Sky Riders (1976)

Touches You

hyped garbage

Best movie ever!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Some fine performances from James Coburn and some of the rest of the cast, plus picturesque Greek locations, can't provide the thermal that would lift this out of the abyss of the gimmick movie.At heart, it's a routine film of a millionaire's family being kidnapped and then rescued by Coburn and half a dozen hang glider pilots from a circus troupe. We get to know the millionaire, Robert Culp, and the kidnapped wife, Susannah York, because they are familiar figures. We also get to know the local chief of police, Charles Aznevour, a Greek with a French accent. Except for John Beck, who heads the circus troupe and teaches Coburn how to fly and whose chin seems to be a granite massif, the other flyers are faceless and nameless, although they too are risking their lives in a daring assault on the ex monastery where York and her two kids are being held.The opening scene has the villains bursting into Culp's Greek mansion and shooting down all the servants before making off with York and the kids. The ransom is five million dollars. Culp, a nice cooperative guy, is willing to pay but hasn't got five million bucks. No matter because the whole ransom business is dropped from the plot anyway, eclipsed by a long and chaotic shoot out at the monastery.The editing really is execrable. So is the screenplay. Coburn seems to learn how to fly a hang glider in five minutes under Beck's tutelage. York doesn't get any lessons at all but can still take the controls during the escape when her companion is wounded. Oddly enough, the movie is built around the use of the hang gliders, which were a novelty at the time. (Earlier novelties included wet suits and Scuba diving; viz., "The Wreck of the Mary Deare," "Thunderball." Later, there were sky divers.) Yet the shots of the hang gliders aren't thrilling, as they should be. Much of it is at night. And the images of mountainous landscapes are jumbled and rolled about carelessly.After the escape is effected and the monastery is under assault from a horde of Greek astynomia, led by Aznavour, who has even given Robert Culp a rifle and dragged him along, some of the hang gliders circle back to the monastery, when they could easily head straight away from the area of danger. The gliders are unarmed but they keep flying around and providing convenient targets for the villains' machine guns.However, for all its flaws, it's a thought-provoking film. The thought it provokes is that no power on earth could ever get me to leave the ground in one of those flimsy contraptions.

"Brannigan" director Douglas Hickox's above-average adventure epic "Sky Riders" qualifies as an entertaining but improbable abduction opus. James Coburn of "Our Man Flint" fame stars as a smuggler who struggles to rescue his ex-wife and two children from the clutches of a treacherous group of trigger-happy kidnappers that call themselves World's Activist Revolutionary Army. This swiftly-paced, PG-rated, 91-minute suspense thriller draws its title from the hang gliders that Coburn employs to snatch Susannah York and two children from a mountain-top monastery. Robert Culp co-stars as wealthy industrialist Jonas Bracken who married Susannah York's character after she divorced the Coburn hero. "Sky Riders" was the first time that the picturesque monastery was used in a Hollywood actioneer. Several years later, producer Albert R. Broccoli used the location in the Roger Moore James Bond thriller "For Your Eyes Only." The aerial assault on the monastery is spectacular stuff, and Coburn appears to be performing his own stunt when he clings to the skid of a helicopter in flight. Unfortunately, despite its scenic settings, dazzling cinematography, and big-name cast, "Sky Riders" suffers from the absence of a strong villain. Scenarists Jack DeWitt, Greg MacGillivray, and Stanley Mann penned the screenplay from a story by Bill McGaw, Hall T. Sprague, and Garry Michael White. Two problems plague this aerial actioneer. They don't have an intimidating villain, and the dialogue remains pretty bland. French singer Charles Aznavour plays a Greek police man who wants to arrest the bad guys. Lalo Schifrin's music enhances the bloody violence

The movie starts with machinegun-toting terrorists killing the hired help and kidnapping a wife and child. The husband seeks his wife's former husband's help in getting them back. The gang's hideout territory scenery is breathtaking, an abandoned and isolated monastery in mountainous Greece. The inside of the monastery depicts ancient Christian Orthodox iconography. Coburn lines up a travelling troupe of circus-act type hang gliger performers to teach him how to fly. These are the early design of hang gliders, with a rogallo wing design. The rogallo wing consists of fabric stretched out in a triangle over two leading-edge hollow aluminum spars, with another aluminum tube for a spine, and another for a cross bar, and a lower metal loop for the dangling pilot to grip and steer by. Very much like a modern delta-style steerable kite. These were dangerous but beautiful designs, which are capable of going into a stall and nose dive, straight into the ground from a thousand feet up if you are not careful and experienced, but a delight to watch in flight. Before he approaches them, Coburn watches the travelling aerialists' circus-style open-air act, as the heartstoppingly colorful hang gliders perform aerial maneuvers with breathtaking poise and beauty. There's a pretty girl in the troup. One flyer pretends to lose his grip and plummets dozens of feet into a nearby body of water while his pilotless hang glider drifts lazily down without him. So Coburn approaches them and asks to be taught how to pilot one. Somewhere along the line, while learning to fly, Coburn gets casual and cozy, and proposes to the performers that they join him in the rescue. "If we fail," you get your money back," the teacher volunteers. "Right!" Coburn grins skeptically and knowingly, to which the others laugh. Coburn isn't bitter, but he's no fool, and suddenly they have all been won over to his side and looking at the challenge as a team. Like I said, Coburn at his best. From there on, it's a class act as Coburn and the aerialists make a stealth infiltration of the sky-high monastery via hang glider, and seek to get the woman and child out and escape again on their hang gliders before the terrorists can discover and stop them.

Utterly ordinary, thoroughly routine and totally forgettable adventure tale that's good only if you want to waste some time -although there are many better time-wasters around. There are no surprises and no attempts at distinguishing this film from dozens of similar films. As for the hand-gliding sequences, many of them are filmed at night and we can barely see what's happening onscreen!