Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 action adventure war thriller spy film directed by Brian G. Hutton and starring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood and Mary Ure. It follows a Special Operations Executive team of men attempting to save a captured American General from the fictional Schloß Adler fortress, except the mission turns out not to be as it seems. It was filmed in Panavision using the Metrocolor process, and was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Alistair MacLean wrote the screenplay, his first, at the same time that he wrote the novel of the same name. Both became commercial successes.

In the winter of 1943-44, MI6 officers Colonel Turner and Admiral Rolland assign Major John Smith, five other commandos of the Special Operations Executive, and U.S. Army Ranger Lieutenant Morris Schaffer of the OSS to rescue U.S. Army Brigadier General George Carnaby, a chief planner for the Western Front, captured by the Germans and held at the Schloß Adler, a mountaintop fortress in the Bavarian alpine village of Werfen, accessible only by cable car. Disguised as German troops, Smith and his team are to parachute in, infiltrate the castle, and rescue Carnaby before the Germans can interrogate him. After a Ju 52 transport plane drops the team, agent Mary Ellison is dropped separately in secret, her presence known only to Smith.

Though two commandos are mysteriously killed, Smith continues the operation; he keeps Schaffer as a close ally, and helps Mary meet local agent Heidi Schmidt, who arranges for Mary to be employed at the castle. Smith starts revealing to Mary that the mission is not what it initially seems – Carnaby’s capture was deliberately staged by the British, and that Carnaby himself was substituted with an impersonator named Cartwright Jones. In Werfen, the Germans eventually surround the commandos in a gasthaus, forcing them to surrender. Smith and Schaffer (being officers) are separated from the remaining three operatives: Thomas, Berkeley, and Christiansen. Smith and Schaffer kill their captors, blow up a supply depot, and prepare an escape route for later use. They ride on the roof of a cable car up to the castle, and then climb inside when Mary lowers a rope.

German General Rosemeyer and Standartenführer Kramer are interrogating Carnaby when the three new prisoners arrive, who reveal themselves as German double agents. Smith and Schaffer intrude, weapons drawn, but Smith forces Schaffer to disarm, identifying himself as Sturmbannführer Johann Schmidt of the Schutzstaffel’s SD intelligence branch. He conveys proof of his identity, which includes showing the name of Germany’s top spy in Britain to Kramer, who silently affirms it. He exposes “General Carnaby” as Corporal Cartwright Jones, and claims that the double agents are British impostors, Smith proposes that they prove themselves by writing down the names of their fellow agents in Britain, to be compared to his own list in his pocket. After the three finish their lists, Smith takes them and then reveals that he was bluffing, and that the actual objective of the mission was to exploit the staged capture of Carnaby/Jones to penetrate the Sicherheitsdienst in order to obtain the identities of the German agents and their commander.

Meanwhile, Mary is visited by Sturmbannführer von Hapen, an SD officer attracted to her, but he becomes suspicious of flaws in her cover story. Leaving her, he happens upon the scene of Carnaby’s interrogation just as Smith finishes his explanation. Von Hapen puts everyone under arrest but is distracted when Mary arrives. Schaffer kills von Hapen and the other German officers with his silenced pistol. The group then makes its escape, taking the three double agents as prisoners. Schaffer sets explosives to create diversions around the castle, while Smith uses the radio room to inform Rolland of their success. From there they head to the cable car station, sacrificing Thomas as a decoy. Berkeley and Christiansen break free and attempt their own escape in a cable car; both are thwarted and killed by Smith. The group reunites with Heidi on the ground, boarding a bus they prepared earlier as a