, actors in search of a pay cheque.  Hell, it beat appearing in Italian schlockfests, as did the likes of John Huston (on multiple occasions), Shelley Winters (ditto) and even Henry Fonda.  So it is that Sky Riders is headlined by James Coburn, a charismatic action lead getting too old to play full-on action roles and who was in the process of transitioning to be being a supporting actor, particularly in villainous roles.  In support are Robert Culp, another lead actor getting too long in the tooth for such roles, Susannah York and Charles Aznavour, rather bizarrely cast as a Greek policeman who, thanks to his accent and moustache, kept putting me in mind of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau.  

The film's premise aims to be very trendy (for the seventies), with an American businessman living in Greece being extorted by terrorists who have kidnapped his wife and child.  With the police apparently clueless (they are being led by Inspector Clouseau, don't forget), enter the wife's former husband, (and father to her eldest child), smuggler James Coburn.  Having identified the terrorists' lair as being an abandoned and remote monastery atop a rock pillar.  (The same location featured in the climax to the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981)), Coburn decides that the best way to effect a rescue is by hang glider, so enlists the services of a 'hang gliding circus' to launch a nocturnal raid on the building.  Realising what he is doing, the police plan their own ground assault on the monastery.  Coburn and his group free the hostages and, after a shoot-out with some of the terrorists, make their airborne getaway, just as the cops arrive.  A huge gun battle between police and terrorists ensue with the hang gliders caught in the crossfire.  After a helicopter chase, the cornered terrorist leader shoots himself rather than be taken prisoner, but the hostages are safe and reunited with Culp, while a wounded Coburn heads for hospital.  The action unfolds as straightforwardly as this synopsis suggests - there are no real plot convolutions or sub-plots, which is probably just as well with running time of just over ninety minutes.  While this is undoubtedly partly due to director Douglas Hickox's preference for narrative directness and unobtrusive direction, one can't help but feel that the on-set accident in which a Greek electrician died in an explosion, (which resulted in the detention of the film's producers, until an out-of-court payment (or bribe) was made), has something to do with the film's somewhat truncated feel.

Nevertheless, this directness and focus on the main plot, means that Sky Riders is a commendably fast-moving film, rapidly shifting from one well-staged action set piece to another.   Conversely, it is also its weakness, as it precludes any real character development and leaves the narrative feeling rather perfunctory.  At times it seems that the script is going to open up a potentially interesting narrative thread - the past adverserial relationship of Coburn and Culp's characters and the past love triangle involving York, for instance - then simply lets it drop.  The film's antagonists, the terrorists, are another weak link, never rising above the level of Bader-Meinfof style stereotypes mouthing the same old rhetoric about world revolution and the like, and never allowed to become actual characters.  None of them seem to have names, not even their leader, let alone any individual characteristics.  Their cause is also left very vague, beyond vaguely leftist slogans - the thinness of their motivation being somewhat adept for a gang cardboard cut-out villains.  Still, Hickox's brisk direction - peppered wit exemplary action sequences and excellent use of the Greek locations - carries the film through these weaknesses whilst it is running, but afterwards, they leave something of an unsatisfactory feeling, as if something vital had been missed.  Hickox, of course, is a director whose reputation largely rides upon the magnificent Theatre of Blood (1973), which, like most of his films, has a narrative directness, still feels more thoroughly 'fleshed out' than Sky Riders, again suggesting that, here, productions problems may have contributed to the film's sparseness in terms of narrative and character development.

Sky Riders was a film that generated quite a lot of publicity pre-production and during production, (not just because of the fatal on-set accident), largely due to the hang gliding element - hang-gliding being something that had captured the public imagination in the mid-seventies and which was growing in popularity.  I recall seeing quite a few behind-the-scenes reports about it on TV, before it seemed to pretty much vanish from view (doubtless due to the bad publicity generated by the accident) - I certainly don't recall its release or having ever seen it turn up on terrestrial British TV (although it probably did, but in a late night graveyard slot).  Not surprisingly, it was a box office failure, stymying producer Sandy Howard's plans for a sequel, (a script was commissioned from and written by Jack Hill).  Not that this, nor the fall-out from the accident, derailed Howard's continued production of mid-to-low budgeted action orientated films and TV movies, including The Island of Dr Moreau (1977), would be disaster epic Meteor (1979) and Jaguar Lives! (1979).  Ultimately, the biggest problem facing Sky Riders was its timing - it came out just before action-adventure films were revitalised by George Lucas via Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  If it had come out just a year or two later, it might have been able to0 capitalise on the success of such big budget studio pictures, riding on their coat tails, particularly on home video (a medium it was also too early for).  As it stands, Sky Riders remains a little-seen, but solidly made fast-moving action film with great stunt work that provides some decent entertainment for an hour and a half.